WHAT DOES A BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DO?
Reviewed under Editorial Standards by Lam Nguyen
Updated: Jun 27, 2025 - The Business Intelligence Professional collects, analyzes, and transforms data into actionable insights to support business decision-making. This role integrates tools, technologies, and processes to develop dashboards, reports, and performance metrics for strategic and operational purposes. The individual helps organizations identify trends, optimize processes, and drive data-informed growth.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Business Intelligence
1. Business Intelligence Analyst Duties
- Requirement Gathering: Gather business requirements and translate business needs into functional specifications
- Analytics Design: Define and assist in the design of analytics solutions across the enterprise
- Roadmap Contribution: Be an individual contributor to building out the analytics roadmap
- Architectural Planning: Provide architectural recommendations for designing, building, testing, deploying, and maintaining highly available and scalable analytics solutions
- Lifecycle Participation: Be a key team member within the reporting and analytics lifecycle, from requirements to daily operations
- Active Listening: Listening, translating wants into essential needs
- Process Optimization: Identifying points of leverage and efficiencies
- Test Management: Drive testing to ensure quality and repeatability
- Process Improvement: Gather collaborative input and participate in process improvement and automation for analytics solutions
- Vendor Coordination: Manage multiple vendors to deliver coordinated and integrated solutions
- Technology Evaluation: Identify and evaluate new technologies for implementation
- Solution Documentation: Support, maintain, and document solutions
2. Business Intelligence Analyst Details
- Dashboard Development: Build and develop dashboards, Power BI data models, and self-serve data pipelines
- Process Understanding: Understand business processes, provide recommendations, and scan for potential or active roadblocks to operationalizing new technology in support of the business
- Stakeholder Communication: Lead change impact conversations with business stakeholders using appropriate diagrams and metrics
- Report Automation: Ensure the organization is not flying blind by supporting ongoing delivery of automated reports via SSRS, Power BI, Cubes, Adobe Analytics, and other tools
- Code Reusability: Maintain queries and documentation to improve the reusability of code and the knowledge sharing in the team
- Data Validation: Guarantee the accuracy of your products by proactively and regularly validating against raw data using SQL
- Pipeline Automation: Generate efficiencies by developing data pipelines and automating processes with Python to support analytics products and dashboards
- Data Visualization: Create effective data visualizations, trends, and tables that intuitively convey insights in seconds
- Analyst Support: Enhance the work of analysts and data scientists by supporting them with the data they need to conduct ad-hoc analyses
- Analytics Training: Champion a data-driven culture by supporting the eCommerce department to raise its overall analytic IQ through formal training, workshops, insights meetings, and presentations to senior leadership
3. Business Intelligence Analyst Responsibilities
- RPA Maintenance: Robotics Process Automation (RPA) implementations and maintenance
- Report Development: Responsible for creating and maintaining the bank’s reports, applications, and interfaces, as well as streamlining business processes
- Solution Programming: Performing complete and specific programming activities, creating solutions that enhance or support the business activities
- Data Administration: Execute the administration, maintenance, and management of the data and data storage environments
- Coding Standards: Follows Banesco USA designing and coding standards to ensure the solution and the environment integrity standards are met, as well as the business requirements
- Requirements Documentation: Responsible for documenting functional requirements and the solution’s design and scope to comply with business needs
- Team Communication: Maintain constant communication with the team and cross-train with team members to obtain or provide knowledge of any new developments and/or solutions that fall under the team’s responsibility
- System Support: Assists with the support of systems to ensure applications’ operability and reliability
- Policy Compliance: Responsible for ensuring the bank’s policies and procedures are followed, for example, IT policy, Risk Management, etc
- System Enhancement: Responsible for reviewing, analyzing, and enhancing systems, including coding, testing, debugging, and installation of applications to support the bank’s systems
- Business Reporting: Responsible for supporting the business drivers and reporting needs with the following
4. Business Intelligence Architect Job Summary
- Data Warehousing: Develop and maintain a high-quality data warehouse solution
- Project Leadership: Lead and manage data warehouse projects
- Technical Documentation: Maintain accurate and complete technical architectural documents
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with BI Developers and Business Analysts for the successful development of BI reporting and analysis
- Platform Development: Work with business groups and technical teams to develop and maintain a data warehouse platform for BI reporting
- Data Layer Design: Develop a scalable and maintainable data layer for BI applications to meet business objectives
- Standards Development: Develop standards, patterns, and best practices for reuse and acceleration
- System Maintenance: Perform maintenance and troubleshooting activities in the data warehouse
5. Business Intelligence Architect Accountabilities
- Database Ownership: Ownership of enterprise databases, both transactional and warehousing, in development and production environments
