10 business intelligence certifications and certificates to advance your BI career

6 months ago AndyC

As data becomes increasingly vital to business success, business intelligence (BI) continues to grow in importance.

As data becomes increasingly vital to business success, business intelligence (BI) continues to grow in importance. And with a strong BI strategy and team, organizations can perform the kinds of analysis necessary to help users make better data-driven business decisions.

BI encompasses numerous roles. BI analysts, with an average salary of $73,705 according to PayScale, provide application analysis and data modeling design for centralized data warehouses, and extract data from databases and data warehouses for reporting, among other tasks. BI developers, with an average salary of $86,190, work with databases and software to develop and fine-tune IT solutions. BI architects, earning on average $114,798, analyze and implement BI for their organizations, with responsibilities that range from determining platforms to building and maintaining data warehouses. And BI directors, on an average salary of $128,148, lead design and development activities related to the enterprise data warehouse.

In its 3Q 2023 IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index report, research firm Foote Partners notes that the average pay premium for tech certifications was down 0.7%. In general, Foote Partners’ statistics show that while organizations will pay a premium for certifications, they’re more willing to pay for non-certified skills, especially in areas like prescriptive analytics, AI skills, and generative AI skills. Over the last two years, the average value of IT certifications has fallen more than 1%, while the value of noncertified skills has risen by a similar amount. The median pay premium for noncertified skills is now more than 9.5% above base salary, while that for IT certifications is 6.5%.

Certifications are not required to work in BI, but they may provide an edge by showing employers you have the right skillset. Below is our guide to some of the most sought-after BI certifications.

Top 10 business intelligence certifications and certificates

Google Business Intelligence Professional Certificate
Certified Business Intelligence Professional
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate
Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate
QlikView Business Analyst Sense Business Analyst
SAP Certified Application Associate: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.3
SAS Certified Specialist: Visual Business Analytics
Tableau Certified Data Analyst
Tableau Desktop Specialist
Tableau Server Certified Associate

Google Business Intelligence Professional Certificate

This certificate consists of a three-course series: Foundations of Business Intelligence, The Path to Insights: Data Models and Pipelines, and Decisions, Decisions: Dashboards and Reports. Intended for people with some experience with analytical principles, it focuses on teaching students and improving their knowledge with extracting, transforming, and analyzing data to meet organizational goals, and creating dashboards and designing data visualization graphs and charts. The courses are online and Google estimates students can complete them in less than two months at 10 hours a week.

Organization: Google

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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