Hot off the back of Dreamforce, it is very clear that Salesforce.com are looking to carve out their space in the Business Intelligence (BI) market, with their new Wave offering.
But, whilst they may be a late bloomer, there are many of us who recognise that BI tools and applications are big business.
And, for those companies looking to adopt applications like Wave, you may also want to consider Business Intelligence Analysts as part of the overall investment.
Below we take a look at the reasons why you may wish to begin building a team of Business Intelligence Analysts, and the skills you should be on the look out for.
Why?
No two companies are the same and without the right skills to integrate and analyse data, business intelligence projects are often useless. BI applications help us to manage the data, but when it comes to analysing it or designing a program, BI requires many varied and far reaching skills, that often one person alone will not possess.
Skills need?
The BI Analyst/s should have both technical skills and business insight skills, so that they can not only use and manipulate the data, but also understand what the data means in the context of the business.
- A BI Analyst will be required to integrate people and processes with technology in order to deliver value to the business. Therefore an element of good leadership and management skills will be vital in ensuring the success of any BI projects.
- In order to see value from any BI project and drive positive business actions and decision making the team and individuals must possess strong business analytical skills. Ultimately, the BI project take information and create knowledge, which will govern actions needed to bring about a positive outcome.
- The BI team must also be able to process data from disparate sources and consolidate it into data resource to ensure data quality. Data integration is very closely linked to data warehousing, and is the link in creating good quality data for the delivery of BI applications.
- Data analysis and design on the other hand focuses on how we can translate data into information through the use of BI applications, which require extensive and adaptable data structures.The BI team must also possess a good level of technology skills in order to administer and manage the BI system and application, to ensure that the data knowledge is available when the business needs it.
Resource On Demand specialise in the recruitment of Salesforce.com and business intelligence professionals, and can provide further advice on the skills needed to leverage the benefits of Wave.