Summary

The provided content outlines the career path for becoming a Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst, detailing job roles, required skills, certifications, and resources for professional development.

Abstract

The web content serves as a comprehensive guide for individuals aspiring to pursue a career as a Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst. It defines the role of a BI Analyst, emphasizing their responsibility to convert data into actionable insights for business improvements. The article lists relevant job titles to search for, common tasks expected of BI Analysts, and the necessary skills ranging from basic to advanced levels. It also recommends certifications to enhance credibility, provides a resume sample, suggests books and courses for further learning, and offers other useful resources such as tutorials and documentation for tools like SQL and Tableau. The content is concluded with a call to support the author through donations or by joining Medium via a referral link.

Opinions

The author suggests that BI analysts play a crucial role in modernizing and improving business processes through data analytics, visualization, and modeling.
Proficiency in BI tools and software is essential for success in the role, with the article highlighting specific tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and SAP Business Intelligence.
The author implies that continuous learning and certification can be beneficial for career advancement in the BI field.
Visualization and communication skills are presented as key components of a BI Analyst's skill set, indicating their importance in effectively conveying insights to stakeholders.
The author provides a subjective list of recommended books and courses, implying that these resources are valuable for acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills in the field.
By offering a resume sample, the author indicates the importance of a well-structured resume in the job application process for BI Analyst positions.
The inclusion of the author's ETH wallet address and Medium referral link suggests a preference for community support and engagement with the content.

Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst Career Path

I will walk you through all you need to know to become a Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst

Who is a BI Analyst?

Business intelligence (BI) analysts transform data into insights that drive business value. Through use of data analytics, data visualization and data modeling techniques and technologies, BI analysts can identify trends that can help other departments, managers and executives make business decisions to modernize and improve processes in the organization.

BI analysts typically discover areas of revenue loss and identify where improvements can be made to save the company money or increase profits. This is done by mining complex data using BI software and tools, comparing data to competitors and industry trends and creating visualizations that communicate findings to others in the organization.

Some Keywords you Can Use on Job Posting Sites to Find Relevant Jobs

BI Analyst
BI Developer
ETL Developer
Data Mining Specialist
Data Visualization Specialist
Data Modeling Specialist
Knowledge Management Developer
Reporting Specialist
Database/Datawarehourse Expert
SAP Business Intelligence Specialist
Power BI Developer
Tableau Developer

Common Tasks and Expectations Companies expect from BI Analyst

Develop strategies for business intelligence and data gathering.
Test, implement, and document BI systems.
Oversee the deployment of data to the data warehouse.
Translate business needs into technical specifications.
Perform data profiling to identify and understand anomalies.
Keep the business intelligence tools and the company’s databases updated.
Analyze competitors and their use of business intelligence.
Monitor analytics and metrics results.
Communicate findings to the company’s upper management.
Run complex reports from existing databases.
Analyze big data to discover trends and patterns.
Establish procedures for data sharing with internal and external stakeholders.
Use data visualization techniques to present information.
Build predictive models and machine-learning algorithms.

Needed Skills to Become a BI Analyst

Basic

Databases/Data Warehouses
Data modeling
Data Visualization Tools
Database management and reporting
Critical-thinking and problem-solving
Communication skills
Strong skills in statistics and reporting
Management and scenario planning skills

Advanced

Data mining
Business intelligence
Data analysis
Business analysis
Business administration
Analytic processes, such as enterprise, SWOT, and PESTEL analysis

Recommended Skills

Tableau/PowerBI
Hadoop
SQL
Python/C#
Microsoft Office and Excel
Microstrategy
Oracle BI
Pantaho
QlikSense
SAP Business Intelligence
SAP Crystal Reports
SAS Business Intelligence
SAS Visual Analytics
Sisense
Zoho Analytics

Recommended Certifications

BI Analyst Resume Sample

Recommended Books

#1 —Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Science: A Managerial Perspective

A managerial approach to understanding business intelligence systems. To help future managers use and understand analytics, Business Intelligence provides students with a solid foundation of BI that is reinforced with hands-on practice.

#2 — The Definitive Guide to DAX: Business Intelligence for Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Excel Second Edition (Business Skills)

Now expanded and updated with modern best practices, this is the most complete guide to Microsoft’s DAX language for business intelligence, data modeling, and analytics. Expert Microsoft BI consultants Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari help you master everything from table functions through advanced code and model optimization. You’ll learn exactly what happens under the hood when you run a DAX expression, and use this knowledge to write fast, robust code. This edition focuses on examples you can build and run with the free Power BI Desktop, and helps you make the most of the powerful syntax of variables (VAR) in Power BI, Excel, or Analysis Services. Want to leverage all of DAX’s remarkable capabilities? This no-compromise “deep dive” is exactly what you need.

#3 — Becoming a Data Head: How to Think, Speak and Understand Data Science, Statistics and Machine Learning

Becoming a Data Head is a complete guide for data science in the workplace: covering everything from the personalities you’ll work with to the math behind the algorithms. The authors have spent years in data trenches and sought to create a fun, approachable, and eminently readable book. Anyone can become a Data Head — an active participant in data science, statistics, and machine learning. Whether you’re a business professional, engineer, executive, or aspiring data scientist, this book is for you.

Recommended Courses

#1 — Beautify your Data: Intro to Data Visualization using Tableau (Skillshare)

Learn how to transform your data into insightful, beautiful dashboards with Tableau expert Tyler Pernes in this clear, hands-on course. By the end of this course, you will take the concepts you learn to build a dashboard from scratch. You can even publish your work online to let potential employers or clients see your great work!

#2 — BI Foundations with SQL, ETL and Data Warehousing Specialization (Coursera)

In this course you will learn topics such as writing SQL queries to work with relational databases, designing Data Warehouses using star and snowflake schemas, loading and verifying data in staging areas, building cubes, rollups, and materialized views/tables, executing commonly used Linux command, analyzing data in warehouses using interactive reports and dashboards using BI tools such as Cognos Analytics

#3 — The Business Intelligence Analyst Course 2022 (Udemy)

The Business Intelligence Analyst Course comprises of several modules such as Introduction to Data and Data Science, Statistics and Excel, Database theory, SQL, Tableau, and SQL + Tableau. This is a great course to get necessary skills for becoming a BI Analyst.

Other Useful Resources

🤖 SQL Tutorial by W3Schools

🦄Power BI Documentation

🐉 Tableau Documentation

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