It’s that time again when Ian Pay, Head of Data Analytics and Tech, looks back at the highlights from the Data Analytics Community in the last year, and looks ahead to the upcoming year.
Another year of successes
The Data Analytics Community remains the ICAEW’s largest community and now surpasses 45,000 members. Only the Excel Community comes close to this, demonstrating that ICAEW members are an enthusiastic bunch when it comes to technology.
Our big success of 2025 has been the launch of the brand new Analytics in Power BI certificate, developed in partnership with Kaplan. Having personally been involved in the development of the course over much of the last year, I’m delighted that it’s now available for people to explore and develop their analytical skills, using Power BI. We’ve worked hard to make the course shorter, more accessible and more interactive than the previous Data Analytics Certificate, while covering a lot of ground in both the key concepts of data analytics, and the fundamentals of Power BI. With the course now launched, we’ll be able to use the Data Analytics Community to introduce ideas that are then developed in more detail through the course, hopefully providing something for everyone!
2025 content summary
In 2025 we delivered 10 webinars and 13 articles. The articles by our Advisory Group member, Monica Odysseos, have once again been very popular, exploring GenAI: What is it really? and AI Literacy: What is it really?. However it was another AI article that proved the most popular of 2025, with another advisory group member, Dudley Gould, looking at the role of AI-generated data in the profession, both for good and for ill.
On the webinar front we covered a very wide range of topics. Data quality has been a theme, with explorations of how to obtain and handle data, as well as how to engage effectively with clients and other stakeholders to get the data you need. We adopted more of a Q&A format covering data strategy and Power BI, the latter proving to be our most popular webinar of the year. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the other three most popular webinars were all relating to AI. With Monica looking at AI’s impact on analytics, Dudley demonstrating a live build of an AI app, and an exploration of more agentic capabilities in our final webinar of the year.
This year we also once again delivered a webinar in partnership with CIPFA, with a hands-on exploration of prompt engineering.
2026 – what’s on the horizon?
Many of you took part in a survey we conducted last year, to understand more about the sort of content and activities you’d like the Data Analytics Community to deliver. 2026 is our first chance to start delivering on the insights from that survey, which we’ll be doing in several fundamental ways.
The first is that, after taking a break for AI & Analytics Live in 2025, it’ll be returning in 2026 but for the first time as a virtual conference. This is as a direct response to the majority of survey responses, leveraging a format that has proven successful for many other ICAEW communities. It means that wherever you are in the world – around a quarter of community members are based outside the UK – there will be an opportunity for you to get involved. Look out for more details on this later in the year, but in the meantime save 26 November 2026 in your diary for an event that we hope will be unmissable!
Beyond this, we’ll be continuing to run webinars and articles for the community. The first few webinars of the year are already planned, including a showcase of the new Power BI certificate in February. There will be more Power BI content throughout the year, as a topic that continues to be amongst our most frequently requested. We’ll be taking a back to basics approach with data concepts, recognising that the majority of survey respondents described themselves as ‘novice’ data analysts. But we’ll keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to latest data-related innovations too, and talking about the solutions that are gaining traction in the world of audit, accounting and finance. And of course, AI will continue to feature, exploring the role that data plays in robust AI solutions, and using the community to provide a deeper dive into themes explored on the institute’s AI Hub.
Lastly, for those who are disappointed to see the end of our old Data Analytics Certificate, fear not – there are plans in the pipeline to develop more courses exploring Python and other advanced capabilities.
2025 was a year when the community continued to tick along successfully, but with more focus in 2026 on delivering the content that you want, we’re excited to keep growing towards the magic 50,000 member figure. And don’t forget, the community remains totally free for everyone, including non-ICAEW members, so please encourage friends and colleagues to join here, and share your favourite content and webinars on social media.