May 13, 2011 at 3:08 pm
So i've been working on developing a business intelligence platform, and turns out I have loved every minute of it. My background is business analysis with a technology slant, but never development, and never had I touched SQL etc until this project.
I've got years of operational team management, business analysis, budget management etc and contact centre management but i'm thinking of changing towards BI Development because creating something useful gives me a special kind of buzz.
What i'm curious to know is what peoples thoughts are, considering I only have approx 6 months experience specifically in the field and nothing formal around DBA skills. My 1 developed solution is pretty good actually and serves several thousand people with some particularly critical information, but at the end of the day i've only worked on one solution.
I am happy to study, but what to do?
Help!
June 7, 2011 at 1:20 pm
ProKelly (5/13/2011)
So i've been working on developing a business intelligence platform, and turns out I have loved every minute of it. My background is business analysis with a technology slant, but never development, and never had I touched SQL etc until this project.I've got years of operational team management, business analysis, budget management etc and contact centre management but i'm thinking of changing towards BI Development because creating something useful gives me a special kind of buzz.
What i'm curious to know is what peoples thoughts are, considering I only have approx 6 months experience specifically in the field and nothing formal around DBA skills. My 1 developed solution is pretty good actually and serves several thousand people with some particularly critical information, but at the end of the day i've only worked on one solution.
I am happy to study, but what to do?
Help!
I think you may find it difficult to make a move with only 6mths and a single app under your belt. What tools did you use? Can you give a brief description in the STAR format?
Situation
Task
Actions Taken
Results
The analytical and management experience should come in handy when looking for PrjMgmt work. But you'll probably find it easier if you build up more technical experience first.
If you can't find opportunities to continue down that path at your current job, you may want to do some after-hours work (hobby/projects) ... or perhaps even approach small businesses with pro-bono project ideas telling them you are looking to build a portfolio of projects, experience, and recommendations and willing to work for FREE 🙂
Data Enthusiast | @SQLbyoBI | www.opifexsolutions.com
June 7, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Talk to some tech recruiters in your area. BI is a HOT field to break into, but you'll be competing with people with a lot more technical experience at first. Your hook will be your experience on the other side of it. Recruiters will be able to tell you very specifically if that'll be enough to get you into it, or what to do if it isn't.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
June 7, 2011 at 11:45 pm
thanks for your replies. I was thinking that too, to be honest, that 1 tool and 6 months is not nearly enough time. However let me tell you about the tool and see if you think it's comprehensive enough.
The situation is, that the the local government within which I work we are having a major shift towards being more customer focussed. The issue however is that it has been inherently difficult to demonstrate Customer opinion. We have a multitude of systems which can either provide indicative customer opinion, or actual customer opinion, but the systems are too many, and the process would be too complex to tie it all together and provide a simple platform to report from.
Enter me. I have created a platform, on the SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence products, which is now being used corporately. It pulls data from a cloud based scheduling system, a Customer Relationship Management system, a customer feedback system, our social care systems and various other smaller products we use across the authority. It also pulls in web visitor data too. I have designed it so that it can provide realtime information on the customer across every channel of contact, volumes, trends, it has reporting alerts if certain contact volumes or satisfaction measures change for a monthly average, weekly average, and even by 10:30am to advise of potential trend changes that the Call Centre may need to consider.
From a performance perspective, the solution can demonstrate what a call centre advisor is doing on their phone per minute, and how much work they logged on the CRM/Social Care/etc systems within the same minute. This allows the call centre to manage performance of their advisors at the same time as managing their demand. I've worked in a lot of call centre environments and none have had that level of information in play before.
The system is efficient, I had some real problems with query execution times but I've managed to spend time in working through those. I have the realtime data on a seperate partition using HOLAP which because of the volumes of information, and the infrastructure it's sitting on, is the best way to approach it. The product is being recognised corporately now and I am being invited to give opinion on other reporting tools, such as Business Objects which is expensive and looking to replace it with a SqL Server solution.
I think its pretty amazing, to be honest. But I need to temper that with understanding whether I have been amazing here, or the solution is amazing and the result is actually just something that you would expect. Do Business Intelligence professionals usually spit out work to this standard? It's the benchmarking element i've not been able to get hold of really.
Anyway, I appreciate your time, thanks peeps.
June 8, 2011 at 6:46 am
It sounds like you did really good work. That's promising. If you want more details on how good, etc., you'll want to talk to people who manage projects like that. That story sounds like a good kernel for a resume on the subject. Put it on your LinkedIn profile, and reference that in the resume.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
June 8, 2011 at 7:21 am
GSquared (6/8/2011)
It sounds like you did really good work. That's promising. If you want more details on how good, etc., you'll want to talk to people who manage projects like that. That story sounds like a good kernel for a resume on the subject. Put it on your LinkedIn profile, and reference that in the resume.
agreed - that is a terrific talking point!
OP, a very comprehensive project...nice work!
Data Enthusiast | @SQLbyoBI | www.opifexsolutions.com
June 8, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the supportive comments guys! it's appreciated.
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