Data visualization is a steadily growing market. It came about as an answer to the complexity involved in data science and data analytics. It took highly skilled individuals to glean anything from data. And it often took days to get answers to queries.
As technology evolved, more and more people wanted access to data analytics applications. That opened the door to more users being able to submit queries and more data being available to be analyzed. But still, some expertise was required.
Data visualization software multiplied to provide users with dashboards of information to users. Sales managers could now review sales numbers and trends each day. Marketing personnel could see how their campaigns were doing and make changes. Managers no longer had to wait for the quarterly report to see if production had improved. Yet, skills are still needed to set up applications to provide visualizations and use such applications to perform more complex analyses.
“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st-century economy,” said Steve Fazio, data governance lead at Talend.
“In a world where competition for jobs, pay increases, and professional success continues to increase, certifications offer a credible, third-party assessment of one’s skill and knowledge for a given subject.”
Here is a selection of seven top data visualization certificates, including entry-level and advanced ones:
See more: Data Visualization Trends
1. SAS Certified Specialist: Visual Business Analytics
The SAS Certified Specialist: Visual Business Analytics certification is designed for analysts who use SAS Visual Analytics to analyze data and design reports. Successful candidates should be skilled in topics, such as:
- Adding and manipulating data items within SAS Visual Analytics
- Analyzing data with SAS Visual Analytics
- Designing and sharing reports using SAS Visual Analytics
The exam for this certification is based on both SAS Visual Analytics on SAS Viya version 8.3 and SAS 9.4 version 7.5.
Those taking the exam have to complete one of the following training sets:
- SAS Visual Analytics 1 for SAS Viya: Basics and SAS Visual Analytics 2 for SAS Viya: Advanced
- SAS Visual Analytics 1 for SAS 9: Basics and SAS Visual Analytics 2 for SAS 9: Advance
Each course tends to last about 14 hours and costs anywhere from $870 to $1,450.
The result is a data analyst who can use SAS visualization tools to organize content, view and interact with reports, access and investigate data, conduct data preparation, perform data discovery, and create interactive reports.
2. Splunk Visualizations
Splunk is popular software to monitor, search, analyze, and visualize machine-generated data in real-time. The company offers several courses and certifications. According to Foote Partners, Splunk skills are in high demand with pay rates higher than in many other areas of IT.
“These IT skills are among those earning the highest pay premiums,” said David Foote, an analyst at Foote Partners.
Splunk offers several free courses on how to use its platform. Its visualization eLearning course teaches students how to create visualizations in Splunk using Splunk’s Search Processing Language as well as the Splunk Web interface. Students learn commands that allow data to be displayed on charts and graphs, transform geographic data into maps, create single value visualizations, and use Splunk’s visual formatting options to change the look of statistical tables.
It is recommended that candidates at least take the introduction to Splunk eLearning course. But as these courses are short (some take only an hour) and free, those wanting to achieve Splunk mastery should take several of them together including visualization.
The Complete Splunk Beginner Course 2022 can be found here.
3. IBM Cognos Analytics: Dashboard
The IBM Cognos Analytics: Dashboard certification is for those using Cognos who already possess analyst skills. This certification teaches the ability to build dashboards in Cognos Analytics.
Users learn to explore and interact with data and glean insight. Best practices for dashboards are covered, including how to add data sources, create visualizations, and other interactions within a dashboard.
Familiarity with database concepts and SQL, how to visually present data, and JavaScript is recommended. The IBM Cognos Analytics: Dashboard is a paid course that takes about 8 hours.
Complete IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2 Cloud Training Course can be found here.
4. Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate
Formerly known as Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate certification, the Microsoft Certified: Power BI Analyst Associate training helps data analysts use Microsoft Power BI to design and build scalable data models, clean and transform data, and enable analytic capabilities that provide meaningful business value through easy-to-comprehend data visualizations.
The course is free online and is paid for when done by in-person learning. Some courses are short, taking less than a day. Other Power BI training takes about four days and costs a little over $2,000.
Microsoft Power BI Certification: DA-100 | PL-300 Exam Prep can be found here.
5. QlikView Business Analyst
The QlikView Business Analyst certification course teaches the ability to identify requirements, design applications, prepare and load data, and develop applications. It offers skills in preparing, modeling, visualizing, and analyzing data to its maximum value.
Candidates should have some practical experience developing production-quality applications on the Qlik Sense platform. They should be familiar with creating dimensions, measures, and objects for the master library. And they should understand user experience and design best practices and have some experience building visualizations.
Courses generally take about two days and cost around $1,500.
6. Tableau Desktop Certified Professional
The Tableau Desktop Certified Professional certification is geared toward experienced Tableau users (at least a year) who want to achieve visualization mastery. The exam will cover skills such as visual best practices, advanced technical skills relating to Tableau Desktop functionality, and storytelling with data visualization.
Candidates can benefit from the free exam prep guide offered on their website or take advantage of a readiness course that takes 90 days and costs around $1,000.
Tableau Data Analyst/Specialist Desktop Certification can be found here.
7. SASÂ Certified Visual Modeler
SAS Certified Specialist: Visual Modeling using SAS Visual Statistics on SAS Viya is designed for analysts who are using SAS for exploratory and predictive modeling, model fitting, and analysis in a business environment.
Those wishing to take the course should already be skilled in building and exploring descriptive and predictive models, performing model validation, assessing model goodness of fit, and modifying, comparing, and scoring models. They should also have completed a couple of SAS courses on model building, each about 14 hours and costing $870.
See more: Top Data Visualization Tools
