Who is Business Intelligence (BI) developer?
A business intelligence (BI) developer is responsible for building, improving, and maintaining business intelligence tools, the primary goal of which is to transform data into valuable insights.
Business intelligence developers must be able to understand, as they work with different types of data e.g. spreadsheets, CSV, XML, and so on. As BI Developer, it can include anything from coding to testing to debugging to designing to implementing newly developed tools.
A BI developer spends a lot of time researching and planning solutions for existing problems within the company. BI developers also are responsible for building OLAP, or online analytical processing. They also work with databases, both relational and multidimensional.
Work Environment
This position is most commonly found in office environments in large corporations and in IT companies. Most BI developer positions require some technical background and a substantial amount of work experience in other business areas. This also made a perfect choice for a career change, especially for those who are interested in switching to IT/software
As the primary focus of this position is to solve problems, BI developers must always be dealing with data and presenting it in an understandable way to human brains. They should be capable of creating tables and writing reports on their findings, and they often simplify highly technical language for others in the company.
Tech Skills Required
Here are some basic skills required,
- SQL and relational database, Data Warehouse
- SSRS/SSAS/SSIS, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), Report Builder
- Power BI, DAX, and security rules.
- Some coding skills like VB, C#, JavaScript, etc.
Business Skills vs Tech Skills
BI or Data Analyst is a fast-growing role, almost every company with data will need at least one person who understands BI.
Working in BI, you either can focus on the business side such as organizing information with different parties and interpreting them to the management team.
If you enjoy doing technical tasks, there is a big room for you to just focus on development sides such as Power BI, data warehouse, and data-related tasks.
That is why BI has been a very popular choice for people who want to change careers to IT/Software. People with marketing, finance, accounting, and business management can all do BI and they usually do better than those who just recently graduated. The main reason is BI does require a good understanding of the business operation and people communication.
Example Work
Here is an example Data Warehouse and Power BI
Data Warehouse Architecture
Power BI Reporting/Dashboard
