What Skills Do You Need for Business Intelligence?

if you're considering starting or
transitioning to a career in business
intelligence or data science
then there are a few key skills that
you'll need to acquire
in this video i'll be discussing what
the basic skill set
is that you'll need to succeed
hello and welcome to vitamin bi bringing
you business intelligence for beginners
and beyond my name's adam and on this
channel i talk about
how you don't need to be a data
scientist or have a huge budget
to get started in bi so if that's
something you're interested in learning
more about
don't forget to subscribe and click that
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new videos hey guys it's been a while i
know
if you'd like to know why it's taken me
so long to get back to posting videos
check out this short video here so as i
said in my intro in this video
i'm going to be talking about the
various different skills you'll need to
acquire
if you want to get into bi or data
science
it's a question that i get asked on a
regular basis so i thought why not put
my answer into a video
this is going to be just a basic
overview
so not going overboard on the details
but it should give you a general guide
that will hopefully push you to find out
more for yourself
okay so we'll start with the most
obvious the basic
foundation and source of all business
intelligence
data for a geek like me data can be
quite exciting
it's nerdy i know but i actually often
get a buzz
out of getting access to a brand new
data source for the first time
it's like diving into the unknown or
setting off on an adventure into
uncharted territory to discover things
that no one has ever discovered before
because sometimes that's essentially
what i'm doing
manipulating and aggregating the data
and crunching the numbers
to gain insights from it to learn things
that neither i nor the data's owners
knew before
anyway i digress a little but not
without reason
i'm kind of demonstrating to you that
unless you can get
passionate about data there's not much
point in exploring the possibility
of a career in data science so that's
the first
skill you'll need well really more of a
character trait
when it comes to data though there are
three main areas
you need to know about what it is where
it is and how to access and query it
what it is means what it's made up of
and the different formats it comes in
fairly straightforward basic stuff
that's quick to learn
to find out more about what data is made
up of check out this video here
in terms of the different formats it
comes in well that depends on its source
you essentially have structured and
unstructured data
structured data tends to be the kind you
would probably most associate with what
data looks like
the kind of traditional rows and columns
tabular formats
you might find in an excel spreadsheet
unstructured data is basically
everything else and by that i mean
literally
anything else emails videos audio
pdfs log files anything
i've got to say that unstructured data
is fairly uncommon when it comes to the
realm of bi
so it's not something you would
necessarily need to be an expert on
i'm certainly not you would however
need to be very familiar with structured
data which tends to be stored in
relational database management systems
or rdbms
i haven't done a video on relational
databases yet but i plan to
and when i do i'll put a link up here or
in the description below
this leads quite nicely onto the second
element of data i mentioned
where it is so as i said the data you
will need to deal with more often than
not
is structured data that's stored in some
kind of relational database
things like mysql postgresql
sql server i'll get onto what sql is in
a minute or it could be something as
basic
as a csv commerce separated values file
or indeed an excel file going back to
relational databases
they're either on-premise or in the
cloud so either
installed on an in-house server or as
the popular meme jokes on someone else's
computer i.e the cloud
the cloud is in fact much more than that
but
for the purposes of this discussion
that's essentially what we're talking
about
i just mentioned some of the different
sql database types
well there are cloud versions of these
as well
so instead of installing one on your
in-house server
you can essentially rent what's called
an instance of one in the cloud
okay so now we've covered the what and
where of data
the third part is knowing how to access
and query data
again we'll break this down into
different types of data
when it comes to relational databases
they have what's called a host address
basically it's ip address where it can
be contacted
and then you need to use a username and
password that's been set up in the
database
in order to connect to it and query its
data
to query just means to ask questions of
and this is done using the query
language called sql
also commonly called sql it stands for
structured query language and it has
different versions like i mentioned
before
my sequel post grey etc whose syntax
varies slightly
but it's mainly the same when it comes
to querying
when it comes to cloud data sources
other than those cloud versions of rdbms
the way these are communicated with is
usually via what's called an
api application programming interface
the most common types of these are rest
and
soap they have what are called end
points that
let you access specific data sets and
the way
querying works is that you make calls to
the api
that contain parameters asking it to
return the data you want
so i guess a good question you might
want to ask here is
do i need to learn all about how apis
work
and the answer is yes and no yes you do
need to have a good understanding of how
they work
because you may be called upon to write
custom api calls to query data
and if you haven't got a clue about them
then you'll be a bit lost
but you don't need to be an expert know
how to build them that kind of thing
when you're working with these online
services and their data sources
you'll more than likely be doing so with
a bi
tool and normally the tool you're
