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Srini Rengarajan

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Srini Rengarajan

Program Manager, DW/BI

Collabera

Srini Rengarajan is a member of:

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Srini Rengarajan's Advice

Effective Decision Making

DWBI is one of the domains that’s gained unprecedented popularity in recent times. DWBI professionals are a sought after lot in many organizations these days as they directly affect decision making.Someone starting new should decide what space they would like to be a part of:either the Data Management stream – which includes Data Integration,Data Quality, Governance and building Data warehouses, or, the Business Intelligence/Analytics stream – which consumes the centralized data and converts into meaningful information. The latter involves a deeper understating of the business while the former requires a sound sense of refining raw data.

The Journey: Early days to How I got here

To be successful in one’s career, it is critical to get the basics right
and be clear on what one wants to achieve. I believe in thinking big,
no matter what and have always aimed high. This has helped me scale up
from a rookie engineer (from my early days) to a seasoned BI
professional today.

Decisions that mattered

One of the important decisions was to move from application development
to a specialized role in DWBI, which involves DWBI Consulting,
Competency building and Delivery. I felt the latter is more challenging
as it requires deep domain proficiency and involves interacting with
multiple stakeholders across geographies and deals with overcoming
numerous constraints.Hence, the accomplishments are even more
fulfilling.

Work and Role: Then and now

My current role is largely strategic, unlike my previous role, which
involved a mix of strategy and execution. I am happy to have
conceptualized and operationalized the Data Warehousing & Business
Intelligence (DWBI) Center of Excellence at Collabera. This involved
building a proficient team with high end managers and architects in a
short span of 6 months.

Two years down the line

Given that I thrive on challenges, I would most probably be managing and
maturing larger DWBI Competency Centers and Delivery organizations.

What I learnt along the way

One important lesson is to not taking ones eyes off market dynamics and
consumer behaviour/expectations, while ensuring that the basics are
still solid.

Evolution of BI as I See it

A decade back, DWBI was pretty new; organizations were skeptical about
the ensuing ROI and were in two minds about implementing DWBI solutions.
Things have changed a lot since then! Chances are that we will find a
DWBI solution being used in most large organizations, while mid-size and
smaller organizations are steadily following suit. This space is just
getting more and more interesting,with organizations looking forward to
newer ways of converting data into information, along with newer and
better ways of consuming data.

Trends to Watch Out For

Mobility and Big Data are two of the areas that I am keenly following.
With BYOD (Bring your own device) becoming more prevalent, it is
important to look at how existing BI solutions can be made available to
these devices and how efficient their usage would be.

One thing
is certain – Big Data is here to stay!While the problem has been in
existence for some years, the magnitude has increased exponentially.This
will affect every organization at some point in time.

My Advice If You are Starting Out

DWBI is one of the domains that’s gained unprecedented popularity in
recent times. DWBI professionals are a sought after lot in many
organizations these days as they directly affect decision making.

Someone
starting new should decide what space they would like to be a part
of:either the Data Management stream – which includes Data
Integration,Data Quality, Governance and building Data warehouses, or,
the Business Intelligence/Analytics stream – which consumes the
centralized data and converts into meaningful information. The latter
involves a deeper understating of the business while the former requires
a sound sense of refining raw data.

Must Focus Areas in BI Domain

DWBI Maturity, Innovative Solutions and managing Competency/Delivery centers will grow in importance.

Do We Need Certifications?

More than the certifications per se, the learning(s)/knowledge that come
with them are utmost vital in any professional’s career. There are
numerous DWBI technology certifications available today that a person
can undergo towards becoming a DWBI professional.

Books/Websites I recommend

Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon, two foremost legends of this domain, have
authored quite a few wonderful books. Two of them are - The Data
Warehouse Toolkit, 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Dimensional
Modeling and Building The Data Warehouse, Fourth Edition.

Tdwi.org is a good website for reference. There are many groups like Information Excellence,
which focus on knowledge sharing within the DWBI Community. They also
conduct monthly and quarterly sessions for DWBI professionals at
multiple levels.