What is a Business Intelligence Analyst?

Business Intelligence (BI) is all about transforming raw data into business insights. It leverages services and software to transform data into actionable insights that affect and inform an organization’s tactical and strategic business decisions. BI tools analyze and access huge data sets and present analytical insights in summaries, reports, graphs, dashboards, maps, and charts to provide users with detailed intelligence about the current state of the business. 

Technically it refers to applications, technologies, and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information to support better and improved decision making. Business Intelligence systems are data-driven DSS (Decision Support Systems), which is sometimes used with briefing books, report and query tools, and executive information systems. 

Business intelligence tools offer easy and quick access to insights about an organization’s current state based on available data. It provides historical, current, and predictive views of business operations using data that has been gathered into a data mart or data warehouse. 

Willing to step into the promising world of business intelligence? Well, a business intelligence analyst might just be the role for you. Professionals usually take Data Analytics certification courses to gain foundational knowledge. 

This article will tell you more about business intelligence analysts, the skillset, and the steps required to become a BI analyst.

What is a BI Analyst?

A Business Intelligence Analyst is a professional who is an expert in empowering business leaders or decision-makers with real-time, accurate, and actionable insights that increase workforce efficiency, enhance productivity, improve the competitive edge, strengthen market positioning, and augment customer experience. BI analysts determine business requirements and critical priorities, define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), implement Data warehouse(DW) strategies, and identify business intelligence by mining Big Data using advanced tools, technologies, and software. BI analysts discover areas of revenue loss and search where improvements can be made to increase profit efficiently.

BI analysts can identify trends that can help other teams and departments, executives, and managers make business decisions to improve and modernize processes in the organization through data visualization, data analytics, and data modeling techniques. Their role is becoming very crucial as organizations move to capitalize on the volumes of data they collect. Business intelligence analysts provide a vertical bridge by communicating information of high value to support decision-making demands.

Business Intelligence Analyst Job Requirements

People who want to start their career as a Business intelligence analyst will require a broad range of skill sets, including technical skills, analytical skills, and soft skills. Some of the popular business intelligence analyst skills involve the following:

• Understanding of data collection protocol and software
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, C#, R, Tableau, and Hadoop.
• Knowledge and expertise in integrating software and programs into data services
• Experience in business administration and database management
• Understanding and familiarity with data warehouse architecture, data modeling concepts, and data mining tools
• Strong communication (verbal and written) skills.
• Superior critical-thinking and problem-solving skills/capabilities
• Good knowledge of data protection and privacy laws

Earn these skills and take steps forward to your dream job as BI Analysts.

Roles and Responsibilities of BI Analysts

BI analyst’s job roles and responsibilities vary by company, which means they are determined by where they work. There are many tasks related to the role, but a successful BI analyst has some common responsibilities, as mentioned below.

• Assist with data collection and modeling.
• Review and validate customer data as it’s received.
• Oversee the data deployment to the data warehouse.
• Create procedures and policies for the collection and analysis of data.
• Analyze and interpret data.
• Discover and build new data procurement and processing programs.
• Develop and manage BI solutions.
• Deploy software and hardware upgrades to leverage big data use cases.
• Monitor metrics and analytics results
• Provide reports, Excel VBA application, and processes via the application life cycle.
• Collaborate with business leaders and users.
• Monitor and analyze business processes and requirements.
• Create and manage documentation that involves the design, user manual, and requirements.
• Identify opportunities to improve strategies and processes with technology solutions.
• Find development requirements to improve and streamline business operations.
• Implement new data analysis methodologies.
• Review customer files to ensure the integrity of data collection and utilization.
• Understand and identify anomalies through data profiling.
• Create reports and data visualization.

Some other tasks that BI analysts can perform are research market trends. They analyze it using the internet and stay current with what competitors and their own companies do in the industry. They determine business information needs and help managers make better marketing decisions and customer service. 

Business Intelligence – Benefits of Specializing 

When it is a matter of higher education, most of us prefer to get the qualification in a subject that will have promising career growth potential in the next few years. So only a specialization course will help you reap maximum benefits.

Business Intelligence as a study option is becoming popular rapidly worldwide as several business leaders/corporates are looking for skilled professionals in this field. Only a few institutes offer graduate-level programs, but there is a huge demand for talent in this new field. 

Master’s Course- An MSc in Business intelligence is specially designed to give candidates a postgraduate education in the understanding, skills, and knowledge of business intelligence that will enable them to operate professionally and effectively in the application of BI tools in the industry, research, and commerce. This course will help you gain and understand principles, theories, concepts, tools, and technologies for business intelligence, including transactional analysis and processing.

It prepares you to apply critical knowledge, evaluation, and synthesis to structure and handle business intelligence data. This PG course also helps you employ research and techniques to plan and execute a significant research project to get meaningful insights from data. BI analysts can deal with complex professional legal and ethical issues relating to business intelligence and demonstrate awareness of current issues at the forefront of business intelligence.

Opt for the Business intelligence Certification course, grab the opportunity to become a BI analyst, and polish your portfolio in this new and evolving field of Business intelligence.