Business Intelligence The Good And The Bad Points 2

[Skittle]

Further to my posting, 'A Tale Of Two Roles' I am curious about how people in Business Intelligence see their roles.

What are the good and bad things about BI roles?
In my world this will be somebody who does everything from understand requirements, ETL, data warehouse, report write/olap cube and data mining.

I have read up on BI and attended a couple of courses to get a feel for it but not actually done the job. I assume the following:-

The Good

It's a role that is very popular at the moment.

It's a role that never finishes because reporting requirements
change with the business and tweaking is always needed.

It's a role that calls on a variety of technical skills ( ETL, database Design and Reporting)

Its a role that has a high level of people interaction. You have to be able to communicate well.

It's a role where you need to understand the business and processes.


The Bad
Tracking why a given figure 'doesn't look right' to a user back through an OLAP cube, a start schema, an ETL process and the source database is laborious.

The data you report is only as good as the source data. If the source database has dirty data and/or poor integrity data, the BI expert is the person who has to cater for the bad data often without eliminating the cause of the source system bad data.

Report writing in Crystal Reports is a bit dull.

the Other
Data Mining is a little abstract and needs very close co-ordination with the user to find the right data relationships.



Any others?

Dazed and confused.

Remember.. 'Depression is just anger without enthusiasum'.

 

[toddl]

I commented on your other post, so I'll give my little tidbit here as well. I'll stick with commenting on the bad points.

I find tracking the data to be interesting, especially if you're not involved in the ETL portion, by tracking it through the areas you're able to understand it better. A good OLAP system will likely mirror your Star Schema, so normally you're just looking at what the ETL is doing. Good documentation is key here.

As far as dirty data, it's something that can always be there. Through education and team work, you can usually work with the business or source system people to fix or understand the reason why. It's probably one of the harder things, as some BI people will just try to fix the report since thats an easier short term fix.

If you're developing spreadsheet reports, it's pretty dull. If you're getting into dashboard and interactive reports, it can be pretty fun.

It pretty much comes down to what you like to do. Good luck!

 

[Welshbird]

Hi Skittle,

I've worked in BI for the best part of 15 years. And for my sins, always in the same industry sector.

If you set things up well, and test things appropriately, you don't get users asking you to track back becuase this 'doesn't look right' and in fact, a good BI professional will provide the report with a commentary to explain any and all nuances within.

For me, the most important fact is to understand the industry and the data.

For me, and the whole of my team, our role is NOT about provide reports to people. Its aboput providing insight and recommendations so that the business benefits as much as it can from the information.

In fact I'd argue that in general, BI isn't a technical role - its much more about understanding and discussing than it is about ETL and crystal reports...

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen