Business Intelligence Developer: Role, Skills and How to Hire

Business intelligence is the analytical application of big data sets to uncover patterns, insights, and trends in order to make the right decisions for clients, partners, and employees.

BI is an analysis of a company’s performance, operations, resources, and customer needs. Businesses use their business intelligence to assess new opportunities and evaluate existing operations. It provides the strategic direction to support the day-to-day activities of the department, including creating an optimized plan of business operations that addresses current and future market conditions.

BI developer roles and responsibilities involve the sophisticated use and visualization of numbers and information to drive decision-making in an organization. Businesses use it to make better investments, provide more competitive products and services, anticipate technology trends and new competitors, monitor cash flow better, attract new talent, and more.

What Is a BI Developer?

BI developers are people who use data, analysis, and insight to help businesses run more efficiently. As analytical thinkers, the roles and responsibilities of BI developer regularly contribute to business success by harnessing the technical skill sets of software developers, analysts, and other business professionals.

Their primary area of expertise is in building BI systems designed to enable business processes to be more efficient and effective across an organization or marketplace. The primary bi developer skills required are essentially human intelligence applied to the problem-solving process in the context of business using statistical and data visualization tools.

The Key Components of Business Intelligence

Before discussing business intelligence developer roles and responsibilities, we must first consider the key components of this concept and how these professionals interact with each component.

Data Source Layer

The data source layer is the core building block of any BI solution as it enables you to store and retrieve data that is critical to your business process.

A good data source layer will feed analytical workflows and yield actionable insights. In a nutshell, a data source layer is a repository of structured, automatically updated information.

Think of it as your internal archives, only much larger. The data source layer may consist of data storage systems, databases, cloud infrastructure, and other resources and methods designed to enable the organization to access and extract information from any source.

Warehouse layer

It is important to combine all related data extracted from the data source in a useful and meaningful way. The data warehouse refers to a structured collection of data that enables the processing of high volumes of data and organizing them into the existing knowledge base.

Think of it as a regular warehouse, where goods are held, packaged, and organized until they are ready to be shipped; in business intelligence, the ‘goods’ refer to an organization’s data. In BI, modern data warehouses include tools for extracting value from unstructured data and using it to improve decision-making.

BI Reporting Layer

While the data source layer and the warehouse layer mainly describe what happens in the background, the reporting layer is the actual BI interface.

By interacting with this interface, analysts and developers can create charts, tables, and diagrams to present data in an easy-to-understand way to the user. It’s the insights generated from these statistical, visualised reports that are used to improve operational efficiency, enhance communications with clients and other stakeholders, or prepare for potential crises, among other BI functions.

Business Intelligence Developer Roles and Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities of business intelligence developer are varied, so do BI developer salary, but in this section, we cover the most important duties of these professionals. A BI developer must be able to combine both the analytics and the programming aspects of BI in order to produce fruitful results.

1. Defining Technical Requirements for BI Tools and Interfaces

BI developers are responsible for building BI interfaces, converting the technical requirements into visible results: tools for intelligent business analysis. The technical requirements for analysis and design may be very different depending on the nature of the business.

The job of the BI developer is to interpret the technical and requirements. Thus, a BI developer must be versatile, must possess good industry knowledge, and must also have strong business acumen.

2. BI Software Development, Deployment, and Maintenance

Like every other developer, a BI developer must have strong programming skills in order to build a user-friendly interface. One of the key decisions a BI developer must make during the process is to determine what type of data visualization best fits the organization’s business model, nature, and objectives.

They define how to integrate spreadsheets, dashboards, and other analysis features into the software interface in a usable fashion that enables accurate and meaningful data collection, organization, and interpretation. Of course, the eventual deployment and continued maintenance of these tools still fall within the purview of the BI developer.

3. Data Documentation

BI developers are also responsible for documenting the data structure that explains all the variables, algorithms, and statistical relations that apply to a project, including the programming codebase. By properly defining data models and architectures, BI developers enhance the functioning of BI reporting tools.

In adding data to warehouse storage, it is important to store the data in a way that makes it easy for people to find and use them. The documentation of data structures forms the basis of the technical documentation and guides, which aid the end-users in navigating a BI tool or interface.

4. Database Management

Databases are integral to the functioning of a BI interface. Hence, database management is a critical responsibility of BI developers. They must understand the rules, data types, and functionality designed to facilitate business logic.

More so, a BI developer must understand how databases work and how data is organized so that they can work with both current and historical data to design interfaces and build tools that are relevant to the organization. The ongoing maintenance of these interfaces and tools also depends on the proper functioning of the databases and the data they store.

