The Top Business Intelligence Skills To Boost Your Career

Business Intelligence (BI) careers are the ideal blending of the two disciplines of business strategy and computer science. Combining education with the following top skills will help you on begin or boost your BI career.

Business intelligence roles come in two different types, front-end and back-end. Think of front-end as the communicator of data and back-end as the technical wizard that builds the models, tools and platforms.

Regardless of where you want your BI career to go, these fundamental skills are needed to boost your career.

Data analysis: BI professionals use data to make better decisions. For this, you need to be good at examining many different sources of data, validating the source and output, and then making accurate and actionable conclusions about them.

SQL programming: SQL (Structured Query Language) is a programming language that is commonly used in BI. Even if you are more of a front-end BI professional, you’ll need to know SQL and how to use it.

Problem-solving: BI involves more than just analyzing data. It’s also about creating business strategies and solving your organization’s business problems with that data.

Industry knowledge: While some of this can be learned on the job, you need to have at least a surface level understanding of the industry dynamics you will be working in. You should want to continue to learn your industry and become an expert in it, as it will increase your ability to connect data with business problem-solving.

Communication skills: For the front-end BI professional, communication skills are critical as you will need to explain your findings to your company leadership and other stakeholders. Back-end BI professionals also need solid communication skills to work with their peers, and lead and manage projects and teams.

Future Careers in Business Intelligence

The business intelligence department has its history in government, research centers and other industries that utilize big data. Now with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, BI departments are being utilized by enterprise-sized businesses.

Because of its relative newness, you will find BI job titles referred to by a few different names, here are a few common titles:

• Big Data Developer
• Business Intelligence Consultant
• Database Applications Developer
• Data Warehouse Developer
• Data Warehousing Consultant
• ETL Developer

Where Can Your BI Career Take You?

Business intelligence is an emerging field that is in high demand in a variety of industries and sectors. If you are in the big data or data warehousing discipline, a BI career could be the next upward move for you. Contact the business intelligence experts at ASB Resources to learn about career opportunities that will excite and engage your data-driven mind.