Career Prospects - BBA Data, AI & Management

Chief data officer

Role

The Chief data officer drives the company's digital strategy based on data collected.

Responsibilities

He/she ensures that the data collected is reliable and consistent and that it can be processed to support decision-making in line with company's objectives.
He/she will be able to adjust and adapt data collection to produce different reports. The objective is then to format the data (graphs, algorithms, etc.) to facilitate its use by the relevant departments (marketing, HR, accounting, etc.).
His/her position is cross-functional and allows for in-depth knowledge of the company and a finger on the pulse across all topics (processes, professions, business issues, services, etc.).
His/her responsibilities lie at the interface between different functions: IT Director, Management Controller, Head of operational activities and support functions.
He/she will work closely with other specialists such as Data Scientists or web analysts.

Skills and attributes

The Chief data officer is highly proficient in mathematics, statistics and analysis. This requires a high degree of rigour and good organisation skills in order to carry out regular and accurate data monitoring.
He/she has strong listening, pedagogical and communication skills in order to answer questions, meet the needs of his company and explain the data to different departments.
Adaptability is also important in order to optimise the database according to demand (suppliers, colleagues, customers, etc.).
His/her management role requires the ability to lead a team with diplomacy and push for performance.
 Business intelligence manager

Role

The role of the Business Intelligence Manager or Business Intelligence Consultant is to advise and propose strategic decision-making tools to company decision-makers.
He/she will then select data, sort and analyse the company’s situation as well as its difficulties using this data. The data will help him/her to define an effective solution adapted to the company's needs.  His/her role continues right through to the application and implementation of the project.

Responsibilities

His/her main responsibilities are to analyse the functional and technical needs of a company and to implement robust and efficient data architecture.
He/she provides solutions and seeks to improve the IT tools deployed in the company’s decision-making processes.
He/she is also in charge of producing reports for clients and providing support and/or training for employees.

Skills and attributes

The Business Intelligence Manager must be independent, self-confident, adaptable and must be convincing to reassure decision-makers of the relevance of his/her proposals.
He/she has broad IT knowledge: systems architecture, development methodologies, CRM (customer relationship management tools), ERP (Integrated Management Software Package), SQL (database specific IT language), etc.
He/she will also be proficient in specific decision-making tools such as: SAP software, Sybase, Oracle, Datastage, Informatica, Microsoft, Performance Point, Business objects, Cognos, Hyperion etc.
Data Architect

Role

The Data Architect is involved upstream of the processing of raw data. He/she is responsible for the collection of data of varying degrees of quality from different internal or external sources.

Responsibilities

On a day-to-day basis, He/she creates and improves infrastructure for storing, handling and retrieving data. The Data Architect designs, documents and builds database applications. His/her global perspective ensures compatibility between databases and frameworks (software infrastructure) and company objectives. He/she works closely with the Data Scientist who provides with the data to be processed.

Skills and attributes

The Data Architect must be organised, rigorous, flexible and creative (with an innovative mindset). Interpersonal skills are also important, especially for teamwork.
He/she must be proficient in specific IT languages and tools (Hadoop, Spark, NoSQL).
He/she must have a good level of English, and good working knowledge of computing platforms, computer modelling, the design of data storage solutions and the processing and transformation of complex data.
Data Protection Officer

Role

The Data Protection Officer ensures that personal information is protected. He/she ensures that the data collected in the organisation for which he/she works is kept secure and used in a legal manner.

Responsibilities

Data Protection Officers have a key role to play in meeting the growing needs of organisations with regard to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). He/she is responsible for compliance with the new regulatory requirements linked to digital evolution. He/she thus ensures that his/her employer or client is compliant with regard to the data it collects and uses for commercial purposes. He/she works closely with other functions and company departments. His/her role also involves the use of data internally.
He/she ensures compliance with data protection legislation. He/she oversees compliance with the law by working with the purchasing, legal, IT and other teams. He/she makes recommendations and proposes alternative solutions where needed to comply with the law. He/she provides advice to management and alerts them in the event of irregularities. He/she manages security risks and incidents.
The Data Protection Officer holds one of the most cross-functional roles in a company. He/she works at the interface with various professional disciplines, in particular Marketing, General Management, Human Resources and Development. Given the number and diversity of his/her interlocutors, he/she must be able to communicate easily with the various parties, which requires a certain sense of pedagogy as well as finely-tuned persuasion skills.