working with will have a data connector
for that specific
source which means you don't need to
formulate the individual api calls
yourself
if it doesn't have a connector then
you've chosen the wrong tool which is a
whole different story
so again although it's a good idea to
have basic api knowledge in your tool
belt
it's not essential talking of bi tools
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hope to see you in there okay back to
the video
so where were we oh yes basic knowledge
of apis is a good idea but not essential
what is mandatory in my eyes however is
knowing sql for querying you may be
asking but won't the bi tool be able to
do that for me as well
the answer to that is almost definitely
yes however
the problem is that you may need to do
some work on the data
before you connect it to your bi tool
let's say that the data you need to
visualize is contained across
several different tables in a database
these tables contain
all historical data let's say millions
of rows in each
but you only want to query data for a
specific period of time
and you don't need all of the dozens of
fields or columns in every table
to just connect to all that data with
your bi tool and then query that is
really inefficient it means that your bi
tool is going to need to aggregate
millions of rows across different tables
for every query
which makes your dashboards really slow
to load and what if your bi tool doesn't
have a graphical interface
that you can use to join the different
tables together
you'll need to know the sql code to do
that as well
all this being said bi tools are
becoming more and more advanced in their
capabilities
and functionalities so there's a good
chance you'll be able to do
most of what i've talked about without
knowing sql
but what if you can't another benefit of
knowing how to query data using sql is
that it helps you to understand
how querying works in general how
queries are formulated
to join and aggregate data so
moving on after you understand and are
comfortable with data
you'll need to know how to use bi tools
or more specifically how to use
one bi tool inside and out
and i mean how to do everything with it
become a full-on
expert because once you have experience
of pushing one bi tool to its limits
then you'll probably be able to use any
other bi tool to a fairly proficient
degree
within a very short space of time this
is because
most of them function in a very similar
way
and the reason for this is there aren't
100 different ways to query the same
data
the results behind the data
visualizations you'll need to produce
for your dashboards is identical so it
stands to reason that the way to get to
that result
using different tools should be very
similar
here's a question have you ever used a
pivot table
if you don't know what that is then
watch this video here
if you have then you pretty much know
how to use a bi tool to query and
visualize data
because most bi tools at least the ones
i've seen
basically have a pivot table engine at
their core
to query data the way the tools
interface presents the functionalities
of the pivot table model will differ
the way things are named how the
elements of the query are placed into
the pivot table etc
but it's still a pivot table at its core
of course
there's more to a bi tool than
visualizing data by placing
fields into a pivot table you'll also
need to know how to apply manipulations
to the results of queries
and also create custom fields by writing
formulas
lots of bi tools have their own
proprietary language for
writing them that you'll need to learn
others will actually incorporate
elements of sql or something very
similar
like google's data studio so another
good reason to learn
sql writing custom formulas is all part
of the day-to-day of working
in bi because a lot of the time we're
problem solving
which is why i talked about pushing one
bi tool to its limits
because once you have you'll become
familiar with the kinds of problems
you'll need to solve
and although the data is always
different the same kinds of problems
always have a tendency to reappear
so by learning how to solve these
problems with one tool
you'll be better equipped and know how
to approach them
when using a different one the next
skill to have
is to know how to effectively visualize
data
and build reports and dashboards there
is far more that goes into a dashboard
than just trying to make it look as
pretty or as cool as possible
data visualization theory is something
that's important to have a
solid grasp of and there are some really
great books on the subject
if you'd like to learn more then i'd
suggest a great place to start would be
the
visual display of quantitative
information by edward
tuft in terms of dashboard design there
are certain rules that you should follow
like telling a story and not overloading
your dashboard with information
i'm not going to go into much more
detail than that because i'll be making
a video dedicated to this subject
coming soon so if that's something
you're interested in don't forget to
subscribe and click the notification
bell so that you don't miss it
so we've covered the important general
areas of
data bi tools and data visualization
albeit briefly i'd say that that just
about covers the main
areas there are of course other more
specific skills you might need to
acquire
if you'd like to get into bi or data
science but this
at least gives you an overview the lay
of the land if you like
i mentioned right at the beginning about
how i got excited about getting my hands
on new data
it's worth repeating that if this
doesn't resonate with you then you
should probably look at a different
career choice
other personal interests that would
serve you well are a portion for
problem solving logic and design
i'm interested to hear your thoughts as
well is there anything really important
you think i've missed
let me know in the comments below okay
that's it for this video if you liked it
don't forget to hit that like button and
again please do subscribe
thanks for listening and until the next
time stay bi curious