With data being the new age oil and a sought-after commodity, it is no surprise that businesses are driving decisions based on the inferences made from its analysis. Business Intelligence is the future; helping companies to perform quantitative analysis, develop customer-centric insights and reaching business goals.
As per a report developed by Zion Research, the Business Intelligence market will grow steadfastly at a CAGR of approximately 8.4% from 2016-2021 and hit a revenue of USD 26.5 billion by end of this period. In the backdrop of this technological revolution, have you given a thought about considering a career in this field?
Choosing a business intelligence degree will kick-start your career in business in the right direction. A master’s degree in BI will give exposure into topics like data management, predictive analysis and leveraging statistical techniques to drive decision making.
How to kick-start your career in BI
If you are a newbie/student – Bagging an entry-level post or an internship with an organisation that has a full-fledged analytics division is a great move. It is important to identify whether you would like to be a back-end or a front-end BI professional. Demystifying this, back-end BI comprises the technical aspect and understanding of building BI platforms. Whereas front-end BI professional is involved in analysis, modelling and insight creation of data.
One of the basic skills to have is proficiency in SQL programming which helps in extracting, transforming and loading operations on data from data warehouses.
If you are already working – Whether you are currently a project manager or already have a ton of experience in the IT sector, then you have an added advantage. Supplementing this knowledge by learning important technologies like SQL, data modeling, data mining and data integration will help establish a successful career.
For a front-end professional, it is important to communicate and understand the findings of the analysis to non-technical people. Also, if you have been working actively in the IT sector with knowledge of variety of languages and tools, then making the transition to BI would be smoother.
Roles to explore
Starting anew, these are some of the roles in the BI sector you could apply to:
BI developer
The role is to help transform data into quantitative data through dashboards, working on the technical development of BI platform and solutions. They also need to have a strong background in data warehousing and mining along with problem-solving abilities.
BI consultant
This role involves developing cost-effective solutions for achieving business objectives, recording milestones, handling budgets and pulling up reports based on performance metrics.
BI engineer
A BI engineer is responsible for implementation of tools, enhancing the BI platforms and streamlining processes. For this role, it is important to have dual competencies of a business intelligence analyst as well as developer and the ability to perform apt project management.
Equip yourself with the right skillset to begin a career in BI!
