Business Intelligence: Definition, Roles, Skills Required & Workflow

Every business run by a company certainly has to track its business performance accurately. To help measure this performance, the presence of business intelligence is one solution that can help.

Business Intelligence (BI) is systematic in collecting and analyzing data derived from company activities to determine company policy.

Perhaps Binarian is not yet familiar with the word itself. So, this time Binar will give full details about business intelligence. Check it out below!

What is Business Intelligence (BI)? (Definition)

Business Intelligence

Before we dig deeper, let’s first consolidate our understanding of ‘what is business intelligence’.

The term business intelligence itself can refer to a profession and also refers to an activity carried out by a company. But in this note, Binar will elaborate more on business intelligence as a profession.

A subject is a role in a company that is responsible for finding ways to analyze information related to the company’s business.

Business intelligence relies heavily on data to be able to perform analysis and then convert it into new opportunities or breakthroughs to grow the company’s business. This large role makes it an important position in the company.

In practice, it is often the same as a business analyst. Both are equally important but have fundamental differences.

The analyst is only responsible for the level of analyzing the data, while the business intelligence is required to present the results of the analysis.

Benefits of Business Intelligence (BI) fpr Companies

As mentioned in the previous step, it is an important position in the company. This is concluded without reason.

There are several factors that make the presence of BI very important in a company. Here is the information.

  • Companies must know how their performance and success are over a period of time. In this case BI helps companies to focus on the main vision.
  • Problems that occur in the company’s business must be identified early so that they are not serious and are easy to deal with. This is the function of business intelligence, which is to provide information on the problems of the company’s performance.
  • Companies have data, but they can’t use it fully without the presence of Something.

Skills Required for Business Intelligence

The position of the business mind in the company is very important, it is not surprising that the salary offered is generally high. Did this make you interested in pursuing a career in business intelligence?

If you are really interested in this one profession, there are several skills that you must have. You must have the hard and soft skills below before becoming a business mind.

1. Communication Skills

An important skill that should not be missed by business intelligence is communication.

As you already know, Jambo isn’t just tasked with analyzing data. It is also necessary to be able to communicate the results of his analysis with other related parties.

That is why communication skills are so important to have. You must be able to present the results of the analysis so that they can be well understood by interested parties.

2. Analysis

One of the most important soft skills that a business mind must possess is analytical skills. Besides being closely related to data, this profession is inseparable from analytics.

A person with good analytical skills tends to think more carefully. This is very necessary to be able to analyze company data properly. Tasks that must be completed can be completed more quickly.

3. SQL

Jobs like business intelligence are closely related to data. You need to know that processing data, not only Excel can be used. At a high level, you need SQL to process the data.

SQL itself is short for Structured Query Language. With SQL, you can perform various data manipulations from creating, reading, editing, and deleting. This manipulation is commonly called CRUD.

4. Microsoft Excel

Excel is a program from Microsoft that is designed to process data. Apart from being able to process data, this application also provides options to display or view data easily.

MS Excel can also be classified as one of the basic programs that can be used to process data. That’s why you should know Excel before being. If you already know Excel, learning other tools will be easy.

Business Intelligence Workflow

The discussion is not complete if you are not familiar with the system or workflow. It turns out that there is a lot of work that must be done with business intelligence.

Business intelligence workflow is divided into 3 main stages, which are ETL, data warehouse, and BI output. Listen to the explanation again, Binarian~

1. ETL

This early process is extract, transform, load (ETL) which aims to get data. You cannot get the data directly, but there are several steps that must be passed, which are:

  • Data validation (data validation) is finding data that is relevant and valid.
  • Data cleaning (data cleaning) is done to standardize data so that there are no duplicates of data or data reduction. For example, writing Jogjakarta, Jogja, and Yogyakarta is equivalent to being Yogyakarta.
  • Data transformation (data transformation) is the process of modifying existing data. For example adding new columns, changing the data type if needed, or combining one data with another.
  • Data collection (data aggregation) is done if necessary. Examples are using the count, average, or sum commands.
  • Data loading is the process of transferring data to a storage or data warehouse.

2. Data Warehouses

The data warehouse is the place to store all the databases that have been obtained from the first step. Here, it divides the data warehouse into several data systems as needed.

3. Process BI Results

The final work process is to use the data generated from the previous process for various purposes. Some examples include:

  • Detailed analysis
  • Mining more and more data to find certain patterns. This diagram will be used later to make predictions.
  • Visualization of data, for example in image form.
  • Give a warning to the company.

Today’s intense business competition requires companies to constantly monitor to grow their business. That is why Business Intelligence is a very important position in a company.

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