What is the difference between a Data Analyst and a BI Developer?

Comparison between the pastry and the filling of the data pie

This is part of a series where we compare professions. We interviewed Robyn Turner (data analysis) and Priscilla Reagan (business intelligence development) to find out more!

What made you want to get into data analysis / BI development?

Robyn: I love making sense of the world through concrete facts and statistical accuracy. Data analysis is the perfect opportunity to do this — especially with the sense of surety that comes with using SQL. I really enjoy uncovering issues and opportunities by bringing together an array of data from different sources to paint a fuller picture that would be meaningless in isolation.

Priscilla: Visualisations speak louder than words and I love the fact that I can produce impactful visualisations that will help business in decision making. We have the platform to reveal trends, opportunities and problem areas that will shape the future of the business.

What does your typical day look like?

Priscilla: I start the day with slack, checking the various support channels to address Sisense queries if any. Calendar is my next stop to check the meetings for the day and planning focus. A typical day is a mix of team stand-ups, meetings with stakeholders to gather requirements for BI solutions, connecting with the data engineers to identify the relevant models to deliver the solution and working with data analysts to understand the data and requirements better. Housekeeping the BI reporting environments is a part of our daily activities.

Robyn: Working on ad-hoc tickets, like pre or post-experiment analysis or campaign targeting. More strategic roadmap items, like understanding more about customer skipping behaviour or a deep dive on changes to the order rate. Meetings to catch up with stakeholders, map opportunities and present findings.

What skills/tools are most crucial for your job?

Robyn: Most important is the ability to use SQL — it forms the foundation for data analytics, as it allows you to retrieve and manipulate data for analysis. Having a good grasp of Excel/Google sheets is useful. We also use Databricks, Periscope and Sisense. Other important skills are multitasking, stakeholder management, prioritisation and the ability to work in an agile way.

Priscilla: Expertise in a scripting language (like SQL, Python) is the basic requirement. Experience with data visualisation libraries is also crucial. Perception of the underlying data warehouse architecture, data integration tools (ETL/ELT process) will be useful on the job. We build our dashboards in Sisense and use dbt and Databricks for modelling. We heavily rely on Miro, Slack and Google Meet for team collaboration and Data Team rituals.

Who are your key stakeholders?

Priscilla: At Gousto, BI are a foundational team serving all parts of the business. So our key stakeholders are data analysts, finance, fulfilment operations, human resources, senior managers, and the list goes on. Anyone in the organisation looking to make data driven decisions!

Robyn: At Gousto, data analysts are each embedded in a certain part of the business. In my area, our key stakeholders are colleagues that work in marketing and product. Supporting them through experiment analysis and identifying opportunities/problems that can be harnessed/solved through efficient comms and superior product design.

How do your two professions interact?

Robyn: At Gousto, interaction with BI developers is picking up as we migrate from using Periscope to Sisense. With an analysts knowledge of the data and stakeholder requirements, we can liaise with BI to make reporting come to life. This allows stakeholders to have more visibility of the data.

Priscilla: Data analysts help us understand data better and deeper in order to provide the right information in the dashboards. We talk to data analysts from the initial stages of the dashboard development cycle to help in modelling, through to the final stages to assist in testing the derived information.

What advice would you give to someone coming into your profession?

Priscilla: Being a BI developer gives you the opportunity to code as well as be creative in visualising data. It also provides the best platform to understand end-to-end business functions. In a nutshell BI developers role presents one with the best of both worlds (Technology and Business).

Robyn: You don’t always have to have the fanciest technical background and be proficient in an array of languages to excel at being an analyst. Focus on being curious and capturing a coherent story behind the data and you can make a big impact!

Check out more stories from Gousto and make sure to follow us here, so you catch the next instalment in our series of “What’s the difference between…”.

While you’re waiting for that you can check out this post about how to run a Gousto analytics hackathon.