The Key Responsibilities of a Business Analyst

Business analytics is one of the most misinterpreted disciplines you will find at present. A lot of us are constantly confusing it with business intelligence, data science, data analytics, and what not! There is a sheer lack of definitive information regarding the primary roles and responsibilities of a business analytics professional. We will try to establish the responsibilities that befall the business analysts in today’s time and age.

1. Hunting for problems

As a business analyst your job is to find a lacuna where everyone else sees a harmony. Alright, I shall turn the poetic quotient down and explain. Suppose you are working for a publishing house where there are two photocopy machines. You notice that 13 people use those machines per day on an average. You watch some security camera footage and do some math to arrive at a conclusion that 40 work hours are wasted around that machine. That is the number of productive hours per week for an average employee. You see an opportunity there, a gap, a loss.

2. Conveying the problem to the executives

It does not mean that you go straight to the CEO and tell her on the face that she has been paying the weekly wages of an employee to the photocopy machine every month. That would not make any sense. Your responsibility is to build a proper report of the case and express your desire to look further into the matter through a presentation that makes the CEO think. Yes, top notch communication skills are an asset which a BA cannot do without.

3. Procure and analyze data

Make a plan on what sort of data could help you tackle the problem at hand. In case of our photocopy machine dilemma, you can look into the kind of documents that are being photocopied. You may choose to look at other options that can replace the machines. You can look into the value added by those documents. Your plan of procuring data and the data which you do procure both determine the quality of analysis which you will achieve.

4. Visualize the data

The stakeholders have spent their time and money and now they want to see what you have done. So, it is the responsibility of the business analyst to create a visualization that moves the stakeholders to action. Your job is to use the data to find a probable solution which may or may not work. However, your visualization should be convincing enough to make the CEO lose some money willingly even if your great plan does not work.

The skill set

From the series of tasks we have already talked about you should have gotten an idea that a business analyst counts on both technical skills and soft skills to succeed. Let us talk about the tools first.

Spread sheets

It could be MS Excel or something else, but you really need to know your way around a spreadsheet tool. Excel has a bunch of advanced functions which are worth spending some time on.

Visualization tools

Story telling acquires a very important place when it comes to appealing to the executives. Your visualizations need to have an edge. Tableau comes highly recommended.

Query language

You can go with SQL or NoSQL. Learning a standard query language goes a long way in terms of making you self sufficient as a business analyst.

Programming language

You never know what your dream job may ask you to do. It can require you to design a simple predictive model to run some data on. You will need a programming language in that case. Go, with Python, if you are looking for suggestions.

The soft skills hold just as much importance in an analyst’s professional life.

Effective communication

It is essential that you communicate with efficiency, preparedness, and conviction. It is a good idea to keep a notepad handy while speaking with a stakeholder. Whether or not your firm gets the contract often hangs on the balance with your communication skills as its only bet. So, do not let yourself down.

Networking skills

This is kind of an extension of the previous one. However, this has to start when you are enrolled for a course and have a group of peers. Affordable Business analytics course in Delhi will help you acquire more contacts than hours spent on the social media.

Tireless focus on details

We have already talked about problem hunting. This along with brain storming for solutions demands a great amount of focus on details.

So, if you feel you are up to the task, then it is a good time to get started.