The 2021 Finance Analytics Neural Map — Brought to you by Christian Martinez and The Financial Fox

The demand for analytic-driven decision making across the Finance Function has continuously increased.

According to Gartner, “Finance analytics reporting and support account for almost one-third of finance function spend”.

This neural map is an attempt to bring you all the areas that a Finance professional should know in order to start using the full potential of Finance Analytics and Data Science in 2021.

We have mapped 7 key areas: Programming Languages, Places to Learn, Must Learn in 2021!, In the cloud, BI Platforms, Data Visualization and New Technologies.

Programming Languages

One of the first things that come to mind when you start thinking about data-driven decision making or analytics is programming languages.

Some Finance professionals still have the misconception that programming languages are “just an IT thing” or “super complicated things to learn that would never to be used by Finance”.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Languages like Python are very powerful and easy to learn. The financial industry is increasingly adopting Python for general-purpose programming and quantitative analysis, ranging from understanding trading dynamics to risk management systems.

Some other programming languages are: Excel (VBA), SQL, Java, SAS or R (follow this link if you want to learn more about R).

Places to Learn

One of the key questions most Finance professionals ask is where to learn about these programming languages or data science skills.

There is a lot of information out there (maybe too much!) so I will recommend some of the places I have used to learn in the past.

1. LinkedIn Learning: There are over 16,000+ online courses taught by real-world professionals. For Data Science, this is a great path to start with!

Price:$49.95 AUD (June 2021) but is FREE for University Staff and Students if you sign in with your uni e-mail.

2. Data Coach: It is a digital learning platform offering in-depth training in business intelligence tools and self-service analytics software (Tableau, Power BI, Alteryx, SQL). I have done many of their courses and they are really amazing. Platform is very easy to use too!

Price: From $99 to $299 (for individuals). The company I work for has also a subscription with them so also check out that option!

… This is the end of the article for now but we are working on more content to come in the upcoming months!