What I do as a Data Analyst: no, it’s not only about analysing data

The reality of being a Data Analyst in a fast-paced business, juggling multiple reports, having your findings challenged, and dealing with the inevitable mistakes you will make.

Whether you’re considering a career in Data Analysis or you’re curious to see if other Data Analysts have a similar routine to yours — you’ll like this article.

Before we start, a bit of context…

I work as a CX Analyst, meaning I analyse customer experience data for a consulting company within the Luxury industry. Our clients are Luxury brands, and my main responsibility is to analyse the customer experience they are offering and suggest next steps to improve it. This analysis goes into reports presented by the account managers and are an integral part of what the company delivers to the client. Hence, they have to be insightful and of impeccable data quality.

The tools I use for analysing data and building reports are mainly Excel, Power Query, and Powerpoint. Part of my job is also to use Power BI to create automated reports.

Finally, I am currently fully remote and a digital nomad. I move countries every 3 months and mostly live in co-living spaces with other remote workers. My office is usually a coworking space, and my hours are flexible. I need to be somewhat available between 9–6pm CET, but I can start and finish work whenever I want as long as I meet my deadlines and am present for important meetings.

This is what my usual remote office setup looks like: second monitor, laptop raiser, wireless keyboard & mouse, headset, notepad, and Harry Kane’s bum.

So, what do I actually do as a Data Analyst?

I manage my pipeline of projects and negotiate deadlines:

I’m part of a team of analysts, and we all have our pipelines with all the reports we need to deliver and their deadlines. Usually, we work on 1 report at a time, but we have peak months in which we sometimes have to create a report while another one is being reviewed by the account managers and a third is being proofread by another analyst. Things can get quite hectic!

This is one of the misconceptions I had before I became a Data Analyst. Usually, when we’re practicing and building our portfolio, we get used to having all the time in the world to focus on that analysis…