Who is a Business Intelligence Analyst and What Skills do you need to become one?

A business intelligence analyst is a growing job role today that is directly connected with data and decision making. Business Intelligence Analysts are also known as BI analysts; one of their main jobs is to collect and forward information for other organizations.

Responsibilities of a BI Analyst

BI analysts help make decisions for their organizations and perform thorough checks to ensure actionable insights from the data available to them. While the exact descript of a BI analyst’s job can vary from organization to organization, they are expected to take care of the following tasks:

• Breaking down Business Data: The first job role of a BI analyst is to break down business data and gather information from it. BI analysts are required to break down into small batches for better interpretation.
• Interpreting the Data: The next task on the panel for BI analysts is to interpret the data that they have gathered and broken down earlier. Data interpretation is done after the data is structured properly.
• Share Findings: The final job role for business intelligence analysts is to drive actionable insights from the data that they have accumulated earlier. The findings made from the data are shared with all others, and insights are taken based on this information.

Business intelligence analysts go through specialized education, which helps prepare them for the corporate world and its challenges. Some of the complications that they are expected to overcome during their time as analysts include the structuring of raw data, the interpretation of data from different sources and the requirement to drive decisions based on this data.

READ – Importance of data engineering

In this article, we take a look at business intelligence analysts and the job skills they should have to succeed in the market today. These skills have been crafted after due consideration, and will help you understand the complications of this growing job.

Essential Skills for BI Analysts

Snowflake

Snowflake is a recent solution developed in 2012. The platform operates as a software as a service solution and comes with a one-stop solution for data warehousing, data engineering, data lakes, data application development, data science and data application development.

Snowflake can help improve the consumption of real-time data and allow organizations to drive insights based on actual data in the real-time.

Snowflake can be used for data processing, storage and other analytic solutions. These solutions are easier to use, flexible in nature and a lot faster in operations.

BI analysts should be able to configure the basic UI for snowflake and should be able to work on them for actual results.

Tableau

Data preparation is another integral part of business intelligence and tableau helps you with just that through its instant solution. Before you can gather insights from your data and use it for future decision making, you need to be able to clean and collect the data first.

Tableau helps you organize your data and clean it through a number of steps and solutions. As a BI analyst, you should be aware of how Tableau works and should be able to incorporate it within your steps.

SQL

SQL is a database that helps store all your data in one place. With the growing demand for structured data, SQL has come up as a new and innovative solution that people can comprehensively use for the appropriate results.

SQL is comparatively easy to use and can be used for programming and coding. Even individuals that are new to the world of data and programming can utilize the language to derive positive results from it. BI analysts show have a basic understanding of how SQL works to be able to derive positive results from it. Knowledge of the database can help structure data and improve insights.

Python

Python is a unique open-source programming languages, which can help developers and business intelligence analysts. Python can be used to make interesting frameworks, libraries and a number of other structures.

Besides being used as a development tool, Python can also be used for communication with machines and for setting algorithms. Python is easy to use, and BI analysts should know the basics of it.

READ – Python for Big Data

ETL

ETL, which stands as an acronym for extracting, transforming and loading data is a daily part of the routine for business intelligence analysts. The ETL approach can help engineer solutions to complex data structures and can allow analysts the luxury to structure actionable insights from data.

Business Intelligence analysts can study up on the ETL process and implement it within their day-to-day approach. A more structured form of ETL can lead to proper decisions based on hard facts.

Devops

Devops is where the world of development meets the world of operations. There are number of tools like Docker and Slack that can help manage development as well as operations of applications and solutions.

A basic understanding of Devops can help execute projects to perfection and look over operations in a thorough manner.

We have covered all skills deemed necessary for business intelligence analysts to secure a job in the market today. You can polish your command over the skills mentioned in this article to secure a role as a BI analyst.