The Role of an Independent Business Intelligence Consultant

For many organisations finding the right mix of trusted Business Intelligence advice and skills to improve current BI solutions or build new ones can be a costly nightmare. Software specific vendors have a vested interest in pushing their own products and labour broker type of consulting houses tend to answer most problems by placing more resources on site.

Contracting an independent business intelligence consultant to work with your employees is often the best solution as the intellectual property associated with the solution then tends to stay within the company.

The easiest way to define the role of an independent business intelligence consultant is by the results you are trying to achieve.

Satisfied Clients have the following to say about their BI Consultants

• My consultant helped me to understand and more precisely define the problems in my organization, helping me to accept that there was more (to the problem) than just symptoms I initially wanted to address.
• My consultant helped me to reduce training time and cost by providing tools and data models designed for the business user, instead of the technical IT user. All staff benefited from the paradigm shift in how to holistically approach problems.
• My consultant helped me to improve data quality by bringing focus to and emphasis on the organization's data.
• I feel more confident now to tackle even bigger problems on my own.
• I know more now than I did when we started; I’m more capable.
• I felt like I had a strong ally on the face of a lot of resistance.
• We now have simple access to pockets of information by implementing a central BI repository, eliminating silo analysis and providing new insights.
• We are now able to analyze data to gain insight not seen before, due to delivering sophisticated analysis and reporting through enterprise data models and end-user BI tools
• Our company executives and employees are now empowered to make business decisions as they are provided with the information that they need.
• Not only did I get what the contract said I would get, but there’s a sustained improvement in performance. We learned things we didn’t anticipate learning.

To achieve the list of results above a world class BI consultant requires a wide technical capability as well as strong interpersonal and analytical skills.

Due to inherent complexity of Business Intelligence projects a BI consultant is therefore readily defined by his/her skill set.

Skills required to become an independent BI Consultant

Hard Skills that a BI specialist should have and be able to convey to your employees are:

• Strong SQL Skills
• Data Modeling Skills
• Data Transformation and Automation Skills
• Online Analytical Process toolset skill (Cubes)
• Web Application skill is a plus

The BI consultant must also have the required Soft Skills to interact with people at all levels throughout the organization. He/she must be equally comfortable interacting with the CEO, Operational People and Technologists.

During the course of a BI project the BI consultant will typically interact with:

• Business Executives: to Understanding the vision (more sales)
• Managers: to Actionable components (target specific markets)
• Operational people: to Provide actionable data (sales calls)
• Technologists: to Build technology (why do we need sales?)

Summary

From a technology perspective, very few employees have the hard skills ranging across all the technical disciplines required to design and build a BI solution. On top of that there is the requirement for soft skills as well.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just go to a single person who has the knowledge and skill to put your project on track and empower your own employees to do the work?

This is the role of an Independent BI Consultant.

Vicus Brits
is a Business Intelligence Specialist providing solutions and advice that Creates and Delivers Value.

You can reach him now by email vicus@britsits.co.za or via his website

www.britsits.co.za