DataCareer Insights: Interview with Roman from Novalytica

Tell us a bit about yourself: What has your career path been?

Due to my academic interests, I first decided to pursue  a PhD in Empirical Political Economy from the University of St. Gallen. During my PhD-studies, I also had the opportunity to do research stays at the University of Oxford and at Washington University in St. Louis, which was very exciting both in terms of the academic but also the cultural experience. After obtaining my PhD, I first worked at a survey company in Lausanne where I gained practical experience in project management and conducting as well as analyzing surveys for clients from the public and private sector. Before joining Novalytica, I worked at a private research company that conducts scientific studies in the domains of labor and social policy. I had the opportunity to further improve my skills working with big databases as well as how to communicate findings to a broad audience.

What excites you most about working with data?

Data is so abundant nowadays and there is a huge potential to use it. Delving into new data, producing meaningful insights, communicating findings and enabling other people to work with data is challenging, yet very fulfilling. Good data also allows for data-based decision making by providing useful information about how things work and evolve over time. Thus, collecting data from structured and unstructured data sources and making it easily accessible is not only fun but ultimately helps businesses to make better decisions. 

What’s your role at Novalytica?

First of all, let me tell you that I am excited to join Novalytica. It’s a team of highly qualified individuals that want to accompany clients on their data journey and provide businesses with a solid data basis for making better, data-based decisions. I will be working on developing business intelligence applications as well as behind the scenes tidying and preparing data, conducting data analyses as well as being involved in inhouse workshops for our clients to improve internal data skills.

What do you think are current/future trends in the data area?

I think a growing number of companies and entities in the public sector realize what treasure they are sitting on and more and more individuals making decisions will want to use the data they own. With tools such as Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Sense or Tableau, a broad audience can make sense of the data they have in a user-friendly environment. Instead of looking up information in separate excel-files, it’s easy to combine different datasets and gain a deeper insight about the current state of the business. Moreover, the Swiss Open Government Data strategy offers the opportunity to easily access and combine data, which can generate a value-added for decision-makers.

Considering that the available data is growing in size, making sense of which data can really help to answer relevant questions will become even more important. I am excited to support our clients on their data journey.