Getting a career in business intelligence analytics (BIA) may be one of the best decisions you ever made. While not as well-known a field as software engineering, for example, business intelligence analytics is a growing field, with a projected job growth rate of 21% through 2028 and a salary increase of 10% over the last five years.
The added bonus? Business intelligence analyst (also known as a BI analyst) roles have quickly become some of the best options in the “tech jobs for good” realm, with more and more opportunities to go beyond day-to-day duties and truly impact the world.
Let’s dive into some examples of why this is, and how you can determine if getting into the world of business intelligence analytics is right for you.
Why business intelligence is important
Despite having a whole host of different names (business analytics, business intelligence, business analytics and intelligence, etc.), this computer science field offers its practitioners the same opportunity: the ability to help organizations analyze data, report on it, and make informed decisions that improve the company as a whole.
These are just a few areas where BIA solutions can make a difference in the world through data:
Climate
Business intelligence analytics can be used very effectively in the climate industry. It can be applied to weather forecasting and climate modeling to predict future events, and it can be used internally for companies looking to better understand their environmental impact, reduce their carbon footprint, and contribute to making a healthier planet.
For instance, an analyst could take historical and real-time data about a company’s energy consumption and determine the best business strategies on how to improve its efficiency. A BI analyst could also use BI tools to help determine where a company might be at risk from natural disasters, how these would impact the business, and what steps they can take to help mitigate these potential scenarios.
Public safety
Is your guilty pleasure consuming as many true crime podcasts, TV shows, and movies as you can get your hands on? If so, consider the impact you could make by working in crime analysis. Using business intelligence tools and skills, you would analyze historical crime data, trends, and reports to help law enforcement agencies better understand and stop potential threats and unnecessary crime.
And in a crossover with the climate industry, your business intelligence analytics skills could help governments and organizations better prepare for natural disasters and save lives of citizens around the country. By organizing past and current data, you could simulate future situations to help agencies plan for the best way to respond to, allocate resources for, and prepare staff for any emergency that might come.
Healthcare
If improving the lives of patients and or medical staff sounds rewarding, a healthcare BI analyst role is for you. This career provides lots of opportunities to directly impact humans and the care they receive. In medical settings, business analytics and intelligence can be used to analyze trends in patient data to predict and prevent future health crises, to suggest treatment or mitigation options for patients, and even to prevent readmissions.
A BI analyst can also help the hospital and its staff make a more informed business decision about how to allocate resources and boost employee productivity. For example, by analyzing equipment usage patterns or staffing schedules, an analyst can determine when certain equipment might need to be more readily available, or when more staff needs to be on hand to provide patient care.
How TripleTen graduate Andrew makes a difference
When TripleTen’s students graduate from our programs, they enter a variety of different fields. But some of them know from early on that they want their career to mean something beyond just the title, and that’s exactly what happened to Andrew MillsapsRekindling His Curiosity for Tech After A Decade in Sales: Andrew Millsaps’s TripleTen Story.
Andrew had worked in sales and insurance for over a decade, even owning his own insurance agency before he started to feel that he wanted something more. He joined our bootcamp after hearing about our money-back guaranteeWhat You Need to Know about the TripleTen Money-Back Guarantee that promises a full refund if grads follow all our expert recommendations and don’t land jobs within six months of graduation.
The workload was difficult, and Andrew relied heavily on the bootcamp’s code reviewers to help him refine his skills. However, while still in the bootcamp, Andrew heard about an analyst role at a utilities company. After one interview, he knew he wanted the position. So he made a custom electric rates map and presented it to his next interviewer, the company’s CEO.
Andrew was offered the job, and now works in data analytics (another term in the business intelligence and analytics field) for Volunteer Energy Cooperative, a company that brings electricity to rural, underserved communities. He spends his days taking data from different areas of the business – whether that’s internal operations or customer interactions – to determine the best ways to save hours of manual labor and reduce overhead, therefore improving the overall efficiency and value of the Cooperative to its customers.
I have done a variety of different jobs, and now I'm in tech, and I'm loving it. And I know it's just been just a few short months so far, but I love it. Andrew Millsaps, TripleTen grad
How to know if business intelligence analytics is for you
Becoming a BI analystHow to Become a Business Intelligence Analyst will provide you a plethora of opportunities for doing good in society and the world. You can make sure you’re going down the right path by asking yourself questions like these:
Tech jobs for good: find your path
The BI analyst role has an important power: having access to data and using it to make informed decisions that can improve not only the company you work for and its competitive advantage, but also the lives, society, and environment that it reaches. Having a meaningful career in the BI market is possible, and you’ll also benefit from job security and a good salary, since this industry is only going to get bigger and more important as the years go by.
Don’t forget: you can check out our tech career quiz to help confirm your interest in business intelligence analytics! Find out now if you’re ready to take the leap into a new career in this growing field of tech.