You need to understand the business to be successful as a data analyst. But how do you learn this? And how can you best support a business at different stages?

In this episode I talk with Olivia Höwing about her experience working as a data analyst at Project A. She gets to work with many different portfolio companies and learn about different business models and tool stacks. This position offers a unique vantage point and a great learning curve for a data analyst.

Key takeaways:

• Olivia studied business, but wanted to work more with technology. With data, she found a field that bridges this gap.
• Working closely with internal and external business stakeholders is key to build your understanding of how the business works, and how you can use data to support it.
• The right tool stack depends on the stage and the needs of a company. When you're just starting up, you might just want to plug your data sources directly into a visualization tool. (Looker Studio is a super simple and free tool to get started, especially when you're already on Google Cloud Platform.)
• Building a full-fledged data warehouse, joining different data sources and building more complex data models comes later, when you have more data, more complex business needs, and performance considerations. (On GCP, BigQuery is the obvious choice. It has a free tier as well. And for data modeling, dbt is ubiquitous.)
• While it's interesting to explore new tools, you should only bring them in if it's really needed. Every additional tool doesn't just cost money, but adds complexity. And often the job can be done with tools that are already there. (For example, if a company is happy and productive working with Tableau, there's no reason to bring in another BI tool, even if better options might be available.)
• Data activation is about culture and building data into your daily routine and decision making. Close relationships with your business stakeholders are key here.
• If you want to learn and build your skills, it can be very helpful to go to local meetups or conferences. This year, the dbt conference Coalesce is coming to Berlin.
• Olivia supports Datacraft, a community to help people find their way into data.

Find Olivia and Valentin on LinkedIn.