A Guide to Business Intelligence Analysts

Some tips to shine and reduce “suffering” when working as a BI Analyst

Me when trying to query as much as data :(

Lately, I’ve been back on the training grind, mentoring a mid-level Business Intelligence (BI) direct report. Before this, I had two rockstar senior BI analysts who handled everything I threw at them. My job was to create challenges and verify their data magic. Now, with my new trainee, I’ve made some interesting discoveries that might help you, whether you’re in BI or a business guy wanting to level up your data skills.

I’ve noticed that some of BI Analyst have the following three mistakes that affect their performance.

1. Collecting Data Without Knowing the Question: The Classic Mistake

Ever notice how some BI folks love to provide mountains of information without really understanding what the business needs? They provide as much data as possible, simply to satisfy stakeholder requests or avoid back-and-forth. Given a request or a question lacking business context or information, instead of asking for clarification to understand the purpose and provide relevant data with appropriate metrics, they spend a lot of time gathering data, finding data sources, writing long queries, and end up delivering a metric that states a fact without any real insights.