A business benefits greatly when it makes use of past information and present data. These benefits include avoiding past mistakes made by similar endeavors, understanding what their potential customer base is in need of, and understanding how their resources may be best utilized.
This process is streamlined and made easy to use by a BI Developer, someone trained by Data Analytics certification courses, who is charged with the creation, improvement, and continuous upkeep of BI interfaces. “Interfaces” here refers to tools of data visualization and analyses that may draw from both raw structured and unstructured data.
What Is Business Intelligence?
To put it simply, business intelligence involves the gathering, storing, and processing of data to make decisions. These decisions involve answering any business-related question at any stage of its process.
Before one even decides to pursue a business endeavor, business intelligence may come to his/her aid. Using BI tools, one may look at groups of people to determine who may potentially be customers. He/she may find out what specific products and/or services this consumer base may require and also how to procure it and/or bring it into effect.
At later stages, business intelligence databases would allow the management of endlessly incoming streams of data that work to help a business. This involves the changing needs of the present consumer base and finding new consumer bases to target. Using BI tools, one may effectively change or upgrade his/her business model to maximize his/her profits and the social good he/she may seek to generate.
BI tools of one company and/or venture may also work to help later businesses or people with purely academic interests. Hence, we may conclude that business intelligence is highly beneficial to almost all parties involved.
What Is A BI Developer?
A BI Developer is one who manages the influx of data to find ideas and/or solutions for a business. Just as the need for business intelligence is pervasive in every step of a business’s process, a need for a BI Developer is highly in demand for any business venture seeking to maximize its potential and growth.
The first of many potential services of a BI Developer is the creation of a way to systematize data. A BI Developer may work closely with a business or a potential business, as a consultant or an employee, to determine what best way he/she may convert the influx of data from his/her area of study into an actionable business model. To undertake this venture, he/she may choose to utilize previously made frameworks of systematizing data or make his/her own software from scratch.
A BI Developer may also be in charge of the upkeep of a business’s modes of collecting data. This allows him/her to modulate the framework to take inputs from new sources of information, finding ways to secure the software from cyber-attacks, and even finding ways to reformulate the frameworks entirely from scratch.
How To Become A BI Developer?
A BI Developer may be involved in theoretical formulations and/or creating and maintaining databases. In the latter case, he/she may specialize in a multitude of resources and tools. These include spreadsheets, e.g., Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, to maintain and update data stored in a tabular format.
A BI Developer may also choose to store unstructured data in more flexible formats of data visualization. In this case, several companies make their own databases to ensure greater security. In this venture, the BI Developer who is better acquainted with programming holds a far greater competitive edge.
To further increase your market value as a BI Developer, it is also useful to master machine learning and Big Data processing interfaces to ensure a constant stream of information without regular manual maintenance.
For a BI Developer choosing to specialize more in the theoretical aspects, it is useful to study data analytics and industry-specific processes. In this way, he/she may better formulate and improve what data to collect and what conclusions to draw from such data. Of course, a BI Developer with more interdisciplinary specializations will hold a greater edge, as he/she can utilize machine learning to conduct data collection, processing, and visualization without the aid of human interference. This, however, does not replace the need for BI Developers who focus on the manual aspects of dealing with data, as they are marketable in their own spheres, and each company has its own requirements.
The need for BI Developers extends past pure businesses and may be utilized by bodies of academic study to think tanks organized by economic ventures like investment banks. A BI Developer may flourish as both an employee and a freelance consultant.
To conclude, the holistic skillset of a BI Developer covers many aspects – experience with regular BI software, adept with data analytics and business intelligence, having skills with spreadsheets and Big Data databases, as well as having programming knowledge and ideally making use of tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
If you want to specialize in business intelligence, it is also useful to have a firm idea of your responsibilities. You will be expected to develop resources for BI analyses, for global usage, or the local usage of your specific client. This may involve tasks like regular maintenance and troubleshooting. Furthermore, you will be expected to translate the results of your data into an effective business model or even improve on your present business model. This is a two-way process, as your business may also work to improve on the way you collect and process data. Having a flexible mindset would allow you to make constant improvements to your game-plan.
Of course, one should note that a BI Developer may choose to be proficient in some of the above aspects. However, it is best to broaden your horizons to be more marketable. Business intelligence is a highly important venture that draws on multiple aspects of data, and a BI Developer is expected to think in the same way.
