No matter what industry you’re in, chances are good that it’s getting increasingly competitive as more companies vie for market share. A dodgy economy doesn’t help. Businesses, especially the big kind, are turning to business intelligence analysts to help them identify lucrative opportunities, devise strategies to capitalise on these opportunities and generally make decisions that will give them the competitive edge.

According to Wikipedia, business intelligence is often confused with competitive intelligence but the key difference is that business intelligence analyses data within a company while competitive intelligence analyses data without the company – primarily among competitors.

Skills Required

Business Intelligence analysts generally specialise in a certain field, mostly because they need to be intimately familiar with that industry. So, you rarely find an analyst moving from healthcare to construction. They also need to be intimately familiar with business processes and best practices in general, which is why most analysts have an MBA.

Don’t think you can avoid people by hiding behind data. You need great people skills coupled with great communication skills.

Your presentation and reporting skills need to be second-to-none as the manner in which you present information could sway a decision either way – to a company’s detriment or benefit.

According to Sid Adelman, business intelligence analysts need to be particularly au fait with various IT software applications. Software packages have been designed specifically to meet analysts’ needs, but that doesn’t mean that they can just enter data and wait for results. They need to be able to navigate the systems and use all the features to get and analyse the exact data required. It’s no picnic.

Business Intelligence Software

Different business intelligence software solutions are available for different fields of analysis. For example, you can get business intelligence solutions tailored to the worlds of finance and healthcare.

Typical features of business intelligence software include:

  • Dashboard visualisation
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Spreadsheets
  • Presentation tools
  • Graphics
  • Forecasting
  • Human relations management

Business Intelligence Jobs

While business intelligence might sound like a limited field, it actually offers quite a lot of diversity (from the technical side of things to the actual business side) and quite a lot of opportunities for advancement.

For example:

You could become a business intelligence software developer, which can be a highly lucrative career, especially if you get in with the right company. Just make sure that you have an impressive array of qualifications and are familiar with a number of programming languages.

Or, you could start off as a junior level business intelligence consultant and work your way up the ranks until you eventually become a hallowed business intelligence specialist or even a business intelligence director.

Finally, you can choose an area of specialisation, such as sales, warehousing and project management.

This guest post written by Sandy Cosser on behalf of SAP Careers, a niche job search site that specialises in SAP-related jobs, including business intelligence, supply chain management and data warehousing.