Business Intelligence (BI) plays a vital role in supporting the company by organizing data and sharing key insights that may optimize pre-existing processes or bring about new business opportuninites. We work with many groups to create financial reporting, operational KPIs, and improve performance through strategic-base management. Often do we integrate ourselves with Data Warehousing, Data Engineers, and Data Scientists. If they are not around then we usually have to pickup the slack by developing our own certified data sources/models and automation tools. I’ve spent over 5 years working for Business Intelligence in both Finance and IT. Let me share with you the top 5 things that you should takeaway with my years of experience building reports and developing business strategies.
1. Have A Deep Understanding Of The Entire Business
This is an obvious given. However, I’m being absolutely serious when I say one should understands the total ins and outs of the business. You should know every department and walkthrough how your business operates step-by-step. Know how you are collecting the information and where does it go. This is alot of work, especiallly if you work for a large organization, but I guarantee you by making the effort to understand the business you will discover unnecessary functions and unneeded redundancies. It will help fix your problems and inspire you with new business opportunities.
2. Never Be Afraid To Reach Out and Ask Questions
When I was first starting out this was the hardest obstacle to overcome. You don’t want to embarass yourself and you might be afraid asking stupid questions. There is easily a sense of inferiority and imposter syndrome. However, it’s very important since every department and person might have a different definition, answer, and ruleset for the same item. There are often misplaced acroynms and information you’re not getting the full pictureto complete your goals. This is also a good networking lesson for who to go to if you need more questions or need help. After all, it’s impossible to know everything especially when it was never documented or written down. Knowing how to ask and what questions to ask is a key function for BI as often the reason why problems arise in the business is because someone or something is behaving unexpected then the intended results.
3. Always Solve Problems at The Source
Many times we get requests from people with issues that don’t have a solution to fixing its source. However, sometimes these can be trick questions where someone can be getting a task that doesn’t actually solve the root cause. People may ask you to alleviate a situation or in some cases don’t even know what they are asking for. In these circumstances, you must always try to ask them why and where do they think is a the source of these problems. Even if you were to answer their request or alleviate the situation for just a moment they may comeback with even more problems. FIxing the source will almost always save you time and effort in the long run.
4. Keep It Simple and Easy to Understand
You know how a picture is worth a thousand words. Often that is what we’re trying to accomplish with data visualization. Although one thing I have learned in my many interactions and lessons with others is to keep the material simple as possible. The higher up the management, the more succint you would need to be to stakeholders of the project. You also want all procedure and operatations to be readable and efficient. The more information that you overload the more confusion it is to both parties.
5. Enpower People with Data and Knowledge Management
Lastly the biggest goal for my style of BI is to enpower people with data and offer self-service BI. Without sharing your data and keeping the knowledge up to date you will tend to get the facts all wrong. Having the data and knowledge be transparent allows other to easiy correct it for errors.