What is business Analysis?
You might have come across terms like business analysis and business analyst and if you are wondering what exactly business analysis is or what the heck is business analyst, then continue reading. Business analysis or business analyst are commonly used terms in information technology (IT) and other modern business sectors. Business analysis is the field and business analyst is the performing the analysis.
What is business analysis?
Business analysis is a research oriented stream which involves looking into the current working conditions, challenges, gaps and finding out solutions to fulfill them.
Exact nature of business analysis may vary from industry to industry but the overall, objective remains same, that is, enhancing the quality of processes, products and overall business.
Business analysis is targeted towards identifying pain areas and business opportunities. Business analysis may involve finding out products or processes to improve an existing process or product OR opportunities for new product in a given market segment.
For example few years back when global economy was going through a slump, an auto manufacturer who expected a slowdown in sales, created a team for business analysis. This team researched what kind of products will help company in improving its sales. They identified the customer segment, price range and type of products which could work along with a strategy. Finally this company launched many new products in that price segment targeting customers and even in an economic downturn, it reported positive figures.
Similarly many companies do business analysis to find out the ways to reduce their operating cost while improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. Banks, insurance companies and investment houses use IT companies to figure out the means of improving their processes using IT products & services which can enhance the level of customer satisfaction while reducing their operating costs.
In IT section, business analysis revolve around IT application, their usage, modernization and improving the overall IT architecture of the company.
So business analysis is a complex field which requires a strategic approach to figure out the problem and propose solution to fix it.
With the time, business analysis has evolved and now you will find newer ways of doing analysis, development and related activities. In IT industry, traditional software development method (waterfall) is gradually being replaced by newer agile methodology.
Agile software development methods are getting more & more popular in current world and their usage have gone up significantly in recent years. It has contributed in further evolution of BA processes and the role of a BA.
Who the heck is Business Analyst?
By now, you have a broad idea about business analysis. Business analyst is the person who performs business analysis. In this post we are going to address IT Business Analyst who is also referred as System Analyst.
As mentioned earlier, business analysis may vary from industry to industry therefore nature of job done by business analyst may also vary. For example a business analyst in an auto or retail sector may be involved in identifying business opportunities which does not involve testing any software so they won’t be involved in creating test plan or related document whereas a IT BA would be doing that. Business analysis in non-IT sectors is more like data mining and job is geared towards using data to enhance business which may or may not include software development.
A business analyst in IT is responsible for requirement elicitation, requirement tracking, creating documents for requirements, solution and various phases of development like testing etc.
Business Analyst Documents include business requirement document, detail design document and Business Analyst Tasks or duties primarily include interacting with all the stakeholder and acts as a driver/liasion for meeting, walk-through and coming up with solution.
If you have a question related to business analysis or business analyst, feel free to leave your comments. If you found it useful, don’t forget to share it.
About akhilendra
Hey,
It has become important for us to also to be a analyst instead of hiring someone because in todays competitive world we need to be updated with business condition as well as personal so that rating of us should not be going down.Becaus if we have kept our eye on the gaps, margins, opportunities etc. so being a decision authoirty plans can be implemented on time.
Regards,
Business analysis is about making sense of the data. Because of the complex IT infrastructure of the business, mush data are stored for safekeeping or future use. Business analyst wade through the data to understand the business better by detecting trends and predicting possible outcomes.
Thanks for sharing this detailed info about business analysis and analyst. It is a very interesting field and can get you good money. My brother has worked as a business analyst for 3-4 years and I have a fair bit of idea about it.
Yes akhilendra, a business analyst job is to analyze the business & improve its overall productivity. Your article is excellent & it clearly explains the role of business analyst.
The following section focuses on the IT sector perspective around business analysis, where much of the deliverables are around requirements. The BA records requirements in some form of requirements management tool , whether a simple spreadsheet or a complex application.