- Solution Design: Leads design, development, testing, and implementation for all new initiatives and modifications to databases, reporting, interface, and associated functionality
- User Collaboration: Works directly with end-users to understand business needs and design appropriate solutions
- Process Documentation: Documents existing and new processes, including business rules, logic, and processes
- Quality Focus: Focuses on quality, results, accuracy, performance, and security
- Vendor Evaluation: Participate in the vendor evaluation and selection process
- Team Mentorship: Provide oversight/mentorship for the work of junior team members
- Data Analysis: Using business knowledge, analyze data to ensure we are delivering the best results
- Performance Tuning: Performance tuning, improvement, balancing, usability, automation
- Technology Evaluation: Evaluate and identify new technologies for implementation
- Domain Expertise: Maintain domain expertise for the functional area, including tracking competitive product developments and best practices
6. Business Intelligence Consultant Functions
- Insight Generation: Analyzing performance through qualitative and quantitative analysis to generate data-driven insights by summarizing and joining complex, disparate data sources
- Program Management: Managing, designing, and developing effective programs for portfolio delivery metrics, ensuring clear communication regarding priorities, progress, schedule, and assessment of risks and issues
- Strategic Research: Conduct targeted, project-based research and analysis across product performance and business operations to inform internal operations, strategy, and data-driven decision-making
- Performance Review: Reviewing historical performance, identifying opportunities, delivering insights, and assessing the impact of strategic initiatives
- Executive Reporting: Contributing to executive presentation content, including building from scratch, adapting existing formats, clarifying requirements, updating, and providing feedback
- Market Analysis: Providing ongoing insight into trends and dynamics within our market as well as adjacent markets
- Stakeholder Partnership: Partnering with other stakeholders to drive data-driven change within the business
- Analytics Strategy: Helping to define and drive the analytics strategy and modeling approaches
- Analytics Adoption: Driving adoption of analytics in decision-making through user-friendly methods
7. Business Intelligence Data Analyst Job Description
- Data Storytelling: Supporting analytics deep-dives into large volumes of data and using it to tell stories for people with varying degrees of analytics competency
- Dashboard Ownership: Set up and ownership of various reports/dashboards
- Data Consistency: Ensure consistent measurement and use of data across teams
- Data Quality Control: Ensure quality control in data collection and improve confidence in the data
- Project Support: Support for various projects from conception to completion
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Maintaining strong working relationships across teams/squads and adding BI value
- Ad-Hoc Analysis: Ownership of various ad-hoc analytics and insights queries to support wider teams
8. Business Intelligence Developer Overview
- MI Production: Be accountable for the development and ongoing production of regular MI and KPIs
- Data Accuracy: Be accountable for the accuracy, integrity, and overall quality of MI produced
- Information Quality: Improve the quality and availability of the management information
- Process Improvement: Assist in the identification of MI areas for improvement across the business processes and systems
- Reporting Standards: Develop reporting design principles and development standards across the business
- Root Analysis: Dig deep to uncover the causes of problems and identify the most effective solution
- Tool Expansion: Expand the usage and application of data analysis tools, specifically Qlik Sense
- System Expertise: Act as an expert regarding the management information processes and systems/tools used
- Tool Familiarization: Quickly acquire a detailed understanding and knowledge of the reporting and analysis tools and data sets currently being used by the company
9. Business Intelligence Developer Details and Accountabilities
- BI Solution Design: Design and develop Business Intelligence solutions
- SQL and BI Tools: Applies best practice SQL scripting, SSIS integration, SSAS Cube or Tabular Model design, SSRS report generation
- BI Delivery: Ensure the delivery of reliable and accurate BI modules or entire solutions to clients
- Quality Assurance: Guarantee the quality of the BI modules delivered to clients
- Client Support: Ensure the effective support of BI modules to clients
- Tool Selection: Assists customers in the selection of Business Intelligence tools
- Developer Training: Conducts training programs for BI developers
- Development Methodology: Implement planning and development methodologies with a focus on productivity and results-oriented
- Lifecycle Monitoring: Monitors data modules throughout the development life cycle
- Standards Compliance: Ensures compliance with quality standards
- Project Strategy: Assists the project manager in establishing a clear vision and strategy
- Team Empowerment: Promote teamwork and empower employees
- Effective Communication: Develop to work with effective communication
- Automation Design: Design and implementation of automation and self-service elements in the solutions
- Technology Adoption: Incorporate new technologies or methodologies in BI processes
- Best Practices: Incorporate best practices and standards for BI development and operations
- Metric Implementation: Propose and implement SLAs, KPIs, and metrics for the BI solution
- Performance Analytics: Implement BI modules development and operation analytics elements to identify improvement opportunities
