This week, we are in discussion with Eshwarya Agarwal, the Senior Analytics Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He is AWS certified & has expertise in AWS machine learning, Tableau, Looker, and data science.
Esh has incredible expertise in customer analytics, data storytelling, visualization, and data warehousing. In his consulting career, Eshwarya has successfully served in various positions, including Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and as Analytics Consultant.
In a conversation with The Executive Outlook, he highlighted his significant career path & when asked about the typical day at work he added –
“His day comprises of talking to the customers, working with the team and doing hands on work with data.
” He further stated “The major goal of conducting workshops with customers/clients is to understand their requirements & address the pain points, so that I can understand things from their perspective, “what is happening to them,” “what are they expecting,” and this helps me create a vision for the project”
According to him, if we are focused and can understand the pain points of customers, projects are much more impactful and increases the effectiveness of the business.
In Esh’s words, “If I talk about my day, my day always involves effective internal collaboration with the team to understand and brainstorm on the project, current/ongoing issues with the analysis and what steps we need to take to resolve them.”
Moreover, he said, “I like to get my hands dirty with data analytics tasks and spend some of my time crunching numbers or generating insights. This helps me better deep dive into the problem and help generate more insights from the data
“He also talks about his journey, how he started his career and got into a good position and what things excite him most.
With an engineering background and a strong interest in math and statistics, he added, “I always was inclined towards mathematics and I intended to earn the certification from the Indian Statistical Institute initially but could not do so”.
He continues on… Because of my interest in Maths and Stats, I took a job in data sciences consulting company through on-campus recruitment. In the beginning, I had no idea what data analytics is, learnt on the job, got to work on some really interesting customer problems and that’s how I began my little adventure into analytics.
On the job I learnt both functional and technical skills. Right from how to define a problem, structure/break a problem into different parts, to actually working and solving a problem through analytical techniques. On the technical front I learnt how to write SQL queries, working with excel, BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI and developing statistical models through R and Python.
Then I got this opportunity to come to the UK with a customer analytics consulting company where I started working with the clients in the UK on their customer analytics problems across the customer lifecycle and that included attribution, retention/churn, segmentation/targeting and Customer Lifetime value. The key skill that I learnt here was how to generate insights from data and then make those insights actionable for the customers that I was working with.
Esh also talks about his experience with the job and what he likes the most.
The thing that excites me the most is the ability to impact business decisions in a positive way. The work that I or we as data professionals do is quite meaningful to the business if done the right way.
Our ability to turn data into insights which can then help in taking data driven decisions is something I love about my job. He explained that a lot of data is being collected legitimately worldwide, but it is only helpful if it is appropriately handled, evaluated, and simplified. So when I am able to create patterns or extract meaning out of it, I really enjoy and feel satisfied.
In his conversation with Executive Outlook, Esh also emphasized the data storytelling techniques and how we can use them in business.
He stated that Storytelling to me is the ability to speak in the language that your stakeholder/customer understands.
The majority of people comprehend information better when it is told in the form of a story, and the same thing happens when it comes to presenting insights from the data.
And from my experience, I can say that when there is a narrative, chart, graph, or another type of account surrounding the story, it becomes more effective and successful at conveying the idea clearly and concisely, Esh says.
He also underlined how to apply data storytelling techniques from a business perspective.
Data storytelling is not new and has existed even when the tools being used today weren’t there. Yes our ability to make an impact and create impactful stories have become easier. So to create impactful data stories, I think it should have :
- Definitely some good data along with some meaty insights
- It should have a purpose or a theme. Too many themes even if they are individually powerful, sometimes spoil the story. So it is important to stick to that theme and revolve around it
- A good narrative which flows well. Along with Visuals/charts, numbers, etc which can be used to enlighten the audience
- Have some key takeaways for the audience
When asked about the tools to enable data storytelling which is very important to know in the interest of the business.
“The nature of my work is consulting; I have always been tool agnostic. It is not necessary that the tool you are using is the same one that your client is using.
Data storytelling is more of a soft skill to me than technical skill. It depends on how you convey the information or build the story around it.
You should practice telling a data story and something you should be ready for or consider whenever you are trying to portray something.
When asked about his preferred method of sharing information with the stakeholders, he continued.
I personally don’t have a preference. Both narratives and visuals have their merits. It depends on what you are trying to do with it.I my opinion they need to be combined together. Like I said earlier a good story will have a good narrative and visuals to enlighten the audience or to keep them engaged.
Having said that some of the use cases require written narratives to explain things in detail. Documentation or unguided training for instance cannot be done with just a visual. It will most likely require a written narrative along with it to explain what is going on.Visuals are open to interpretation whereas written documents bring everyone to the same page.
Therefore, a successful story should have a strong narrative and engaging visuals that encourage audience participation. If the audience is not involved, the story risks losing them and having no impact.
In my experience, comprehending written documents calls for delving into detail; at other times, a little training may be necessary to provide direction. In these circumstances, getting the audience on the same page takes time. It can be difficult, but if we offer these things as a visual effect and storytelling, we can accomplish something by carefully describing every element and explaining our message to our audience.
Editor Bio
I’m Isha Taneja, serving as the Editor-in-Chief at "The Executive Outlook." Here, I interview industry leaders to share their personal opinions and provide valuable insights to the industry. Additionally, I am the CEO of Complere Infosystem, where I work with data to help businesses make smart decisions. Based in India, I leverage the latest technology to transform complex data into simple and actionable insights, ensuring companies utilize their data effectively.
In my free time, I enjoy writing blog posts to share my knowledge, aiming to make complex topics easy to understand for everyone.
