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

Business intelligence (BI) is about turning raw data into actionable insights that your organization can use to make strategic decisions. If you’re intellectually curious and have a knack for problem solving, working in business intelligence can offer many opportunities, including excellent salary potential and a strong job outlook. By building skill in this field, you could pursue roles such as business analyst, data analyst, data engineer, or statistician—all of which help companies turn their data into strategic insights. 

As you begin exploring whether a business intelligence degree is the right fit for you, you may notice “business intelligence” isn’t always listed as a standalone major. In fact, many professionals in this field have degrees related to computer science or information technology. This guide can help you navigate your options, understand the coursework and skills you need, and provide insights to help you determine the best educational route to launch your career in BI.

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 the business to assess its performance, see any trends and patterns, and make plans for improvements. 

In practice, business intelligence answers strategic questions 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?

BI professionals not only work with data but also connect it to real business challenges. Because of this, education needs to blend analytics with a deep understanding of business processes and how they interrelate. 

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

Business intelligence and data science have similarities, and the roles of business intelligence analyst and data scientist might overlap, but 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.

What is a business intelligence degree?

A business intelligence degree equips learners with the skills to analyze and interpret data to solve business challenges. It combines elements of data analytics and business strategy to provide you with the tools to understand business trends, uncover insights, and communicate them in a way that benefits the organization. 

Generally, students study business intelligence as a bachelor’s degree, which covers both theoretical and practical courses. Depending on the institution, students may be able to major directly in business intelligence or pursue a broader degree in business or technology. If you’re looking for more advanced coursework, you can opt to study business intelligence at a master’s degree level. Some colleges even allow you to take an accelerated bachelor’s and master’s degree, completing both in five years.

Choosing the right business intelligence degree

While some schools offer specific business intelligence degrees or specializations, professionals in this field often approach it through related disciplines. Many professionals in this field earn a “business intelligence degree” by pursuing a bachelor’s degrees or master’s degree in computer science, business studies, statistics, data science, economics, information technology, or a related area.

Each degree path can prepare you for a career in business intelligence, providing a unique lens on how to analyze and interpret data in a business sense. Your choice may depend on whether you’re more interested in business strategy, technical aspects, or a blend of both. For example, a business analytics program might emphasize data interpretation and performance metrics, while a computer science degree may focus more on technical areas like artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. Some degree focuses you can choose to build a foundation in business intelligence 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 

No matter which degree you choose, it’s important to ensure you build both data and business-related skills. For example, if you choose a data-specific degree (such as data science), it can be helpful to find business or business intelligence electives that complement your learning. This helps you build business acumen needed to apply your technical skills. Many programs offer specializations or tailored elective courses, and you can choose the ones that most align with your interests. 

Business intelligence degree courses: What to expect

If you’re pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business intelligence, your coursework will be designed to help you develop technical and business-oriented skills that prepare you for real-world roles in data analysis and strategic business planning. You’ll typically 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. 

Core courses lay the foundation for understanding how to manage and manipulate data, and how these insights can guide business processes. For example, in an “Introduction to Data Science” course, you can explore the basics of data analytics, including how to find associations between variables and represent the distribution of your data. In a business context, this might look like finding the association between customer characteristics and purchasing behavior, or representing the age distribution of your clientele. Each data-centric course will build your analytical foundation differently. Other courses you might see in this realm include:

• Big data analytics

• Data management 

• Data visualization for business

• Statistics

• Foundations of data-driven decision making

You’ll also benefit from taking more business-specific courses, which help you understand the basics of business operations, organizational behavior, and how to use different business intelligence platforms. For example, courses like “Business Management” can help you learn how to lead teams more effectively, and how to handle transitions, complicated market dynamics, and financial decisions. Other courses you may benefit from include: 

• Business analytics

• Integrating business fundamentals with ethics and law

• Foundations of strategic and managerial business intelligence 

• Business intelligence systems

• Financial management

• Optimization and decision support modeling for business 

Skills you can learn in a business intelligence degree

Earning a business intelligence degree goes beyond theory to equip you with practical, career-ready skills that you can use in the workplace. In many cases, you’ll be able to combine internships, real-world case studies, and collaborative projects to put what you learn into practice. The exact skills you’re likely to learn depend on your degree choice, but skills most relevant to careers in business intelligence 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

• Communication of analytics insights

• Problem-solving using data

• Business strategy

Is business intelligence a good career path?

Business intelligence roles often 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. The average annual base salary for a business intelligence professional is $126,100 [1], which is considerably higher than the national average.

When looking for a business intelligence role, consider common industries that hire business intelligence professionals, such as government departments, private businesses, and consulting firms.

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: $101,360 [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: $99,677 [4]

Job outlook (BLS): 23 percent [3]

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

Business intelligence manager

Average annual US base salary: $144,739 [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: $78,763 [6]

Job outlook (BLS): 9 percent [7]

As a financial analyst, you gather and analyze current and historical data to support businesses in making financial decisions about spending money and investments and to help increase return on investment (ROI).

Marketing analyst 

Average annual US base salary: $76,013 [8]

Job outlook (BLS): 8 percent [9]

As a marketing analyst, you’ll be responsible for gathering, analyzing, and reporting 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. 

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 Google Business Intelligence Professional Certificate, available on Coursera.