Amongst the most popular career opportunities of recent years, career in Business Intelligence is one of the top choices.
Wondering what is Business Intelligence (BI)? It is a set of procedures, architecture, and utilization of technologies to convert raw data into tangible information that can help decision-makers take profitable business decisions.
Business intelligence directly impacts a company's strategy and operations by helping them take data driven decisions.
Want to find out more about what a day in the life of a Business Analyst looks like? We spoke to Mahima Kukreja, BI Manager at Naukri to take us through the roles and responsibilities of a Business Intelligence Manager and share her advice with enthusiasts of the field.
Could you please tell us a little about what you do?
I am working as Business Intelligence Manager at Naukri. I help the leadership team make informed decisions by evaluating how Naukri’s products are performing
What got you interested in the field of business analysis?
The quote by Peter Drucker - “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” moved me. From the very start of my career, I measured my own productivity and optimized my own codes to measure and showcase the improvements.
Other than this, I always liked deriving insights from the data and presenting it to my clients/stakeholders.
Once you found your passion, what was your next step to make a career out of it?
I was always good at storytelling so I knew I wanted to make a career where I will get to present to stakeholders.
I was always thrilled whenever I was asked to find insights from a large volume of data.
So, rather than going for a conventional coding job, I went ahead and applied for consulting firms post my graduation.
Did you pursue any additional courses for your career growth?
I have been upskilling myself with online courses time and again. I also pursued my MBA from ISB, Hyderabad in order to upskill myself.
Could you walk us through your journey so far?
I started my career as a business technology analyst in one of the leading consulting firms. I have handled multiple pharmaceutical clients in my previous organizations and visited their US offices multiple times.
Having served the consulting world for 8 years, I wanted to try something new. Hence, I switched to Naukri to explore the Internet Industry. It has been going great and I have been learning a lot of new things every single day.
What does a day as a Business Analyst look like?
Business analysts start the day by looking at all the problems they need to solve on that particular day.
There are multiple stakeholders like marketing, product team, sales, and leadership who are waiting for Business Analysts to provide insights on the data so that they can make decisions accordingly.
We conduct meetings with these stakeholders, clean up the data (using tools like Excel/SQL), create dashboards using tools like Excel/Tableau/PowerBI and provide insights to them on an ongoing basis.
Some of the broader problem areas that we work on are improving the ROI of marketing campaigns, identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities for sales team, tracking the critical product metrics and conversion funnel, drawing insights around user behaviour and product usage.
What are the 3 things that you like & dislike about being a BI Manager?
Likes:
- Being able to do highly impactful work
- Being able to present to the leadership team directly
- Being able to manage and mentor teams
Dislikes:
- At times, the data requires a lot of cleaning so a few analyses require a lot more time and patience which stakeholders sometimes don’t understand
Given the dynamism of your work profile, how do you maintain your work-life balance?
Having worked in the consulting world in the past, I have developed my own ways of prioritization. I start my day with a team huddle and prioritize the work for myself and my team.
This ensures all of us are wrapping up our work in the evening timely thus maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
What would you advise our readers planning to pursue a profession in business analysis?
Be ready to love numbers and derive insights from large volumes of data. Business analysts also need to keep themselves updated with the latest BI tools like Tableau, Power BI, etc
How has Info Edge helped in your career growth?
Info Edge has been giving me the opportunity to solve new problems everyday. The learning has been great so far.
In just a span of 9 months, I have been given the opportunity to present to the leadership team multiple times which speaks volumes about the guidance and trust we all get here all along!
How has business analysis advanced since the time you started? And what is the next big thing in the field?
I would say the basics still remain the same. Tools to carry out the same analyses have emerged and they will keep emerging in the future too. So, we have to get the basics right first.
Technology/tools are just a medium to achieve the end result.
The next big thing in the field would be Augmented Analytics which is the practice of deploying automated algorithms to process large sets of data that can also make predictions and prescriptions on that recommended data.
Now that you have come so far, what will your next milestone be?
The next milestone will be to build multiple strong BI teams within various verticals of Infoedge.
What’s the success mantra of your life?
Hard Work never goes wasted. So keep working hard, and things will fall in place. They always do.
What is "In Conversation with"?
Seeking an expert's opinion is not always easy, so we are bringing the expert's opinion to you!
In this series, we aim to explore the career journey of people from different fields, backgrounds, and career stages who have tread the path and made a place for themselves in their specific areas.
Join us as we try to understand all about what they do, how they started, and where they are headed next.
Stay tuned to read more such articles. To get insights into your desired field, send suggestions to guestpostnaukri@gmail.com!
