Business Intelligence Consultant

In business, intelligence comes in many shapes and sizes. There’s emotional intelligence (EI), for instance, which speaks to companies’ ability to interpret customers’ words, behavior and body language. There’s competitive intelligence (CI), which represents companies’ knowledge about their competition. And then there’s business intelligence (BI), which describes a company’s understanding of itself, internally.

That’s the kind of intelligence that Business Intelligence Consultants care most about. Although they’re contractors, companies hire Business Intelligence Consultants to help them collect, analyze and use information about their operations.

Typically, that means equipping clients with new BI technology, or helping them improve and upgrade their existing system. After all, BI relies heavily on software, which Business Intelligence Analysts use to find, organize and summarize data about sales, inventory, marketing, manufacturing, etc. As a Business Intelligence Consultant, therefore, you’re at once an IT specialist and a business management expert, charged with creating a tool and then teaching people to use it.

Indeed, you first help clients set up systems for collecting data; then you show them strategies for interpreting and using it to drive business performance. As a result, your job might include setting up IT infrastructure and diagnosing business problems, as well as training employees. For instance, you may notice your client lacks customer information; you’ll therefore set up software for tracking customer behavior, then teach employees how to use it, as well as how the data can inform and improve how they sell and market to consumers. The end result: You give clients the tools they need to raise their business IQ.