An Honest CFI BIDA Review 2024: Is BIDA Worth It?

This is an honest review written by BIDA graduate. We may receive a small fee for some of the courses we refer at no extra cost to you & Get 10% Off in case you go through the links.

Now let us dive into CFI BIDA Review.

My Story: What Motivated Me To Enroll To BIDA?

I am currently working as a Data Analyst at MCN (Middle East Communications Network) which is the largest advertising and marketing network of agencies in the Middle East and North Africa. I believe that determination, dedication, and hard work lead to success.

After I graduated from university, I have completed BIDA & FMVA from CFI.

The certification consisted of 14 courses covering topics such as Financial Modeling, Valuation techniques, Budgeting and Forecasting, Scenario and Sensitivity Analysis, The Amazon Case Study, FP&A Monthly Cash Flow Forecast Model, Financial Analysis Fundamentals, Dashboards & Data Visualization, and more.

It has been a great experience where I have been able to enhance my financial modeling skills which helped me a lot in my current work at MCN.

I knew about CFI from LinkedIn posts, and I did my google search on top finance institutes worldwide. Afterward, I was more motivated when I saw the quality of the courses that CFI offers in their programs and the professionalism of their instructors.

CFI delivers an outstanding online education for finance professionals. CFI programs are a great bridge between financial theory and professional practice. Furthermore, CFI certifications focus on closing the skill gap between conceptual and practical knowledge.

Opportunities After Course: BIDA Salary?

BIDA Jobs and Salaries depend and vary upon the industry they work in.

Business analyst jobs are highly sought-after positions in the industry, with average base salary ranges of from $82,000 to $120,000

My Thoughts On The Syllabus Of BIDA:

The BIDA syllabus is very robust, comprehensive, and flexible. There are 14 Core Courses, 3 optional Prep Courses, and you must complete a minimum of 3 our of 7 Elective Courses. There are also Guided Case Studies and Presentations.

a) Core Courses (Module 1):

The BIDA core courses will equip you with robust skills in each tool.

• Power Query: It will show you how to automate data connections and transformations, as well as how to extract and consolidate data from multiple files and deal with errors. Power Query saves you a lot of time especially on reports that you repeat daily or weekly.

• Power Pivot: It helps you develop simple and advanced calculated metrics with consistent formatting, assembles multiple pivot tables, charts, and dimensions into a dashboard that provides you with different angles of analysis.

• SQL: It teaches you how to retrieve and filter data using basic SQL syntax, transform data with the help of numerical, date, and text functions, identify strategies for constructing an unbiased sample, and understand essential terminology related to SQL, databases, and data warehouses.

• Power BI: It contains dashboarding functions that can help you automate your work and create impressive visuals for you to create meaningful stories with complex data. These dashboards will help you have a measurable impact on the strategic decisions of the company.

• Tableau Tool: It provides you with interactive visuals and impressive dashboards. Upon completing this course, you will learn to use table calculations to turn source data into meaningful metrics and create insightful dashboards using multiple visuals.

• Dashboard And Data Visualization: The course will improve your skills for presenting financial information to management and executives at their businesses. You will learn how to present clean, focused, impactful information and develop effective storytelling techniques by utilizing the best selection, design, and presentation of charts and graphs. Finally, you will learn how to build the perfect chart and graphs to effectively communicate the story behind your data.

• Python: It is a programming language commonly used by financial analysts and data scientists in machine learning and other fields. In this coding course, you will acquire skills in writing and executing Python codes to create variables, generate outputs, apply various operators, and manipulate different types of data, use conditions and iterations to create your custom functions, and import and utilize external packages including NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, and Seaborn.

• Modeling Risk With The Monte Carlo Simulation: The course will teach you how to quantify and model uncertainty using this technique and simulate scenarios that include multiple uncertainties at the same time.

• Machine Learning: The course is to predict which customers are likely to default on their loans. Once the model classifies each loan, you will learn to visualize your predictions to see how well the model performed.

• The Professional Ethics Course: The course aims to prepare you for what to do when you are faced with ethical dilemmas throughout your career. You will gain an understanding of the key elements of business ethics, and what contributes to a strong ethical culture within the organization.

b) Prep Courses (Module 2):

The preparation courses are optional and consist of Introduction to Business Intelligence, Data Science Fundamentals, and Statistics Fundamentals.

Personally speaking, I did not complete the preparation courses since I already have the knowledge and background of business intelligence and data science.

I would recommend graduates or professionals who don’t have a data analytics background complete the preparation courses before starting with the core courses to understand the overview of the business intelligence and data science field.

c) Elective Courses:

You must complete a mimum of 3 of the elective courses. They include of Excel VBA for finance, Bayesian Thinking and Advanced Power BI.

• The Excel VBA For finance: VBA is a great tool to automate repetitive tasks on Excel and is also able to streamline long complex calculations. The course uses a case study of a multinational company to create a custom function and explore various useful topics and concepts in VBA.

• The Bayesian Thinking Course: It is the best guess approach based on the information available. through conditional probability and Bayes Theorem. These concepts will form a foundation to help you understand two basic Machine-Learning examples introduced in the course.

d) Guided Case Studies & Presentations:

• Financial Statements in Power BI Case Study: In this case study, you will practice your BI skills by taking on the role of a Business Intelligence developer.

Below shown is an example of what can be done using Power Bi.

Note: This is for information purposes only to make CFI BIDA Review more clear.

You will be helping a retail company automate and visualize its most important financial statements. Thus, this course is the perfect scenario-based case study to reinforce your fundamental knowledge of Power BI.

• Trading Dashboard in Tableau Case Study Overview: In this case study, you’ll take on the role of a Business Intelligence Analyst in an investment bank.

Below given is an example taken from CFI. It is CFI Capital Partner’s Trading Dashboard. You can read the full CFI Review for better understanding.

