What is a business analyst?
Definition: A business analyst analyzes business processes companies use to improve their efficiency and make better decisions.
They act as a bridge between the company's technical and business parts, taking in every detail of both sides and recommending actions they should take.
What does a business analyst do?
A business analyst job description looks like this:
- Analyzing current and past states of the business.
- Creating strategies for pursuing new business opportunities.
- Gathering data about business issues.
- Performing financial analysis for new business ideas.
- Making data-driven predictions about the business’s future.
- Visualizing data using charts and tables.
- Evaluating the different aspects of a business and their changes.
- Reporting to business stakeholders.
- Planning the structure of a business.
- Analysing every department's processes.
- Making suggestions on how to improve current processes.
Key skills for a business analyst
To excel in this role, they must possess a combination of interpersonal and logical skills:
- Analytical thinking as they are working with different types of data and need to come to spot patterns in them.
- Problem-solving, as most of their work is solving business problems, coming up with solutions using data, and approximating the best course of action.
- Decision-making backed by concrete data because their decisions directly impact the business’s future.
- Communication with different departments and on different levels about finance, growth, metrics, and the future of the business.
- Attention to detail, as small inaccuracies can impact their analysis and decisions.
- Deep understanding of every function in the company ensuring that they take in every relevant factor when analyzing the business state.
- Technical skills using data analysis software and tools.
- Financial literature, as most of the data they are using is converted into money, and one of their jobs is advising the creation of budgets.
- Report writing as they need to present their findings to stakeholders in a way they will understand.