In a recent Forbes article, Visa’s Chief Data Officer, Andres Vives, detailed the company’s strategy to embed data and AI across the entire organization. While Visa’s new commerce initiatives are making headlines, the real story for analysts is how the company is actively democratizing data. Visa is providing all its employees with access to generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to foster a truly data-driven culture and empower its workforce.
This move signals a critical evolution in the role of an analyst. When everyone in the organization has access to powerful data tools, the value of an analyst is no longer just about being the technical expert who can pull the data. Instead, your value shifts to providing business context, strategic guidance, and a deep understanding of stakeholder needs. Visa’s approach is a blueprint for the future: a world where analysts must rise above the technical queries to become indispensable business partners.
Here’s what this industry shift means for your career:
- Your Value Shifts from Technical Gatekeeper to Business Strategist. With the democratization of data, your stakeholders can often find the "what" on their own. Your crucial, evolving role is to explain the "why" and the "so what." This requires moving beyond your dashboard and actively engaging with product, marketing, and leadership teams to understand their core challenges and goals. As Vives notes, a key part of his job is "understanding the balance between measuring business value and uplifting the payments ecosystem"—a clear call for analysts to develop the business acumen needed to connect data insights directly to strategic outcomes.
- "Trust" Becomes Your Most Important Metric. Vives repeatedly emphasized that "Everything we do at Visa revolves around trust." When working with sensitive financial data at scale, the stakes are incredibly high. As an analyst, your success will be measured not just on model accuracy but on your ability to ensure the security, transparency, and reliability of the data products you create. You'll be asked to answer new questions: How do we prove our AI-driven insights are fair and unbiased? What are the key performance indicators for a "trustworthy" data product?
- The Blueprint for Internal AI Adoption is Here. Visa has given all its employees access to secure generative AI models to foster a data-driven culture and boost productivity. Vives notes, "We are democratizing data and AI across to fuel innovation for our clients and to empower our leaders and employees." This internal strategy is a roadmap for how large enterprises will integrate AI. For you, this is a call to become a leader in your own organization's AI adoption. The opportunity is to move beyond being a passive user of these tools and become the expert who champions their effective and responsible use across the business.
As analysts, we are at a crossroads. We can continue to be reporters of past events, or we can become strategic partners who guide the business with data.
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