Business intelligence in management careers
I'm new business intelligence (BI), but have several years of marketing and sales experience. What kinds of BI career paths might be good for me? General management is my target -- can BI experience get me there?

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There are numerous avenues that you could pursue. If you're on the "business side" of things now, as it appears, perhaps the best bridge to BI is one of the liaison positions within a business area that takes a data warehouse or mart installation (usually by IT) and develops the BI off of it with tools like Business Objects, Cognos, Microstrategy, OBIEE and Hyperion. Often times, business areas are quite patient with their staff in these areas because their initial needs are basic. If that is even unrealistic, perhaps you could feed requirements into that process from a data analyst or business analyst position. You may find, as many do, that any of these are challenging and rewarding enough positions to where you will feel like you are actually in a BI career path.

As for "general management," everyone should disabuse themselves of any notions that there are positions out there in management where they lack skills and don't contribute. I know it happens, but it will happen less and focusing on that reduces the odds of having a successful career. So, as long as you are targeted and know that you will always need to contribute immensely to your company, I think that true, business-oriented BI should make a wonderful area to launch into numerous other positions. It is at the epicenter of business requirements and information is at the heart of business strategy these days. I'm not convinced it is viewed that way yet, but, as I often say, be excellent at whatever you do and that excellence will be the most influential part of your position.

This was first published in November 2008

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