What is the difference between BI and MI?

When you start a new Vertical market in recruitment, the fundamentals to your success will ultimately come down to how well you know your market. What are the technologies commonly used, what are the current buzzwords, what’s new or emerging and where would you place someone depending on their level of experience?

To be able to speak to Clients and Candidates alike, you need to know what you’re talking about to be able to identify the great candidates and understand what in their world would excite or motivate them to move companies, whereas in relation to a client, if you know what you’re talking about, you will stand out from the crowd.

Some of the most common roles I work on always tend to have BI or MI at the beginning of their title and in the majority of the roles, the skills or technologies required can be the same, with SSRS, SSIS and SSAS being the most common and desirable. Now any of you who have a good understanding of recruitment will understand that many searches are based upon key word matching, but to really understand a candidate you need to understand: The candidates’ expertise, motivations and personal working environment.

When I first started in the Data Market, I found it really difficult to fully understand the clear difference between MI and BI.

I will try and explain it in layman’s terms so that any of you who are just starting your career, or would like to know out of curiosity might be able to understand what I do now.

BI (Business Intelligence) is a set of techniques, tools and technologies that will transform transactional data into useful information which people in the business will understand. Hence, you’ll then be able to use this for analysis purposes to be able to create strategies and make informed decisions about customers and products, showing long term trends that can be used to predict the future markets of your clients and products.

MI (Management Information) represents the process to apply to the data and convert it into real MI. In most organisations the MI will be for the monitoring and reporting of the business which incorporates lots of dashboards. This will enable Senior Stakeholders to measure the health of the business. Good examples of this would be staff KPIs, sales and attendance records etc.

In short, BI tends to focus upon the analysis of its customers and products whilst MI tends to focus upon the analysis of the business e.g. are KPIs being met and how are staff performing.

You will find that in some companies they have BI and MI teams and in others just one team. In an emerging market where I come across a new buzz word every week, it can be hard to keep your finger on the pulse. My motto is if you don’t know what something means or what it stands for then simply just ask.