My Passion for Data Analytics: A Drive to Succeed
As an IT professional with a passion for making things work, my journey into the world of data analytics began back in August 2014, when I attended a bootcamp organized by IBM's Africa Technical Institute. During the training sessions, I was fascinated by IBM's Biglnsights Text Analytics and its ability to analyze a twitter dataset to determine how many times a particular word was tweeted, as well as to discover patterns that could potentially lead to criminal activities, making it very useful in forensic investigation. That experience inspired me to pursue a career in data analytics, which I showcase in this essay through my childhood curiosity and love for technology, leading me to study computer science and become an IT professional.
Ever since that bootcamp, I decided that if I were ever going to make a career change it would be “Data Analytics”. Here I am, 4 years after and decided. My love for technology started as far back as when I was a kid with a corn popper. I will always remember my curiosity about how that toy worked, far more than the excitement of having the toy itself. What made those little balls pops as soon as I started to roll? Well I eventually found out, but the damage had already been done. Over the years, my childhood to adult memories are filled with my quest for knowledge on “how stuff works” – one of my favorite programs on the discovery channel, and this quest was what led me to study computer science as a first degree and transform myself into “making stuff work”. My 7 years of work experience has seen me become an IT professional in the fields of networking, security, servers and storage technologies.
Four of these years have been at Hewlett Packard. As a technical consultant at HP, I help businesses operate in a smarter and more efficient manner in order to increase productivity and maximize revenue and profit. I have been able to achieve this by applying theoretical and practical knowledge to design, consultation, installation and support in the different technology areas mentioned above. The experience and exposure I have gained while working at a multinational has been valuable in helping me decide on pursuing a master’s degree in business analytics as the next steps for advancing my career. While I am aware that this is a major career transition, I strongly believe that this next level of knowledge and advanced concepts will help me better understand business logic from a data perspective. My passion for helping businesses operate more efficiently is the major reason for pursuing this career change and as the saying goes “Data is the new Oil”. Also, I see a lot of untapped real world use cases here in Nigeria. From predictive crime mapping to customer behavioral habits in restaurant and fast food outlets, insurance, manufacturing, financial sector and the healthcare industry.
As a first step towards, data analytics and its related disciplines, big data and data science, I enrolled in a 6-month Big Data Architect program offered by Simplilearn training. My aim is to understand the technical aspects of how unstructured data is analyzed. Ultimately, I intend to become a specialist in analytics both from a business analysis point of view and also from a data analysis perspective. My long-term goal is to establish a consulting company, which will help small, medium and large enterprises make the right choices to develop their businesses based on data analysis.
