Tried a search for ' Business Intelligence ' on this board and could not find anything.
Nor is it mentioned in the BABOK
Is Business Intelligence relevant to Business Analysis ?
If so, why so and if not, why not ?
Cheers !
Engle,
Business Intelligence is a business FUNCTION, and so is Material Requirements Planning (MRPII), and it too is not mentioned in BABOK, because its just a business Function.
And like any business function, if the user wants it, it becomes part of the business scope (Terms of reference), and BAs will elict, analyse and record the users requirements.
On another note, BI used to be called Executive Information systems (EIS), and there are heaps of software products like Cognos/SAS even TOAD/SQL etc., that provide "answers" to these executives.
So the reason why Business Intelligence is NOT mentioned is because it just another Business FUNCTION.
warm regards,
K.
Thanks KJ,
I get what you're saying and agree to a certain point.
I'm still wrestling with the ' just ' part of your post, cause BI could be used to change corporate course.
As well, should not a BA/BSA/Data Analyst be the intermediary between the executives and the answers they seek from the data ?
BI is oft overlooked in the greater scheme of things. Example. I worked on a very large payment system and on the 7 of each month this organization moved about 3 billion dollars to the tax office. Anyway, on a particular day after we had been "live" for a few months, the Managing Director (MD) asked "I'd like to know which states collect the most money; and which outlet in each state collect the most money".
All hell broke loose, because none of us even considered Executive Information. But then again that was way back in 1988. Nowadays, these FUNCTIONAL requirements are almost standard; and most ERP vendors provide some kind of "dashboard" analysis/reporting tool.
BAs are sometimes engaged to refine the reporting on a STANDARD/Regular basis (periodic reporting etc). However, the data analyst is normally asked to extract information on an ADHOC basis, and then we might use our old friend Excel (spreadsheet) to columnise and graph the data. We used this approach in 1988 to keep the MD happy.
K
Thanks KJ, every bit of info helps.
I stumbled upon a Job posting for a Business Systems Analyst - Business Intelligence.
The top 6 responsibilities are :
o Delivery of the business requirements for BI o Work jointly with the business stakeholders to understand the BI scope o Provide functionality input into the estimation process o Understand how BI information supports the associated business processes and the audience for the information o Deliver BI requirements deliverables o Understanding of the BI solution to validate that it meets the business requirements
There are more requirements, but anything after than the first few are generally secondary in nature.
Anyways, it tells me that BA's are not immersed in BI, rather they are the intermediaries between the Business and the BI group. They still require their BA skills, while the BI skills are considered domain experience (similar to Financial, Insurance etc experience)
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