Note, this is for information purposes only to make CFI BIDA Review more clear.

You will become proficient in developing and creating candlestick charts, Bollinger bands, market cap treemaps, growth plots, and more.

In the next topic of this CFI BIDA Review, we will talk about the opportunities after the course.

BIDA Cost: Self Immersion Vs Full Immersion?

I am inclined to think that the pricing is very affordable for the kind of quality I got. There are two payment options: The Self-Study and the Full Immersion. Both subscriptions give access to the entire CFI course catalog.

The Self-study costs $497, while the Full Immersion costs $847. Students who subscribe to either of them get the exact same quality of lectures and equal access to the final exam.

The difference between the self-study vs the full immersion subscription is the access to many different professional tools for financial analysis, premium email support, additional case studies, and more.

I registered in the self-study immersion and used a 10% discount promo code.

I recommend people who don’t have a finance and data science background to use the full immersion bundle which is more suitable and can ease their journey by having premium email support, reviews, and feedback from CFI’s instructors.

What About Offers & Discounts?

10% Off – All Access Subscription – Code: OCGRAD10

Impact of BIDA On My Career?

After hard and long nights of studying to earn my certification, I am now able to save hours by automating data transformation, creating data models and combining big data to create world-class visuals and dashboards.

It has been a great experience where I have been able to enhance my data modeling knowledge and develop my coding skills. CFI’s certification helped me a lot especially in my current work by taking my data analytics and data visualization skills to the next level.

Today, I interpret data and market trends for managerial action and strategy. I develop and implement databases, data analytics, and other strategies that optimize statistical efficiency and quality. I clean raw data to avoid errors, duplicates, and any misinterpretations in reports.

Moreover, I establish weekly budgeting, forecasting, ratio analysis, profit and loss reports on business performance and deliver them to the team.

Lastly, I work with the management to prioritize business needs and I built a Tableau dashboard to visualize reports saving hours per week of manual reporting work.

I hope this CFI BIDA review is helping you in all possible ways.

How Can You Get A Job After BIDA?

After completing the BIDA certification I suggest that you start by building a robust data analytics portfolio to showcase your skills and publish them on platforms such as LinkedIn and Tableau Public so you get exposed to many recruiters searching for the convenient data analyst for the job.

Moreover, you should focus more on practical work by showing recruiters how well you can deal with big data and stressing the importance of business intelligence in every industry. Nowadays, data analyst is the first ranked in the top jobs with increasing demand in all industries.

Thoughts On CFI’S BIDA Certification

Business Intelligence & Data Analyst (BIDA) Certification is still a new program that was launched in 2021. However, CFI is a very well-known and recognized institute especially the FMVA certification which is now considered in the list of the top 5 finance certifications such as CFA CPA, and FRM.

I think BIDA in the future will be also one of the top online certifications recognized worldwide in the data analytics and business intelligence field.

BIDA’s instructors work hard to deliver the message simply and clearly and never fail to keep students motivated by always engaging them in interactive course exercises and qualified assessments.

My Thoughts On The Course Timeline:

I enrolled in the BIDA certification on August 25, 2021, and finished it on October 26, 2021. I dedicated 4-5 hours daily after work to be able to finish it in just 2 months.

I think the average completion time for the BIDA certification is between 2 and 5 months depending on the time you allocate daily to finish the courses. I would highly recommend repeating all case studies and working on large datasets that you find online other than those provided by CFI.

Before going to the conclusion of the CFI BIDA review, I will share some pros and cons as per my experience.

What Did I Like?

The interactivity of video lectures is amazing which keeps students motivated as if they were in a real university class.

Also, CFI delivers a robust and rich curriculum for students by providing them with stunning PowerPoint files that contain all the necessary information needed.

CFI is flexible because you can complete any program certification at your own pace without being stressed by time. CFI is credible, relevant and is highly recognized as one of the top finance institutes due to the rich curriculum it offers for its students. Furthermore, once you register for any of the CFI’s certification programs, you become their student for life.

The instructors are experts, outstanding, and play the bigger role in the program to explain all lectures in a structured and comprehensible method. CFI’s commitment to quality and industry relevance remains always constant.

The BIDA is taught by several industry experts like Tim Vipond, Joseph Yeates, Pavel Nacev, Lester Leong, Andrew Russel, and Sebastien Taylor who is the leader of the program.

CFI’s alumni have the edge over other finance graduates by finding jobs with high salaries at top companies in different industries such as Salesforce, Blackrock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and many more.

What I Disliked?

The qualified assessments can be passed by someone with poor financial knowledge because multiple retakes are allowed.

I suggest that CFI should limit the retakes allowed and increase the passing grade of the courses from 80/100 to 90/100 including a specific time for each exam.

Therefore, CFI will make it more challenging for students to pass the exams.

Final Verdict: Is BIDA Worth It?

To conclude this CFI BIDA review I would recommend the BIDA certification for all graduates and professionals who want to sharpen their skills in data analytics.

My journey with CFI was astonishing, and I have acquired a lot of new skills which are essential for anyone who wants to pursue their career as a data analyst.

Upon completing the certification, you will be able to save hours by automating data transformation, combining data to create world-class visuals and dashboards, applying models to financial datasets, and interpreting all data models.

CFI’s courses focus mainly on acquiring practical knowledge more than theoretical knowledge to equip graduates and professionals with the necessary skills needed to advance in their future careers.

Author – Kevin Baroud I am currently working as a Data Analyst at the Middle East Communications Network. I have advanced skills and passion in financial modeling, financial risk management strategic business management, and data analytics. – My Linkedin

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Also, read our other articles CFI FMVA Review and CFI Vs Wall Prep

Hope you find this CFI BIDA Review Helpful!