How to Become a Power BI Consultant

A Business Intelligence consultant, often known as a BI consultant, is responsible for enhancing a business’s internal operations through consultation and analyzing data to reach the highest level of productivity and profitability. They provide recommendations for enhancing a firm’s processes based on the data they analyze to create reports. They also understand how businesses work in the current market and can forecast future events and trends using the existing data. This further helps the businesses to improve their products and workflow to stand out in the market. Professionals nowadays are opting for online courses like Power BI Certification to master this tool.

Let’s start this blog by understanding the roles and responsibilities of BI consultants in a company.

Roles and Responsibilities of a BI Consultant

We have mentioned the following key roles and responsibilities for you to understand what exactly a Power BI Consultant does?

• BI Consultant examines and verifies information gathered by the businesses.
• They are responsible for documenting the processes at work.
• BI Consultants are expected to collaborate with the IT team to create database-exploiting programs.
• BI Consultants helps in creating models to study the behavior of major industries.
• They keep an eye on the measurements and outcomes of the analysis.
• They are also responsible for introducing innovative data analysis techniques.
• Data analysis and report writing from several data sources are done by BI Consultant using IDT

Prerequisite to Become a Power BI consultant

To become a Power BI consultant, you need to possess some key technical skills to achieve your defined goals. Let’s take a look at some basic questions a professional willing to become a BI consultant may face.

Have a look at this video to get a glimpse of what Power BI is all about:

Power BI Training | Learn Power BI | Power BI Course | Intellipaat

What is the Minimum Educational Qualification?

Most BI consultants have a bachelor’s degree qualification in related fields like Computer science and IT. However, few BI consultants have master’s degrees before they start their job. If you want to become a BI consultant with a high-paid salary, a bachelor’s degree in computers or any related field is recommended. The chances of career advancement are high with a proper qualification.

What are the Skills required to become a BI Consultant?

BI consulting is all about dealing with data and business process methods and defining solutions for businesses. Check the blog on What is Power BI? if you are interested to know more about this business tool. To land a job in Business Intelligence, you need to possess certain skills mentioned below:

• Data Analytics

Business Intelligence Consultants must possess a variety of data analytics abilities, including data analysis and also a basic understanding of Machine Learning and AI. Data Analytics skills will help them understand the data and analyze it to define solutions for business development.

• SQL

BI consultants do work with databases. So knowledge in SQL will help them become more efficient with big data and databases.

• Business Processes

A business process is a collection of actions carried out by employees to produce a quality product and offer it to clients. BI consultants should have an awareness of how business works and various business procedures which help them to provide clear goals with measurable outcomes.

• Reports and Dashboards

As a part of their responsibilities, Business Intelligence consultants are expected to design reports and dashboards using the data. First, they have to analyze the data and derive the profitable outcomes which must be reported safely.

• ETL

ETL is a procedure of extracting data from numerous sources, transforming it into the correct type of architecture for searching, analysis, and reporting, and loading it into a data storage or other sort of centralized data repository. You should also have an understanding of ETL tools.

• Communication Skills

We have already discussed that the BI consultant’s job role includes collaborating with IT teams to develop the project according to the business standards. So excellent communication will be an advantage for them.

• Problem Solving Skills

Solving business problems is not an easy task to achieve. A BI consultant requires critical thinking and problem-solving skills to discover the problem, understand it, and find the best possible solutions. They should have the patience to work with past and present data to understand where the business stands in the current situation and they can take it to.

Tools to Concentrate on

BI consultants require proficiency in various Business Intelligence tools. Without learning Business tools you cannot become a BI consultant. There are various types of tools available in BI which are used for a specific purpose. The following are the basic tools you can use in BI:

• Data Analysis and Data Visualization: In the context of business intelligence, data visualization is critical. So, It is necessary to understand the top BI tools for data analysis and visualization include Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense, and QlikView.
• Dashboards: To efficiently work with dashboards you should know the tools such as Looker. Qlik, WalkMe, Sisense, and Domo.
• Reporting: Reporting can be done easily with the business intelligence tools such as Datapine, SAS Business Intelligence, SAP BusinessObjects, and METRIC INSIGHTS.
• Predictive Analytics: BI tools such as SAS Advanced Analytics, RapidMiner, Alteryx, and IBM SPSS are helpful in Predictive Analytics.
• ETL: Informatica PowerCenter, IBM InfoSphere DataStage, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Ab Initio are the Business Intelligence tools for ETL.

Wrapping up

Let’s do a quick recap here. Becoming a Power BI consultant requires a qualification along with the skills and knowledge in tools. You should have a few technical skills as well as soft skills to successfully become a BI consultant. Moreover, experience in working with BI tools will make you stand out from others.

So first, gain all the required skills and then complete a certification in BI. There are numerous online certifications available over the internet. Find a recognized certification and keep upskilling yourself. Don’t forget to get hands-on experience because theoretical knowledge is not at all enough for you to get a job. Update your CV according to your skills and this will help you land your dream job as a Power BI consultant.