Every role has undergone some amount of evolution owing to the overall transformation of businesses over the last few years. The key drivers for businesses have changed. The inclination towards automated solutions and data driven decision making has brought a sea change to how problems are perceived and resolved. The business analyst plays a crucial role in helping companies herald this change.
Be it interacting with clients to understand their requirements, or working closely with the project development team to make sure that all the requirements are fulfilled, the business analyst is the go-to person for companies. Let us delve further into the role of a business analytics professional.
Requirement solicitation
Let us imagine a scenario where you are working as a business analyst for an application-development firm. A client reaches out to you with the requirement of an application for their business. He has an idea in his mind of how he wants the app to and you are supposed to understand that idea and convey it to the technical team in a comprehensible manner.
The business analyst is responsible for creating and maintaining a communicative platform between the client and the developers so as to ensure clarity of vision at every stage of development.
It is the business analyst’s job to drive efficiency and cost effectiveness in terms of delivery. And once the product is ready for deployment the BA should be able to demonstrate its effectiveness through visualizations.
Cost reduction
A business analytics certification reflects similar dexterity in analytics technology and business acumen. This makes a business analyst the best person to find ways of alleviating cost and bringing in larger sums in profit.
Business analysts are skilled in descriptive analytics – they can analyze enterprise data to find redundant expenditures and inefficient processes. These insights help a company to make strives for internal development towards profitability and efficiency.
In fact, a business analyst can save money for their clients by modifying their requirements for the best results.
Process enhancement
The analytical capabilities of a business analyst is put to test when a company needs ways of overcoming an obstacle in terms of cost or efficiency. With complete visibility of business data, an analyst can identify specific areas of a business that need improvement.
The BA professional can make suggestions for implementing automation or maybe upgrading software. There can be an issue related to siloed systems where the BA can suggest moving to a cloud based integrated platform for business management.
The business analytics professional has to make a business case for these changes where he or she can demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed change in terms revenue earned, cost reduced, or time saved.
Data visualization
With user friendly tools like Tableau in the picture, it may seem that data visualization is the easiest part of a business analyst’s job but in reality, it is not. That is primarily because of the high stakes and low tolerance for mistakes.
A business analyst is responsible for creating comprehensive visualization that captures the essence of particular movement through images, graphs, tables, etc. The visualizations play a pivotal part in gaining approval for an internal enhancement or closing a deal with a client.
The impact of a visualization depends on the BA’s presentation and communication skills along with his or her understanding of the data that lies underneath.
Data driven decision making
The roles of data analysts and business analysts overlap in many aspects. Especially if you think about the general skill sets of both. A business analyst needs firm knowledge of SQL to make queries. Some knowledge of statistics and grip over a programming language can instantly elevate the BA to a higher pedestal in the industry.
A business analytics who can perform predictive analytics to support data driven decision making becomes a coveted asset for any enterprise. Since the business analyst has, by definition, a solid understanding of the business domain, the additional analytics skills come as a huge bonus. This makes a business analytics professional effectively more valuable than a data analyst.
These two roles have converged at many points especially in startups. Hence, it is a good idea for enthusiasts looking for a business analytics certification to opt for a course that focuses on some analytics tools.
A skilled business analyst is capable of bringing great value to an enterprise and a lot of leaders and business owners have lately come to realize the massive upsides of having a business analyst on board.
