Exploring a Business Intelligence Degree: Is It the Right Career Path for You?

Business intelligence involves gaining valuable business insights from data to shape future strategies and decision-making. Working in business intelligence offers many opportunities, excellent salary potential, and a strong job outlook. A degree in business intelligence can lead to many career options, including business analyst, data analyst, data engineer, and statistician. 

Learn more about business intelligence, business intelligence degree options, and the possible career paths you can take once you graduate.

What is business intelligence? 

Business intelligence is the process of collecting, analyzing, and presenting raw data to gain information for making informed business decisions. Gaining insights from historical, current, and third-party data allows your business to assess its performance, see any trends and patterns, and make plans for improvements. It allows you to answer questions and solve problems such as:

• What are the current consumer trends?

• Which products are selling the most units?

• When is the quietest sales period?

• How is the market changing?

What is a business intelligence degree?

A business intelligence degree helps you build data analysis skills, allowing you to understand business trends and how you can use data to solve business challenges. You’ll find a variety of bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees that fall under this umbrella, varying in specialisms and course offerings.

Types of business intelligence degrees

Generally, students study business intelligence as a bachelor’s degree. A bachelor’s degree typically takes four years to complete as a full-time program and covers both theoretical and practical courses. You’ll normally study core courses that cover topics like database management, data mining, and business analytics, with the option to take electives such as data wrangling and visualization, statistical programming languages, and supply chain analytics.

You may decide to continue your education to study for a master’s degree in business intelligence. Some colleges allow you to take an accelerated bachelor’s and master’s degree, completing both in five years.

Degree majors

Depending on the college you enroll in, you can study a straight business intelligence major at the bachelor’s degree level. You can also choose to specialize in business intelligence at a master’s degree level. Each university is different, and you’ll find some that offer business intelligence as a major, some that offer something similar, and some that offer courses that include material to help you move toward a career in business intelligence. Some examples include:

• Business intelligence and analytics management

• Business intelligence and analytics

• Functional data analytics

• Business analytics

• Business analytics and information technology

• Data science

• Computer science

• Statistics

• Business administration 

Business intelligence degree courses: What to expect

If you’re studying for a bachelor’s degree in business intelligence, you can expect to cover a range of subjects relating to business intelligence and business analytics in addition to the general degree requirements of your program. 

Your specialization will likely cover core trends with big data, how to interpret data, and how to solve problems using BI tools. Some examples of courses your business intelligence major may cover include:

• Introduction to data science

• Foundations of strategic and managerial business intelligence 

• Business intelligence systems

• Big data analytics

• Data management 

• Data visualization for business

• Integrating business fundamentals with ethics and law

• Financial management

• Optimization and decision support modeling for business 

Skills you can learn in a business intelligence degree

Studying for a degree in business intelligence can equip you with a range of knowledge and skills you may build on by gaining practical experience through learning or opting for internships. Examples of skills you can learn include:

• Data analysis

• Business intelligence systems

• Analytical software packages 

• IT infrastructure and information security

• Managerial skills

• SQL knowledge 

• Data modeling

• Extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL)

• Online analytical processing (OLAP)

• Data warehouse architecture 

• Data visualizations

• Critical thinking

Is business intelligence a good career path?

Business intelligence roles come with good salaries and job security. Companies and organizations, regardless of industry, utilize business intelligence to gain insights and inform decisions, so you’ll find roles in a range of sectors. Common industries hiring business intelligence professionals include government departments, private businesses, and consulting firms.

The average annual base salary for a business intelligence professional is $126,307 [1], which is considerably higher than the national average.

Career opportunities with a business intelligence degree

A business intelligence degree is a good entry point for several different careers and for progressing within the field to leadership roles. Take a look at some possible business intelligence job roles and their average annual base salaries.

Business intelligence analyst

Average annual US base salary: $101,561 [2]

Job outlook (BLS): 23 percent [3]

As a business intelligence analyst, you analyze business, competitor, and industry data to find ways to improve a company’s efficiency, increase sales, and meet business goals. Business intelligence analysts present findings to executive-level staff to inform important decision-making. 

Business intelligence developer

Average annual US base salary: $99,821 [4]

Job outlook (BLS): 23 percent [3]

As a business intelligence developer, you design and develop dashboards, data querying tools, visualizations, and reports for analysts. They can be used to gather, analyze, and gain data insights about a business and its performance. 

Business intelligence manager

Average annual US base salary: $145,070 [5]

Job outlook (BLS): 23 percent [3]

As a business intelligence manager, you’ll lead a team of business intelligence analysts who gather, analyze, and report on insights they gain from data to support business leaders in making important strategic decisions. 

Financial analyst

Average annual US base salary: $78,707 [6]

Job outlook (BLS): 9 percent [7]

In the role of a financial analyst, you gather and analyze current and historical data to support businesses in making financial decisions. They typically focus on how money is spent, investments, and increasing return on investment (ROI).

Marketing analyst 

Average annual US base salary: $76,068 [8]

Job outlook (BLS): 8 percent [9]

As a marketing analyst, you’ll gather, analyze, and report on consumer, industry, and company data to develop marketing strategies. You’ll also assess whether products are marketable, who will buy them, and what the best price point is. 

Business intelligence vs. data science: What’s the difference?

Business intelligence and data science have similarities, but while business intelligence analyst and data scientist roles might cross, they are not the same. A data scientist or analyst might create reports based on data, but a business intelligence analyst will translate the data into a business context. Data science relies on analysis using algorithms and mathematical equations, but business intelligence takes a more human approach and solves problems in a business environment.

Explore business intelligence options on Coursera

Business intelligence is the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting on data to help achieve business goals. You’ll find a number of business intelligence degree courses available whether you are looking to study at a bachelor’s degree level or an advanced level. You may also consider a Professional Certificate to bolster your resume, such as the IBM Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst Professional Certificate, available on Coursera.