Business Intelligence Market Snapshot 2022

We recently completed a Data, Insight & Analytics Employment Guide, using data collected via a detailed survey of industry professionals. We then combined the data with ADLIB’s extensive internal data and knowledge gained from operating within the Data sector to provide this snapshot of the current Business Intelligence Market

The first stage of a business becoming data-driven is to be able to capture key KPIs and be able to visualise this to bring out key trends. At the forward-thinking end, more and more businesses have implemented self-serve analytics where business users are trained to use the front end of Tableau, Power BI, Looker or Qlik to be able to create their own dashboards and reports or have automated solutions that run regular reports for them. At the earlier stage, we are seeing more and more SMEs understand the need to measure performance across their businesses, with a rise in data agencies & consultancies to install and set up these tools or provide automated platforms that do this for them. We are seeing a higher demand for Business Intelligence Developers with cloud technology experience and/or some software skills such as Python, C# or VBA to be able to work with cloud based platforms that companies are moving on to.

Our Consultant’s view – Will Chinn, Consultant BI Development & Data Engineering –

BI professionals progress into this line of work from two main avenues, those who are more development focused and those who are more analytical. For the former, this position is often seen as a great way to progress into a more in-depth Data Engineering role. Due to this, the biggest draw to BI candidates is often the opportunity to learn, with skills like Python being most sought after by candidates once they have become adept at SQL and visualisation tools. 

Naturally, as Data Engineering salaries increase BI Development salaries follow suit; we have seen a steady increase of 10-15% in salaries over the last year and with the surplus ratio of jobs to candidates I don’t doubt this trajectory will continue. Key technologies that tend to attract the best candidates include anything cloud-related as often this is their first opportunity to get hands-on cloud work alongside the ability to further develop their coding skills predominantly Python. 

Candidates who have developed their BI skills to include advanced programming languages know their value and are taken off the market rapidly. For the best chance of securing this talent, opportunities need to be fully remote and highly competitive in salary. For the less well-rounded candidates, the opportunity to learn is always the big draw but not in exchange for a salary sacrifice. 

Generally speaking, we are seeing a trend of salaries increasing in this space due to demand increasing. As more and more companies move to being data-driven we see this trend continuing. A way to combat this is to look to upskill existing staff to be able to use these tools and to drive the move to self serve analytics, so the BI teams don’t have to be so large. BI candidates also, generally are looking to work mostly remotely as they understand they can get a lot done at home and there is no need to be in the office every day. We are seeing an uptick in candidates moving because they are being asked to come in 4-5 days per week.

Top 5 key tech skills we see:

• SQL and variants T-SQL
• Visualisation tools (Power BI, Tableau Qlik, Looker etc.) with Power BI being most popular
• SSAS, SSIS, SSRS
• Python, DAX, MDX
• ETL