Data Owner is the new Data Analyst
A year ago, I wrote an article on why every business should hire a data analyst first. Well, that aged quickly.
Here’s why. With AI adoption and self-service analytics, data analysis is finally becoming a skill, not a job title. Once business users have data they can trust, they’re all set to take it to their favorite AI and do their thing. No need to read spreadsheet formula documentation (Ben
Ben CollinsGoogle Developer Expert · Collins School of DataOne of about 30 Google Developer Experts for Google Workspace worldwide. More than 75,000 people from over 1,000 companies, including Google, Netflix and the UN, have taken Ben's Google Sheets courses., I’ll miss your Google Sheets newsletters), no need to learn SQL.
However, this by no means says businesses don’t need a data person anymore. Quite the opposite. Now that non-technical users consume data directly, data quality, freshness and all that boring governance matter more than ever. Business users know the context inside out, but they might not notice a discrepancy or a duplicated row.
That’s the Data Owner’s job. Unlike a data analyst, a data owner focuses on data enablement: connecting the relevant data sources, mapping them to entities business users are familiar with (hello, data modeling!) and ensuring data trust.
Here’s a table that I hope makes the difference between a data analyst and a data owner clear 👇
| Data Analyst | Data Owner | |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | “What our number are?” | “Can we trust this data?” |
| Core job | Answers business questions | Makes sure business can answer them on its own |
| Serves | Stakeholders with requests | Business users and their favorite AI |
| Daily work | SQL, reports, dashboards | Connecting sources, data modeling, quality and freshness checks |
| Delivers | Dasboards, Answers | A trusted data model, the source of truth |
| Success looks like | A shorter ticket queue | No ticket queue |
| Worst nightmare | “Can you pull this number by EOD?” | “AI says revenue doubled last week” |
If you’re a data analyst and the Data Owner role doesn’t feel like your thing, consider becoming a Data Partner instead. Causal analysis, decision support and data literacy education bring a lot of value to the business. They also require great communication skills and a solid understanding of both business objectives and where the data comes from.