I am Plabeeta Patangia, I have been working as a Pricing Analyst in Advance Auto Parts for the past 2 years. Prior to that, I worked as a Quality Analyst for 4 years at Amazon. As a Pricing Analyst, my job is to provide value-based pricing for all the customers by creating Pricing Strategies based on previous pricing behaviors and sales information.
At a personal level, I am basically from Assam, got married 3 years ago, and have been settled in Hyderabad. I have a passion for Culinary-art.
In my current role, the prime responsibility is to ensure we maintain a smooth relationship with our commercial customers by providing them value-based pricing.
The biggest challenge was to analyze large datasets and develop solutions based on past trends. I always found it difficult to build a story over a large dataset. Even if I gained insights from the data, I was all over the place. Another challenge was I had to create analysis with large datasets which was not possible in excel. I was in a place where SQL and Python were must-have skills and I lacked them.
Business Analytics has always been a part of my career and I always had a passion for working with complex data and making it meaningful. To understand Data better and to develop solutions out of the Data, I understood that a Program in Data Science will greatly add value to my career and make my job easy for me. Finally, I made up my mind to do a PG Program in Data Science. The next question was which program to choose.
I did a lot of research, reached out to people on LinkedIn who have completed the Great Learning PGP-DSBA course, and always received great feedback. I also discussed with one of my colleagues who had recently completed the course and got to know from him how immensely helpful the Program was for him. I immediately decided to take up the Program.
I had to put in a lot of effort and hard work throughout the journey. On one side I had to work, and parallelly, doing the DSBA program from Great Learning.
The regular mentored learning sessions were really helpful. And the fact that the curriculum was so flexible that I could smoothly manage both work and studies. As all the sessions were recorded, even though I missed a few sessions due to some unavoidable situations I still could go back, watch those and learn. Besides, all the video lessons, assessments, projects at the end of each module, and lastly the Capstone Project greatly helped me sharpen the skills I gained and used it practically.
Regular engagement with my Mentor, who helped me perform better day by day at the Program, kept me going throughout, which led to sharpening my skills. Also, the step-by-step feedback by the mentor on the Capstone Project greatly helped me refine my project.
After learning all the new skills, I implemented those skills at my work. I informed my manager about the newly gained skills and immediately got into a lot of projects. I used my skills and delivered a lot of BI Dashboards and automated large reports that reduced man-hours by 80%. I have been greatly recognized and rewarded for these projects. Also, my life seems easier now, what I used to do in a week with so much struggle I can accomplish that within a day now. For me, this is a success but still, this is just the beginning. Finally, I am not scared of large datasets anymore.
My advice for all those who are either looking to start their career in analytics or someone who is looking to make the transition into analytics as a career is- You have to believe in yourself that you can do it and be consistent throughout the course. At times you may be demotivated and feel low but never lose faith in yourself and keep pushing your limits and you will come out with flying colors. Additionally, keep exploring opportunities to implement your learning at your workplace. Implementing the learning on the job will give you the best results in your career, and you can go to the next level soon.
