All decisions should be Data driven

Ujjyaini Mitra 
AVP – Strategy, Head Analytics – Digital Venture, Viacom 18:

Data Science is bringing opportunity for job, innovation, companies etc. When I talk about job, I think every company today needs a bunch of data scientists and therefore people having rights skills because data science is not one single domain, it’s like maths, statistics and computer science, unless and until you amalgamate all the three it’s very difficult to be a data scientist. People who have right skills have immense opportunities. Data Science is going to grow atleast for next 10-12 years.  

In my organization particularly, first thing that we have adopted is all decisions should be data driven. We are trying to cut short of as much of the gut feel based decisions. Second is no silo in the data. So if I have five different business units, all the units, data should talk together. So therefore I have a 360 degree view of the complete business. 

Third is data science, so far analytics was a very much support business. But now in our organization data science is a main frame business department all together. So as a Sales person has a revenue earning as a part of their KRA equally my data model also has a same KRA. So we actually share the profit/ loss of the business as a part of our KRA. Therefore this is a business team and not a support team for the business to run.