The place of a Business Analyst in a company, especially, IT-based companies, cannot be overstated. As the world gravitates towards getting things done over the internet, customers’ behavior can be closely followed and documented. Having a proper analysis of customer behavior holds inestimable secrets that can help guide business owners on the best decisions the company can make to increase revenue.
Speaking succinctly, a Business analyst is responsible for bridging the gap between IT and business by using data analytics to evaluate processes, define requirements, and provide data-driven recommendations and reports for executives and stakeholders. In addition, a business analyst helps companies improve processes, products, services, and software through data analysis. This group of agile people sits to fill the gap between IT and the company and improve IT efficiency.
In this article, we will discuss the key role a business analyst plays in an IT-powered organization and the necessary skills you need to learn. Let’s get on with it.
Meanwhile, you can become a Business Analyst by enrolling in a project-based online BA training.
What are the Roles of a Business Analysts in an IT Firm?
Primarily, a business analyst helps to understand how processes, products, services, software, and hardware data can improve performance and add value.
- By analyzing historical data, you must express these ideas and actions that are best suitable for stakeholders to make at a given time. While at it, you must ensure that the ideas are feasible and financially applicable, and functionally appropriate.
- Depending on the specific role, a business analyst can use insights from data to improve existing products, equipment, software, services, or processes. You can also prioritize technical and functional activities that the business must do. As a business analyst, you should not be afraid to suggest decisions you believe is backed by statistical data.
- Business analysts are responsible for developing new models that support business decisions by working closely with IT and financial reporting teams to develop initiatives and strategies to improve, import, and optimize costs. According to Robert Half Technology, you need “a strong understanding of regulatory and reporting requirements as well as extensive experience in forecasting, budgeting, and financial analysis, combined with an understanding of key performance indicators”.
It is important to note here that the role of a business analyst is constantly evolving and changing, especially as companies rely more heavily on data to advise their business operations. Because technology is not static, data also changes. As an example, there were was nothing about Tiktok. Now, however, data/insight from Tiktok can be enough for a Business Analyst at a digital marketing company.
Also, each company has different problems that a business analyst can address and solve. Whether it is outdated legacy systems, changing technologies, faulty processes, poor customer or customer satisfaction, or large isolated organizations. The business analyst role can vary depending on the purview and niche of your organization.
Despite the variations in the responsibilities of business analysts, however, a business analyst is typically saddled with the following responsibilities;
- Creating detailed business analysis
- Observing business problems
- Opportunities, and solutions
- Budgeting and Forecasting
- Planning and Monitoring business.
- Growth gap analysis
- Pricing
- Reporting
- Definition business requirements and report to stakeholders
- Identifying and prioritizing technical and functional requirements is at the top of the list of business analyst responsibilities.
What Skills are necessary to Learn as a Business Analyst?
The position of business analyst requires both hard and soft skills. Speaking of hard skills, you need to know how to extract, analyze and report data trends as a Business Analyst. This would require skills such as:
- Data analysis
- Data visualization
- Survey taking
- Stakeholder analysis
- A solid understanding of the business
- Engineering cost-benefit analysis
- Process modeling Network
- Database management, and other technologies.
But it does not end there. You also must have some important soft skills. For example, you must be good at sharing sharing technical information with others in a unambiguous manner. Furthermore, you should help them understand how this can apply it on the business side.
Some other soft skills required of a Business Analyst include:
- Verbal and written communication skills
- Interpersonal skills
- Consulting skills
- Animation skills
- Analytical thinking and problem solving
- Achieve a high level of accuracy with attention to detail
- Organizational strength
You can learn this skills by joining a reputable online BA certification course.
Wrapping up
In this article, you have seen how critical a Business Analyst is. In an IT firm especially, a Business Analyst help to track the footprint of end users, perform calculated analysis, and come up with decisions that would better the revenue of the business. A Business Analyst might have diverging tasks depending on the company they are working for. However, some responsibilities are common to all. Those responsibilities have been talked about. It is critical to point out that in the IT-powered world, the demand for Business Analysts would only increase as they are become the bedrock for intentional business growth and development.
