So says Samuel De Swardt, senior business intelligence consultant and architect at Stanlib, who believes in self-development and continuous improvement, not only in your career, but in all aspects of life.
De Swardt transitioned naturally into the IT space. He first studied mechanical engineering and as time progressed, and his career ambitions changed, the move to IT made sense.
Speaking of how he got involved in business intelligence and analytics, he says: "Having a naturally analytical mind, I continuously find it extremely fascinating to experience how raw data can be transformed and used to make any kind of decisions. And if you think about it carefully, our natural minds do that all automatically and on the fly.
"Coming from a mechanical background, I find many commonalities between BI and mechanical engineering, delivering something, from virtually nothing. And to be able to deliver something valuable, there's a natural analytical path you have to follow."
Daily challenges
One of the biggest challenges he experiences on a day-to-day basis, is people, says De Swardt. "I won't really call it a challenge, but occasionally it's definitely people, as people's behaviour can change due to many external and internal factors. I'll rather say that it keeps things interesting. I'm extremely fortunate and blessed to be extremely passionate in what I do, making everything I do enjoyable."
He has, however, learned some things the hard way. "Success does not come easy. Everyone defines and experience success at different levels and areas. But I believe the most important thing is to always learn from your failures and apply [this knowledge] to improve yourself, be it in your career, sport or personal life. Don't be scared to own up to your mistakes, rather, own them."
Was there a moment that De Swardt considers career-defining? "I believe the only moment for myself, and even so for everyone else, is to find a career that you are really passionate about. After that, many areas in your career and personal life will naturally fall into place. Bearing in mind that only a very, very small amount of working people in the world, are really passionate about the work they find themselves involved in. When and if you reach this stage, your career ends and your journey begins."
On the cutting-edge
When asked how, as a data analyst, he keeps up with the latest developments in the BI sector, De Swardt says that being a believer in self-development and continuous improvement drives him to always be aware of peers, competitors, the market place, trends, and suchlike. "I try to stay in touch with these using various approaches ranging from social media, news feeds, industry relevant groups and surrounding myself with like-minded people. Being a family man, it is always challenging to do further studies, courses, seminars and the like, but saying that, you have to make the time. In the end, it's always very rewarding learning something new," he elaborates.
The future
If De Swardt could give a piece of advice to future data analyst and BI professionals, it would it be to never, ever be too afraid, embarrassed or too proud to ask questions. "There is no such thing as a stupid question. Never be pretend to know everything. The less people know, the more they think they know - this is also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect."
Where is BI going in the future? "It's quite difficult to predict the future of BI and even more so the role of the data analyst, just because there's a lot of self-service BI surfacing, coming with prebuilt analytics which inherently can already deliver huge insights that can drive profits. That being said, the need for human intervention will never disappear, even looking at systems such as IBM Watson. The personal touch in fine-tuning analytical algorithms might deliver that final market gain."
De Swardt will be presenting at the ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit at The Forum in Bryanston on 14 and 15 March 2017.
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