In an industry that is experiencing a steady rate of job creation, data science itself has moved from just a buzzword to a strategic component in organisations. In addition to this, data scientists are increasingly taking on more strategic roles as organisations employ a product-centric view of data. It is a field that promises tremendous job growth and higher earning potential. Our latest research posits 97,000 jobs are available in this buzzing field. On the hiring end, there is a significant overall growth in jobs in the field.

Technology continues to rapidly transform every industry. The world of BI and analytics is no different. We've shared five predictions every data leader needs to know about in 2019, but there were five more we couldn't leave out. Traditional big BI products introduced the notion of semantic models - data models that aimed to provide a centralized, unified, logical, business-oriented abstraction over physical data sources, which serve as a single source of truth for business metrics. While the motivation for using semantic models was sound, the tools for building and maintaining them were extremely complex, requiring very specialized and expensive resources.

This article was developed with Kevin Haaland, CTO of The Better Software Company, a SaaS platform to small business and franchise owners. Haaland was formerly the head of IBM's Watson Analytics. From Siri to Alexa, customers are becoming accustomed to AI-powered solutions and soon they will expect the same for their local businesses. Sure, an AI roll-out can be daunting, but by adopting a strategic approach and adding smart software, small businesses will not only be able to differentiate themselves from competitors, but compete with the industry giants as well. While many over complicate the technology, AI's behaviors are predictable – it's merely an advanced system that is trained, not told.