Mathematics

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

Business Fundamentals

Data Concepts

Data Quality

The Skill Set

Analysts need math skills like fish need water, and without them they won’t be analysts, or fish, for very long. There are a set of specific areas within mathematics that are needed for analytical examination. There are obvious ones like understating changes and fluctuations in both relative and absolute terms, peer (competitive) and periodic comparisons and ratios come to mind as the basic skills. Businesses, however, are starting to become more advanced in their analytical view of their data as volume increases and quality improves. Things once reserved for pure statisticians such as acceleration rate of changes, trending and projections, statistical examinations like z-scores, correlations and standard deviations, and data normalization have made their way in to business analytics.

Reasoning seems to becoming a lost art, but it is an important part of analytical study. The ability to observe data and see patterns and from that patters develop a hypothesis and theory of what is occurring and why is important in finding hidden trends or opportunities for growth. Inductive Reasoning takes a curious person to sit down with a large data-set, with no specific question to answer, and parse through it to see what they can find. Deductive Reasoning is a bit more traditional, in cases where you know what is happening, but you need to understand why it is happening.

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There is a better than average chance that the last three items I touched on are covered in a good school of business, but basic data concepts are lacking. Without understating concepts like cardinality, parent-child relationships, mutual exclusivity, as well as basic data warehousing fundamentals like facts and dimensions, star schema methodology and table relationships they can be behind the eight-ball on analytical capabilities.

Data quality also falls in to the areas that are not covered in a traditional business school. Without understanding data population, data validity, consistency and completeness of data they may make assumptions on an incomplete or invalid data-set.

The Final Piece; Data Intimacy

The last point to make would be that of data intimacy, which only comes with exposure to the company’s data. An analyst can’t be afraid to dive in, dig through and ask questions so that they can understand every twist, turn, and variation the data may go through or hid in. As an analyst, you have to know the data you are dealing with inside and out.

What does all this mean?

Data volumes are growing at an increased rate, and it is projected that we will not have enough qualified data and business analysts in the very near future based on the demand these data volumes are creating. Higher education must act now to meet the demand of the “real world”, or students must take it on themselves to step outside their schools required curriculum and take class to prepare themselves for the challenges they will face when they enter the workforce. For that to happen, we must educate those students in what the true need is, and not what is prescribed by an outdated curriculum.  By taking the right classes, and preparing themselves from a business and technical sense, students can position themselves to compete in a very high demand job market once they graduate.

Don’t believe that the demand is there? Check out all these articles on The Emerging Role of the Analyst.

Myth #1: General IT workers know how to “do” business intelligence.

Many IT shops try to retrofit a BI team out of people who appear to have some of the skills that you see listed in a Monster.com job opening for a BI professional.  This is a recipe for failure as a general IT worker might be able to deliver a report to a user, but without proper data modeling skills, ETL knowledge, and OLAP cubing skills what will be delivered is what I like to call “Fake BI”. Fake BI can answer one or two business questions, but the minute the business wants to slice the data a different way Fake BI is exposed as incomplete. This is not to say that general IT workers can learn BI, but they need to be mentored by an experienced professional and be willing to learn from the ground up a different way of thinking. Successful BI teams are filled with people who have a “Do You Want Fries With That?” mentality. These folks go the extra mile to deliver added value to the solution, are innovative in using the tools they have at their disposal, and they are constantly asking themselves “How can I make this better and more valuable?” These are the kinds of people you want to place on the BI team.

Myth #2: IT can deliver Business Intelligence without the business’ involvement.

When IT assumes it knows what the business needs, it delivers a solution that isn’t used by the business. This is where the business sponsor becomes the most valuable asset on the BI Team while not really being “on the team”. The business sponsor will be the one defining the business requirements, or working as a liaison between IT and the other business users so that the requirements are captured. If you can make the sponsor happy, they will become an evangelist for business intelligence and your program can continue to grow and deliver business value as other sponsors will come forward with requirements (and hopefully dollars) to drive the project forward.

Myth #3: A BI Project has a definitive end point

General IT workers who live in an Application Development state of mind see all projects as having a beginning and an ending. Business Intelligence is a program, not a project so it is an ongoing process that is constantly evolving and adapting to the business needs as things change internally within the business and externally within the market. Businesses have to commit to a long-term strategy and vision in regards to their data and they need to view it as their most valuable asset. It is important that the business sponsor understand this fact, and if the value is being delivered through business intelligence by the development team this should be an easy thing to see for the executive leadership to see.

Next Steps

If you are the one who is hired as the Business Intelligence “expert” for the enterprise and the business and/or IT is resistant to change, be prepared to be frustrated as you try to champion change within the enterprise. Try to find support from peers and co-workers to help evangelize process change in the name of BI. Some days it may feel like you are trying to teach a pig to sing, but in the end you and I know that the end result can be amazing.

In a new BI program, the experienced party has three very important roles. The first is to build and architect the BI solution. The second is to mentor the less experienced members of the team so that they become more valuable to the BI program. Lastly, you will educating the business users in the use of BI to better their business processes. Once the users are educated, requirements become more clear and the business begins to ask more and better questions.

Next, be sure that you are listening to the business and capturing the requirements they are putting forth, because unfortunately most BI implementation get one shot at “victory”. If it falls short it is shelved for a year or until the next business sponsor comes along and gives it another try. There are many reasons why more than 75% of Business Intelligence projects fail, and unfortunately no definitive reason to keep an eye out for, but if you have a strong, engaged business sponsor and a mix of experienced BI professionals and people who are willing to learn the associated skills than you are ahead of the game.

Lastly, realize that even with the best intentions that some enterprises are not “ready” for BI and you may just have to move on and find new opportunities. If you are wondering what signs to look for to know when you have reached a dead-end with a BI project, check out Wayne Eckerson’s blog post on the B-Eye Network titled “Dead-End BI: When Is It Time to Quit”.

Business intelligence is quite possibly the most frustrating and the most rewarding undertaking you can be a part of as a computing professional. You can find advice all over the internet and in countless books and white papers, and none of it will apply 100% to your situation. The one thing I will say to you, that does apply to all situations is “Good Luck!”