Skills and attributes

The Data Protection Officer has a strong IT and legal acumen. He/she is conversant with the basic concepts of data protection and its various components. He/she is familiar with the general regulations governing the protection of personal information, as well as with all approaches, concepts, techniques and methods related to data protection.
From the fundamentals of privacy, the principle of confidentiality, systems legislation, data transfers, cyber law, to protection incidents and new threats, nothing should elude the Data Protection Officer. He is a hybrid specialist at the interface between mathematics and law. He/she also needs to have the technical and legal knowledge necessary for the regulatory and strategic operation of his/her employer's business operations.
 
Data Manager

Role

The Data Manager operates at the interface between statistics, IT and company strategy. He/she creates and administers databases.
Using information collected, he/she creates databases, analyses them, draws up customer profiles and studies consumer behaviour. The Data Manager’s role is to deploy his/her technical knowledge in relation to real problems and data, in collaboration with the marketing or sales teams.
He/she may be required to compare this data with other so-called open data, i.e. data that is free of copyright and accessible for all. He/she transforms it into statistical tables that are very useful to different company departments: sales, IT, marketing.

Responsibilities

His/her main responsibilities include:
- Draw up data collection specifications;
- Collect all the company's defined data;
- Organise the data to make the best use of it;
- Update databases by adding missing data and removing errors;
- Add missing data;
- Ensure long-term security of data tables;
- Analyze and communicate simplified data results to non-data specialists.

Skills and attributes

The Data Manager must be able to analyse and summarise data, and to work both independently and as part of a team.
The Data Manager is skilled in mathematics, statistics or algorithmics. This knowledge is generally deployed to build and databases.
Proficiency with IT tools and SQL-type query languages (a computer language specific to databases) is essential. He/she must also be well versed in the company's sector of activity.
Data Analyst / Data Miner / Data Scientist

The Data Analyst or Data Miner processes and manages data from a single source such as the company's CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. The Data Scientist has a more senior role than the Data Analyst or Data Miner. He/she handles a larger volume of data from multiple sources.

Role

Their role is to measure company performance compared to objectives and forecasts. They format data using tables or statistics to make it easier to read. They provide the resources necessary to build targeted campaigns that will be effective with customers.

Responsibilities

The Data Analyst or Data Miner extracts data on consumption patterns so that each company department can use it to improve its own performance. In particular, it enables trends to be identified in customer preferences so that the marketing department can define an effective strategy. Consumer habits, flagship products and competitors’ price ranges are among the elements that are useful for positioning oneself more competitively and seducing the customer. In the same vein, he/she will analyse sales data in order to highlight the resources that can be mobilised.

Their main responsibilities include:

- Manage statistical tools and the information necessary to set up a database,
- Fully manage the various technologies specific to big data,
- Find relevant data sources,
- Extract data from the source system,
- Extract and translate business data into statistical data,
- Optimise customer segmentation through consumption data,
- Model and regularly update the database,
- Control data quality,
- Analyse numerical data generated by the company's activity,
- Set up a data warehouse
- Summarise and simplify information to make it accessible for company managers,
- Make recommendations for databases modifications,
- Determine the target of marketing campaigns,
- Determine purchasing or consumption trends,
- Facilitate the decision-making process of companies by acting as a consultant.

Skills and attributes

The Data Analyst/Data Miner and Data Scientist have a strong appetite for statistics. They have a full understanding of both computer language and statistical tools. Fluency in English is also an essential prerequisite for working in a highly international field.
Extreme rigour, a highly analytical mind and strong organisational skills are essential qualities for this position.

Published on January 19, 2021 Updated on October 7, 2024