“The Road to Success Is Always Under Construction”
Lily Tomlin
A business can grow continuously by analyzing the market & consumer needs and investing in a strategic plan to provide products that the end user wants.
But who exactly does that? Yes, that’s the role of a business analyst. But that is not all. Let’s dive deep into the role of business analyst. Before getting there, let’s understand what Business Analysis is.
Business Analysis:
Business analysis is the process of understanding the needs of the business – it can be an innovation or consumer complaints or other market evolution, and strategically formulating a solution for that business problem. Business analysis has become an essential wing for the development of any business. There may be lots of data that has to be researched, analyzed to understand, and forecast the business needs.
Who is a Business Analyst?
In very simple terms, people who carry out business analysis are known as business analysts. Business analyst deals with large amounts of data and forms the business connection. The data can be old records of the company or competitors, they can be customer records, feedbacks or sales and finance data. Business analysts work on these data and provide useful insights and help businesses to increase their performance.
What does a Business Analyst do?
The job role may differ a little bit from company to company. But in general, these are some of the things business analysts will do
- Requirement Gathering: First step would be requirement gathering. Getting all the relevant data that needs to be evaluated.
- Drafting Problems: Need to create a detailed business analysis and draft the possible problems, opportunities that can be worked upon in the business
- Reporting: Business analysts must then report their findings and business requirements to the business stakeholders like project managers.
- Then possible solutions for the above business problem should be worked upon.
- Budgeting and forecasting: Business analysts need to predict the costs that would be incurred upon and forecast what may go wrong.
- Planning and monitoring & finally reporting the result.
Skills Required for a Business Analyst:
Following are the skills that business analysts need:
- Technical skills: Knowledge of IT concepts like software lifecycle, data modelling concepts
- Analytical skills: In Order to analyse large volumes of data and derive the forecast, strong analytical skills are needed.
- Communication: Business analysts should have strong communication skills to report to stakeholders.
- Problem-solving: Providing solutions to the business problems is one of the responsibilities of business analysts.
- Research skills: To work with large volumes of data and to relate the data to provide useful insight that helps to reach business goals, researching skills are needed.
Educational requirements of Business Analysts:
Business analysts job requirements may vary from company to company. Though business analysts need not have a degree with technical background, knowledge of IT concepts are necessary.
Bachelor’s degree in business, accounting and finance or related fields is preferred for business analysts. Knowledge in IT terminology and software systems are desired but not mandatory.
Common techniques used by business analysts
Some of the common techniques used by Business analysts to analyze business processes provide efficient solutions to obtain desirable business results are as follows.
- Brainstorming: Brainstorming is a common technique used to communicate within the team and come up with new ideas and strategies.
- SWOT Analysis: Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threat Analysis. This is mainly done with the company’s historic data as well as competitors’ data to come up with possible pitfalls and new opportunities for the business.
- MOST Analysis: Mission, Objective, Strategy, Tactics Analysis is a very useful tool to plan and organise the details of the project.
- Mindmapping: Mind Mapping is a graphical way to combine different data to strategize, analyze, comprehend and generate new ideas.
- PESTLE analysis: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental analysis helps in identifying the external factors that impact the business.
Career progression Of Business Analyst:
Career progression of Business Analyst is as follows: IT business analyst, Data Analyst, Senior Analyst, Project Manager.
Business Analysts Career Path:
Once you have gained a few years of experience as business analysts there are five potential career paths you can take to reach the next level.
IT Business Analyst:
If you have deeper knowledge and passion for technology, you can take the IT Business Analyst role. This role is a bridge between business and IT. Main role of an IT business analyst would be to improve the quality of IT services by analysing the business needs. IT Business analysts may work on multiple projects at the same time.
Information Security Analyst:
Information security analysts also require strong IT knowledge. Main responsibility would be to interpret security data and monitor IT systems to prevent any cybercrimes or security threats for the company.
Quantitative Analysts:
Crunching the numbers is what you like, then quantitative analysts is the way to go. Creating mathematical models to back financial decisions like risk management based on the analysis will be the main responsibility of quantitative analysts.
Data Scientist:
This is a very challenging yet very rewarding job role. There is a huge demand for data scientists. Data scientists will interpret the data into useful insights by applying statistics and machine learning.
Management Analyst:
Management analysts’ job role is to find ways on improving the business, reduce costs and increase revenue.
Average Salary of Business Analysts in India:
In India the average salary of business analysts range somewhere between 3.5 LPA for freshers and 12 LPA for experienced professionals. Average salary of business analysts is 6LPA.
In the USA, the average salary of business analysts range somewhere between $43.4K for entry level and $127.8K for experienced professionals. Average salary of business analysts is $74,511 per year.
Business Analyst is one of the best career paths one may take. Starting as a Business analyst, It has lots of opportunities and potential to reach ambitious career levels. You want to become a Business Analyst and don’t know where to start? We have it covered for you. Connect with us and get enrolled in our Beginner Business Analyst program now!