Statisticians are more important to businesses than you think
Today’s business landscape includes more data than ever before across virtually every industry. Because of the internet and the relative ease with which huge amounts of information can be collected and processed as compared to any other time in our history, businesses everywhere are scrambling to apply that data effectively to give themselves any advantage they can over their competition. Because it is becoming ever-increasingly necessary to understand and apply data, the demand for statisticians within the business context has skyrocketed and is expected to grow.
Top ways statisticians can impact businesses
There are nearly infinite ways statisticians can influence business. Here are some of the most common ways that statistics are utilized to inform business strategy and improve organizations.
Statisticians can help organizations increase productivity. Measuring internal operations, trends, and happenings can reveal hugely beneficial insights for an organization. Employee morale, machine or manufacturing performance, outputs per team or individual, and more can all help an organization better understand where its blind spots or weaknesses may be and optimize its processes for increased productivity. Modeling hypothetical processes using design and calculation can be another important way statisticians can help businesses trial new methods of production without wasting resources on developing or trying them before knowing whether they’d improve productivity.
Statisticians can help organizations increase efficiency. Collecting data about sales funnels, marketing processes, cost breakdowns, supply chain elements, time spent on various processes or parts of processes, and more can help businesses identify areas of inefficiency and work to mitigate them. Data can reveal where more time or resource is being spent than is necessary. It can also help an organization drill deeper into a surface-level problem and discover its true cause rather than making assumptions and treating symptoms but missing the real issue. Without measurement and skilled eyes to interpret those metrics effectively, drastic inefficiencies can sometimes go completely unnoticed for years or might never be identified at all.
Statisticians can help organizations increase profitability. There are many facets of statistical application that can help optimize profitability. These can range widely across different types of businesses and industries. As an example, statistics can be used to forecast the risk and return expected on different potential investments under hypothetical economic conditions. In consumer products or sales operations, statistics can create models that can inform how best to market upsell products or time marketing messages to optimize conversion rates for various communication channels. And there are countless more. Statisticians can use data to forecast inflation, better understand pricing trends within an industry, or dial in projected demand to inform production rates.
Job outlook: Statistician employment in the coming years
If you were skeptical that statisticians are becoming increasingly valuable in the business sector, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) forecasts for statistician jobs reveal just how much the occupation is projected to grow in the coming decade. The projected job market outlook, or the anticipated percentage change in employed individuals between 2020 and 2030, is 33% – a robust figure considering the average rate of growth across all occupations measured by the BLS is 8%.
And that’s just the start. Similar roles to statisticians that apply their knowledge within the business setting include data scientists, information research scientists, business analysts, and more. These types of roles are all experiencing healthy growth in today’s job market due to the increasing prevalence and necessity of data and evidence-driven decision-making. They are here to stay.
Though there are many other ways statisticians can benefit businesses, those above are a few of the most prevalent. However, statistics can be applied to nearly any problem or question within business settings to help provide insights and strategic direction. If you are looking to enter the world of statistics and make this kind of impact on organizations, earning a master of statistics online can be a strategic way to enter this field and add value to businesses across a wide range of industries and applications.