- Continuous Improvement: Identify and implement continuous improvement opportunities
10. Business Intelligence Engineer Tasks
- Technical Leadership: Be an end-to-end technical lead for multiple BI and Analytics projects including planning, development, strategy, and implementation
- Data Architecture: Design the data schema, build and continually improve infrastructure for Data Warehousing, BI, and Analysis
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Collaborate with analytics, data infrastructure, engineering, and product teams to deliver data that analysts and data scientists can rely on
- Solution Development: Gather requirements and build new solutions to solve the pain points of analysts and developers
- Infrastructure Improvement: Create and drive the improvement of tools and reporting/dashboard infrastructure
- Performance Tuning: Tune the performance of large data pipeline jobs and improve overall system design
- Dashboard Delivery: Design, build, launch, and maintain reliable dashboards that provide insights across cross-functional global teams
- BI Strategy: Work with Data Science leadership to define long-term BI strategy
- Scalable Solutions: Build scalable data architecture and re-usable analytics assets for broader consumption within the organization
- Process Optimization: Seek opportunities to improve data collection, reporting, and consumption based on business needs
11. Business Intelligence Modeler Roles
- Domain Understanding: Understanding the functional domain of a business line
- BI Mastery: Master the applicative BI domain of a business line
- Workshop Facilitation: Organizing and moderating workshops with the business client to define their business needs
- Requirement Gathering: Gathering the business requirements and defining solutions with the client
- Data Design: Designing the different data patrimonies and keeping them coherent in time
- Tool Assessment: Assessing new tools, new technologies, and methodologies
- Team Liaison: Explaining the functional contents of the projects to the development team (link between users and the development team)
- Design Validation: Validating the deviations needed in the design and ensuring they are documented
12. Business Intelligence Manager Additional Details
- User Consultation: Using information design principles and human-centered design, consult with clinical and administrative users to create knowledge and information to help solve business problems
- Strategic Input: Serve as a member of the Information Systems management team, providing strategic and operational input to the department
- Team Supervision: Provide direct supervision to business intelligence team members regarding project assignments and implementation
- Portfolio Management: Maintain a business intelligence portfolio using an Agile/Scrum framework
- Tool Development: Lead team to create flexible, production-ready tools that promote access to data and insight across the organization
- ETL Collaboration: Collaborate with the Software Engineering team to develop and maintain ETLs supporting reporting and modeling
- Quality Assurance: Oversee quality assurance testing and review to produce trusted, accurate data and reporting products
- Security Compliance: Ensure adherence to information security procedures and best practices, including but not limited to maintaining source control and documentation of team projects
- Data Governance: Support information governance initiatives (in conjunction with the Associate Director of Clinical Services and Director of Quality Systems) to ensure data quality and usability throughout the organization
- Administrative Management: Administrative functions such as supervisory documentation (payroll approval, Catalytic Coaching), budgeting, and office/team management
13. Business Intelligence Specialist Essential Functions
- Data Analysis: Understands, cleans, analyzes, integrates, and investigates internal and external data to deliver business value
- Business Translation: Work together to translate the real business need into an analytic problem that you can solve
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Work with stakeholders throughout the organization to identify opportunities for leveraging company data to drive business solutions
- Visualization Design: Identifies the right visualization model depending on the business requirements and data sets
- Decision Support: Seeks rationales that support operational and strategic decision-making
- Application Knowledge: Business applications / Digital applications
- System Analysis: Analyzes existing IT systems and solutions, taking into account both technical and business requirements
- Requirement Specification: Translates user requirements into functional specifications of the IT solutions
- Testing Development: Develops testing programs and techniques to guarantee the alignment between existing IT solutions and their intended specifications
14. Business Intelligence Sales Specialist Role Purpose
- Opportunity Alignment: Working closely with Account Managers for good-fit opportunities
- Executive Pitching: Pitching the BI propositions to Senior Executives and Managing Partners
- Account Growth: Working closely with the customer success manager to identify account growth
- Client Research: Researching firms to identify new clients
- Editorial Collaboration: Working closely with the editorial team to leverage experience
- Pipeline Reporting: Providing regular reports of pipeline and forecast via CRM
- Product Demonstration: Product demonstrations and support to potential customers
- Competitor Analysis: Analysing competitor developments and feeding back on product development
Editorial Process
Lamwork content is developed through structured review of publicly available job postings and documented hiring trends.
Editorial operations are managed by Thanh Huyen, Managing Editor, with research direction and final oversight by Lam Nguyen, Founder & Editorial Lead. Content is periodically reviewed to reflect observable labor market changes.