The Business Intelligence Consultancy Process

IT consultancy is currently one of the top earning jobs in the market. A typical IT consultant is not just a subject matter expert of the technology he is implementing, but also functions as a business analyst, project manager and even a developer, in some cases. It requires time management, stress management and even customer interfacing skills. Business intelligence software implementations are examples of high-risk and complex software systems implemented by industry certified IT consultants. What does a business intelligence IT consultant typically do in a standard full-scale system implementation? The consultancy process starts off with the company identifying a business need. The business needs may happen as a result of the company acquiring other companies, expansion or simply as an investment in itself. This business need is then mapped into a flowchart or a tabular format.

Then, analysis of the business intelligence service comes into play. Which corporate scenarios can be translated into a technical solution? Which ones represent a gap and which ones can be improved? Business intelligence consultancy is more than just providing solutions; it is also implementing them with minimal issues. After identifying the processes, the consultant will then design a working solution addressing present and future needs. This includes support structures apart from implementing the system itself. Once designed, the consultant will then initiate several testing phases, through unit testing and user acceptance testing. Issues that arise will be resolved either by the consultant, technical lead or a business analyst. This can be done iteratively until a perfectly functioning system is in place. Once this is achieved, the system is ready to be rolled out in actual production systems. This is the riskiest part of the implementation because it can disrupt actual business processes if not implemented correctly enough. The business intelligence consultant will need to coordinate with different departments within the company to ensure that this is thoroughly done. This usually involves the end users, managers and support team all at the same time. Once implemented, the consultant will support the productive system for a few weeks or months, depending on the size of the project.