What is a Citizen Analyst, and what do they do?

At first glance it seems that this is a relatively new but increasingly significant role within many organizations.

Though the history behind this role is older than you might believe.

The first recognized citizen analyst is widely believed to be John Snow, a London physician who used data-driven methods to identify the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in the Soho district of London. Snow's work is credited with helping to usher in the era of modern epidemiology and public health.

This proves that, by definition, Citizen Analysts are not data scientists, or professional analysts or IT staff. Rather, they hold varied positions within the business organization and use data analysis (and its various tools) to support decisions made within their business role, team or responsibility.

The underlying philosophy is that anyone can identify processes and tasks that can be improved, they simply need the data to develop insights into trends or patterns that may be influencing their company’s performance negatively.  This data can be generated manually, or via the latest automated data capture technologies.

What kind of citizen analyst are you? To find out and learn more about data capture methods read on site about Task Mining.