I'm good at this job but what is it?
May 1, 2022 4:05 PM Subscribe
I am an end user who has taken to my company's business intelligence system like a duck to water. Being entirely self taught based on my own business needs, I'd like to learn the terminology for what I'm actually doing so I can learn more and describe my work more precisely.
A. My line of work involves a lot of: running a report about a client, making a pivot table in Excel and trying to make a decision, deciding another report is needed so running that, connecting them together in Excel, and so on. I have gotten very into making complicated reports that combine everything I could possibly need, and arranging it to highlight everything I need to make the decision. Some of the functions I've used are merging objects, filtering by results from another query, database ranking, creating variables, context operators, filter/sort/rank, and so forth. What is this called?
B. Sometimes I will create something like described above and then realize that I can modify the report so that it delivers the same actionable insights about hundreds of clients at once. What is that called?
Lastly, I am curious about what I should read or learn if I want to develop these skills more or maybe even change my career. Thank you!
A. My line of work involves a lot of: running a report about a client, making a pivot table in Excel and trying to make a decision, deciding another report is needed so running that, connecting them together in Excel, and so on. I have gotten very into making complicated reports that combine everything I could possibly need, and arranging it to highlight everything I need to make the decision. Some of the functions I've used are merging objects, filtering by results from another query, database ranking, creating variables, context operators, filter/sort/rank, and so forth. What is this called?
B. Sometimes I will create something like described above and then realize that I can modify the report so that it delivers the same actionable insights about hundreds of clients at once. What is that called?
Lastly, I am curious about what I should read or learn if I want to develop these skills more or maybe even change my career. Thank you!
You might consider looking into Microsoft PowerBI. It's a data visualization tool that end users seem to like. (The UI allows the user to sort and select things, making the report/chart/graph more dynamic. End users like to play with it.) I believe you can download a personal version of it; your company might be willing to pay for the full version.
posted by SPrintF at 4:26 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by SPrintF at 4:26 PM on May 1, 2022
Sounds like the beginning of a Business Intelligence Analyst career, honestly.
posted by Cyber666 at 5:57 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by Cyber666 at 5:57 PM on May 1, 2022
Agree about BI Analyst. Including Microsoft Power BI, you could also look into learning Looker, Tableau, Sisense, or Google Data Studio. I'm not sure it matters so much which one you learn first, because the skills are pretty transferrable. We use Sisense, and our newest BI Analyst had never used it and picked it up super quickly.
posted by radioamy at 3:21 PM on May 2, 2022
posted by radioamy at 3:21 PM on May 2, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
Business trend analysis -- analysis of business data to identify consistent results or trends, so strategy can be formed.
posted by kschang at 4:18 PM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]