BI Developer Technical Skills

There are at least 4 bi developer key skills, all of which have been covered here. The BI developer skill set is one that combines statistical analysis with a strong tech background in programming and software engineering. So, in analyzing business intelligence developer skills, you should pay attention to the nexus between these main areas.

1. Programming Skills

A BI developer is a developer and so must have good knowledge of various programming languages that are used in building BI solutions. Some include C#, Python, JavaScript, etc.

They must also have wide experience working with various programming language libraries, specifically data visualization libraries. A combination of coding and analytics is the best way to build powerful BI solutions.

2. Data and Business Analysis Skills

Business intelligence is all about extracting value from data. BI developers must be able to combine math, statistics, language, and other scientific knowledge to speed up business analysis and decision-making.

They apply this knowledge in a systematic way to build useful solutions that enhance performance and discover opportunities for improvement in business operations.

3. Testing and Debugging Skills

The role of BI developer is not one that ends once the product is shipped. It is an ongoing responsibility of maintaining the solution, finding and squashing bugs, and generally improving efficiency.

Therefore, a good BI developer must possess extensive experience in quality assurance, testing, and debugging solutions both before and after deployment.

4. Experience with BI Tools

It only makes sense that bi developer technical skills include some experience working with existing BI tools in order to build custom solutions. Popular BI tools in the current market include Power BI, Tableau, Microsoft Excel, MicroStrategy, Zoho Analytics, SAS, etc.

The BI developer must not only be familiar with the reporting functions of these solutions; they must also be able to demonstrate knowledge of the respective tech stacks.

When and How to Hire BI Developers?

When businesses need to get smarter about how they are operating and understand what is staff augmentation, they turn to Business Intelligence Developers. These professionals help analyze data, predict trends, and find solutions to business problems.

When business growth is required, hiring a business intelligence developer can be one of the most key decisions you will make. A good BI developer will have a strong business acumen and know how to utilize big data and analytics to their advantage. By hiring the right person, you can create a platform that will grow your company while ensuring it remains competitive for a long time.

Business intelligence software is constantly evolving; new tools are developed and old ones updated. As a result, an experienced BI developer who has expertise in software development can deliver value even when your business shifts according to your needs. This can be achieved even when you choose to hire remote developers.

In addition, business intelligence is often overlooked as a means of expanding your business. Be it in the form of a new business idea or idea-driven marketing campaign, the ability of a business intelligence developer to build custom tools to analyze data and uncover trends, cut through the red tape and truly transform your business is vital.

Business Intelligence developers collaborate with other professionals and together gather data, generate ideas, set goals, and present actionable strategies for execution.

How ProCoders Can Help Hire Business Intelligence Developers

Most people don’t realize it, but trying to hire bi developers can be one of the most important things they do in their business. Businesses are constantly evolving and need help keeping up with their changing needs. This is why hiring the right company is one of the most important steps you can take in order to grow your business. There are plenty of business intelligence development firms that can help you out, but how do you find the best service for your business?

In addition, often it is better to outsource app development. Search for intelligence software companies and consulting firms with experience in your industry (it can also be helpful if you want to make cost estimations, like finding out the exact cost of marketplace development). Hiring a specialist costs money, but getting bad software off the ground takes time and investment. The more the agency knows about your business and your competitors, the better equipped you’ll be to make good decisions when it comes to technology.

There is a large amount of talent being overlooked in Ukraine. Most businesses do not realize how many talented in-house intelligence professionals are available to them, however, small their budgets may be. That’s why ProCoders makes the perfect choice for your business to hire business intelligence developers and generally to find developers for startup.

ProCoders has wide-ranging experience supplying various clients around the globe with all manner of professionals with the best bi developer skill set. Knowledge of programming languages is important to building business intelligence solutions, ProCoders boasts of some of the most skilled developers in a wide variety of programming languages and libraries including Python, PHP, Node.js, Flutter, TypeScript, etc.; we even can help you hire IoT developers.

Conclusion

Business intelligence professionals are employed by companies to drive data-backed insights. These professionals use statistical analysis, data collection, and data visualization to aid in decision-making on a massive data scale. BI developer technical skills, in particular, are well-equipped to design solutions that enable your business to transform its operations based on insights gleaned from data.

Are you seeking a Business Intelligence Developer? If the answer to this question is yes, then ProCoders is in great shape to work with you. We’ve developed a comprehensive list of skilled talents that will make building business intelligence solutions a breeze. Contact us today.