In today’s competitive market space, businesses looking to achieve desired success are required to take advantage of every tool and resource within their reach.
They also need to constantly work on organizing discussions between the business users to understand their business requirements for change and then communicate the same to the IT staff so they can work on fulfilling the expectations of various stakeholders.
This is where business analysts come in!
Business analysis is essentially a combination of deriving deeper insights from data using specific techniques and performing different tasks to identify the needs of a business, followed by recommending necessary changes and offering solutions that generate value for the stakeholders.
This blog aims to explore business analyst skills, business analyst job descriptions, and why your organization needs a business analyst.
Who is a Business Analyst?
A business analyst (BA) is a person who narrows down the gap that exists between information technology (IT) and the business by using data analytics to assess different processes and make data-driven recommendations to executives and various other stakeholders.
Involved in various problem-solving techniques, BAs employ a range of statistical and interpersonal skills such as SQL and visualization tools such as Tableau, Excel, and R in a business setting.
Why Does Your Business Need a Business Analyst?
Some of the top reasons why your business needs a business analyst services are:
A. Performing Feasibility Studies
BAs can be instrumental in conducting feasibility studies for an organization. A feasibility study is primarily a process of determining whether the potential idea of a project/system is feasible or not.
For instance, by performing a feasibility study, BAs ensure that a project is technically/legally/economically feasible. With this study, BAs also aim to systematically and objectively assess as well as identify both the strengths and weaknesses of an existing business or proposed idea.
By conducting feasibility studies, business analysts also ensure that your organization gets the benefit of:
- Identifying new opportunities
- Improving project teams’ focus
- Narrowing down the business alternatives
- Offering valuable information for a go/no-go project decision
- Identifying a genuine reason to undertake the project
- Enabling decision-making on the project
- Enhancing the success rate by evaluating multiple parameters
B. Performing Risk Assessments and Preparing a Mitigation Plan
Risk assessment is one area that businesses use to spot areas of uncertainty that could affect value. The process of risk assessment helps in the analysis of those uncertainties along with developing and managing the associated risks.
One of the key focus areas of business analysts’ job description when working for an organization is to understand such risks associated with a project, assess them, and properly manage them by preparing a mitigation plan to help support project success.
If BAs find that adequate controls have not been put in place, they create plans for mitigating, avoiding, or modifying these risks.
Besides, business analysts also ensure that risk management is performed regularly and throughout the project’s lifecycle. To ensure this, they work in collaboration with various stakeholders to help identify new risks and constantly monitor identified risks.
C. Identifying and Defining New Business Opportunities
Identifying business needs and defining new business opportunities is another critical business analyst skill that can do wonders for your organization. The several ways they do this are:
- Conducting market research or identifying new business opportunities brought about by the actions of a vendor/competitor
- Deriving the opportunity from a strategic goal or initiative of the organization
- Identifying a requirement or an opportunity from a complaint made by a business user about an existing system issue and/or performing a subsequent root cause analysis
- Deriving an opportunity from an enterprise analysis activity such as SWOT Analysis, Capability Gap Analysis, or Product Feasibility Analysis
D. Writing a Detailed Business Case
Business analysts’ job also involves writing a detailed business case for your organization. It primarily outlines an opportunity as well as a recommendation to invest the business resources and how to take advantage of it.
Put simply, the business case written by a BA acts as a marketing or sales brochure for the business/project idea. The primary purpose of a detailed business case is to sell a viable solution for an identified/defined business problem or new product to the company.
Some of the ways writing a business case can help your organization include:
- Offering insights into the viability of your project, solution, or idea
- Prioritizing projects
- Supporting a feasibility study
E. Act as a Communication Bridge Between Different Stakeholders
A business analyst serves as the communication bridge between the various stakeholders involved, including the business users and the technical IT people.
Apart from contributing significantly to the success of IT projects in your organization, there are several other benefits of having a dedicated business analyst, as they:
- Prepare detailed reports on project scoping, planning as well as management in terms of both costs and schedule
- Deliver a clear scope of a project from a business perspective
- Elicit the real business requirements of users and effectively manage the expectations
- Improve the overall quality of design for the proposed IT system in a way that meets the user requirements
F. Strategizing
BAs in an organization are also responsible for strategizing and creating new models that support key business decisions. They achieve this by collaborating and working closely with different teams, including financial reporting and IT teams, to establish a range of initiatives and strategies aimed at improving processes and optimizing costs.
To be able to achieve this, BAs display a strong understanding of both regulatory and reporting requirements along with an experience in areas such as budgeting, forecasting, and financial analysis, coupled with an understanding of key performance indicators.
To Conclude
From an organizational perspective, the business analyst job description is constantly evolving. This is mainly because an increasing number of companies today rely on data to assess and advise their business operations.
However, it is important to remember that every organization might have different issues that business analyst services can address, and you need to hire them to resolve your business’ specific use cases. This could include anything from managing broken processes/outdated business cases, performing feasibility studies, strategizing, or working on improving customer satisfaction.
Whether you’re running a small business/startup or are an aspiring entrepreneur looking for business analysis services, Hurix Digital helps you convert your raw ideas into excellent user stories and makes it easier for you to achieve your business goals. To learn more about our business analyst services, write to us at marketing@hurix.com .
