Manik Gupta, Chief Analytics and Insights Officer for North America Consumer Health at Bayer, speaks with Tracy Ring, Chief Data Officer and Global Generative AI Lead for Life Sciences at Accenture, in a video interview about talent in light of generative AI, the approach for new professionals to enter the data and analytics field.
Bayer Consumer Health division has over 170 consumer health brands that cover areas such as dermatology, nutritional supplements, pain management, cardiovascular risk prevention, digestive health, cough, cold, and allergy care.
Gupta says that talent development in light of GenAI is complex and has multiple components. First, he speaks about the talent component required to build GenAI solutions and make them work. He says that the development engineering community is continuing to evolve its frameworks and methods to solve different problems quickly.
However, Gupta highlights the need for developers to focus on fine-tuning foundation models alongside the need for LLM ops and prompt engineering talent. He adds that prompt engineers will be expected to bring more relevant data to the problem and drive contextual clarity.
In terms of the broader business talent pool, Gupta says that they have to adopt productivity-enhancing tools or risk getting left behind. They need to focus on the strategic imperatives of GenAI and develop use cases that drive productivity and monetize LLMs. On a similar note, Gupta stresses the need for a robust partnership between the development and business ecosystems.
Sharing advice for new professionals entering the data and analytics industry, he suggests the following:
Start to think about where in this world you want to play. There are many career tracks within the data analytics world, like solution architecture, data engineering, data science, business intelligence, decision science, and analytics translation. If you are early in your career, take the next five to seven years to gain experience in multiple areas to find your calling.
As you grow in your career, continue to be very curious, build your professional network, and familiarize yourself with one or two industry verticals. The best problem-solving happens when there is a marriage between cutting-edge data science and engineering, and deep industry knowledge.
Stay informed of developments in your area of expertise as everything changes very rapidly in our world. Keep learning and challenging yourself, sign up for hard assignments, participate in hackathons, and take advantage of MOOCs.
Advocate for yourself, share your story, and be the CEO and the CMO of your career. As the CEO, take charge as you are accountable for the destiny of your career. As the CMO, market and advertise yourself as best as you can.
When asked about his approach to driving the adoption of data and analytic services within Bayer, he says that it is clear to the team that its success lies in the success of those it serves.
He explains that a key aspect is to work on things that matter, in collaboration and partnership with the people the team is serving. that you're serving. He mentions how the catalog of data-powered products and services broadly shared in the organization helps to drive awareness about the data office. This is followed by training programs and dedicated discussions around specific topic areas of products.
Concluding, Gupta says that while the organization has quite a bit of distance to cover in terms of transformation, it is on the right track.
CDO Magazine appreciates Manik Gupta for sharing his insights and data success stories with our global community.
