Power Platform | Raise of the Citizen Data Analyst

Yes, you´ve seen this right – after we talked about Citizen Developers born and raised with low-code platforms such as Microsoft´s Power Platform, it is now time to talk about the dozens of „Data Analysts“ using tools like Microsoft Excel or MS Access to quickly correlate numbers, find patterns, create visuals and many more. No surprise those be called out as „Citizen Data Analysts“ by companies like Forrester or Gartner. And no question as well, it´s not a new species of humans we´re talking about – in many situations the Citizen Developer and the Citizen Data Analyst is the same person. So what´s in common?

Considering building an application or optimizing a process in many ways it starts with data – Data matters. On top of data both the Citizen Developer as well as a Citizen Data Analyst is building something. This can be done by using the low-code toolchain provided by Microsoft´s Power Platform, but it also can be achieved by configuring and slightly customizing first party applications out of the Dynamics 365 product family. Above visual outlines data being surrounded by these tools and digital transformation projects can be categorized in 4 different buckets.

Those, that focus on the employee – talking about empowerment and improvements in the day-to-day life. Collaborative applications for instance, allowing to communicate and discuss on data, find conclusions and align on next steps for better decision making.

Another bucket being customer-centric. Those areas to better engage with customers, focus on CSAT, NSAT, MAU, relationship or customer loyalty. Not to forget the various ways of interaction.

A 3rd being around transformation – the new way of X-as-a-Service. Entering new markets, increase time to market and transform products and services based on new requirements, changes forcing changes, and many more.

And finally the last bucket on optimization. Increasing time to value, ensuring business transformation due to changes, improving processes, work, and many more.

All of them, the Citizen Developer and Citizen Data Analyst is working on improvements of business outcomes. How? Above visual outlines the new capabilities when Azure services joining Business Applications including low-code Power Platform. Introducing a new data estate at your company, both the classic Data Analyst or Software Developer can co-work with the Citizen Data Analyst or Citizen Developer – and this is a Fusion Teams approach that makes many companies resuming quickly from pandemic and even increasing business because of the innovation added to their digital transformation.

Above visual shows the foundation of Azure and Power Platform services coming together as Azure Data Lake Storage, Dataverse and the Common Data Model acting together and help making access to data sources an easy task like counting 1,2,3 for both classic software development as well as new added citizen software development teams. Using Azure Synapse Analytics, classic Data Analyst and Citizen Data Analyst can act together or individually on the same data set – analyzing, creating and building new capabilities.

Both of them can even decide to benefit from either the low-code toolchain or to configure and use first party applications from the Dynamics 365 product family. The foundation remains the same and time to value will be increased significantly – not only because of an industry-based common data model that makes understanding data an easy task.

When discussing this with our manufacturing industry customers this week, I always like to show above visual to outline the strengths of Microsoft´s portfolio as data integration is offered even across the Microsoft Cloud – which is essential if your company runs on a multi-vendor cloud strategy. Those asking on Dataverse as a foundation in above visual – in March, 2021 I´ve posted an article around Dataverse compared to Azure SQL that you´d might like to walk through. There´s even more upcoming and to be announced during Microsoft Ignite. Ensure to sign-up, if you haven´t yet. Until then, …