Business intelligence software is hot these days, but there's only so much it can do to find pearls of wisdom in oceans of data. Companies will soon discover that they need more than data and analytics tools to gain the business insights needed to remain competitive, experts argue. They'll need people trained to run the data through statistical models and provide results that executives can act on, says Steve Hillion, vice president of analytics at EMC.

Standard BI tools are limited in scope, Hillon told Meridith Levinson at CIO magazine. They don't encourage people to ask open questions or explore data in a flexible, not-strictly-controlled way. The growing demand for data scientists is also a function of the maturity of analytics and parallel computing technologies. Today there are highly advanced statistical tools available that scale. 

Data scientists have to be good at statistics, modeling and math, and they have to be highly knowledgeable about the business they are working in. They also need to know how to present data in a visually effective way.

"Data scientists need to be able to tease out that one insight that will resonate the most with the business, have the greatest impact on the business, and is the thing that the business can actually act on," Hillion says. "A certain amount of artistry is needed to present the data scientist's results, to make them visual, appealing, and to have an impact."

While some data scientists will be part of the IT group, many are likely to work within business units, such as marketing, finance or research.

For more:
- see Meridith Levinson's article at CIO

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