business intelligence

[nim_vk]

can any one describe the role of a MBA in business intelligence?

[CatOmatic]

Originally Posted by nim_vk

can any one describe the role of a MBA in business intelligence?

I am curious bout this too.

any body keen to share gyan on kind of role of an MBA as a BA/Functional analyst in Business Intelligence?

[CATullus]

HI..I am working in Business Intelligence..I am not an MBA..But a developer of BI Systems..From my experience..MBAs bring in functional knowledge and the metrics to be presented in the BI reports..BI is all about reports and mining and coming to conclusions using the data..SO the MBAs will say we have to have these measures and the system functions this way..We have to have these dashboards and charts..

They bring in more of the system of functioning..

[vandana_d11]

hey attaching this event i produced...

hope it helps...

[bizskool]

Originally Posted by CatOmatic

I am curious bout this too.

any body keen to share gyan on kind of role of an MBA as a BA/Functional analyst in Business Intelligence?

MBA's are hired to bring in functional knowledge to develop models used to predict trends based on data in data warehouses. Used by retail giants, BFSI, I-banks to predict customer, market behaviour etc.

[CatOmatic]

good to hear from u folks. I hope this thread is taking shape to be a really fruitful discussion.

Now reporting i can understand is a mba kindof staff. structure, scope and granularity of reports has to be specified by functional analysts.

what about having so many packages available? By functional knowledge do you mean that a mba has to be trained in some of them (i mean microstrategy, cognos, SAS, BO etc etc)? How easy or difficult they are to grasp (assume average learning capability)?
Or by functional knowledge are you trying to say knowledge about retail, banking etc?

how technical kind of work is data modeling? do developers get models from functional people and then work on it. If I am not wrong, In CRM also we do such modelling say in case of segmentation for retailers, banks etc. How related are they?

Also, I am sure u have come across people who are working in such roles (i mean mba with IT experience working in BI/DW). how is the market for them? In DW/BI so far i know techies rule and package experience is most important. vis-a-vis how is the market for an mba in functional side?

regards,
shamik

[CatOmatic]

anyone to share thoughts on this thread ??

it has been lying idle for so many days.....come on guys

[Seizonsha]

Hi folks,

I am a Business Intelligence Consultant, working for a UK based firm that is into BI and BI alone...The company has been around for 20 years...but is only 3 years old to Bangalore/India...

Essentially, Business Intelligence and Datawarehousing are synonymous..Business Intelligence is a term used to describe information relevant to businesses....in terms of metrics as some one has pointed out earlier...And datawarehousing is the technological domain that helps build BI applications....here again I would like to differentiate between datawarehousing which essentially helps analyse actual sales/purchases data vis-a-vis target/budget/forecasts...and data mining...which is making projections based on real data/sample data...

Thats BI for starters.....

[Seizonsha]

Originally Posted by nim_vk

can any one describe the role of a MBA in business intelligence?

Hmm...Good question buddy...
Strictly speaking, one doesnt need an MBA to be a Business Intelligence Consultant..
I for one, was educated to be an IT engineer, and had no formal education in the areas of business/management.

My compayn, I am told, recruited me when I was fresh out of an engineering college, for among other things, my interest in the areas of business/management and ability to work with software tools.

At the end of the day, BI tools and applications...whether they are reports...or jazzy stuff like dashboards (the name comes from the fact that you can easily see important parameters/metrics on a real dashboard)..all of these BI tools have to be made using software tools...OLAP (online analytical processing) tools and reporting tools compete with each other for ease of use (by BI developers/consultants) and features that can impress end users (typically sales executives, strategists, senior management/boards of companies)..

Looooong answer for a short question...But couldnt help really!!!

To cut the long story short, one doesnt need to be an MBA...but an MBA helps understand the world of business better....may be at the cost of losing touch with technology.....

[Seizonsha]

Originally Posted by bizskool

MBA's are hired to bring in functional knowledge to develop models used to predict trends based on data in data warehouses. Used by retail giants, BFSI, I-banks to predict customer, market behaviour etc.

Hmm...Not really bizskool...
In a company of a 100 Business Intelligence Consultants...some senior..some not so senior...and some consultants are also project managers...we dont have any MBAs!!!
It may have to do with the fact that most software engineers (who will be comfortable using tools to make BI applications/solutions)..if at all they go on to do an MBA....they rarely return to IT..and even if they do...they would have lost touch with technology to an extent...

Besides...in my opinion...you dont need "functional analysts" who give you/others gyaan about business functions only and do no real work
Thats only my opinion...but then..bigger companies..typically big IT companies which have BI divisions may work in a different manner and may need such functional "gurus" around

Cheers,
Seizonsha