Business Analysis has become a buzzword of sorts recently. Many professionals from different backgrounds and domains are transitioning to this career path for better opportunities and pay. So, without further adieu, let’s jump straight to the topic. The first question that comes to a beginner’s mind is, “What exactly is a Business Analyst?” Business Analysts gather data sets of an organization or business, collate and organize them to extract insights to support the decision-making process and fuel business growth.
Business Analysts form a crucial part of a business. They are hired by the management to oversee the transition or growth of a company either by introducing new methods or by eliminating inefficiencies. If you’re passionate about starting a career in Business Analysis, check out this Business Analyst Training Course. Business Analysts perform different roles within a company. There are many effects of Business Analysts’ work that ripples throughout the organization. It may be financial, organizational structure, cutting costs, improvising methods and techniques, achieving faster results, etc. Let’s understand the top skills required by Business Analysts and discuss their responsibilities.
Business Analyst top skills:
We have discussed the role of a Business Analyst in an organization. It’s now time to discuss the top-rated skills of a Business Analyst that will help them start a notable career.
Comprehend Business Objectives:
A Business Analyst must comprehend the business objectives. They must understand the business requirements, recognize real problems, possess domain knowledge, etc. Understanding business objectives is by far the best skill that will help you lead your career as a Business Analyst.
Analytical and Critical Thinking:
This skill is very underrated in most professions. Thinking analytically and critically creates clarity. Businesses need clarity in their decisions, and the best way would be to gather insights from the data they collect. Business Analysts must analyze and translate a customer or client’s requirements. They have to convert the crude requirements into simple actionable steps that need to be achieved.
Critical Thinking skills help Business Analysts to boil down to the matter and identify or uncover the solution after assessing multiple options to fuel business growth. Skills like these allow them to focus on priority problems. Good analytical and critical thinking skills will help Business Analysts remain focused on their set goals and achieve them despite any limitations or lack of resources.
Communication and Interpersonal skills:
Communication and Interpersonal skills are overlooked skills in some of the professions. Business Analysts must possess good communication and interpersonal skills. Every qualified and successful Business Analyst will have one skill in common; an impeccable skill in understanding a conversation and delivering their messages in a clear, concise manner that is very easy to understand.
Business Analysts must interact, understand requirements, and deliver insights clearly between clients and stakeholders. They must be skilled in communication via verbal and written methods.
Technical Skills:
Speaking of technical skills, Business Analysts require a good grip technically to perform their responsibilities. I will outline these below:
- Mastering R or Python is very beneficial. Learning libraries and packages of Python or R will help different purposes like data manipulation, data visualization, data wrangling, and analytics.
- Learning statistical software like SAS and SPSS will help.
- Report and Dashboard creation skills using BI and Data Visualization tools like Power BI and Tableau.
- Database and SQL is other essential skill that every Business Analyst must possess. MySQL Database, Microsoft SQL Server, NoSQL databases.
- Learning Microsoft Excel will always help while performing your responsibilities.
- Business Analysts must be proficient in Documenting and presenting the ideas clearly by paying attention-to-the details.
Business Analysts Responsibilities:
Every Business Analyst must perform various responsibilities within an organization. I will list some of them down with a brief explanation to help future Business Analyst aspirants:
Understand what exactly business needs
Being a Business Analyst, you must understand critically what a stakeholder and a customer want. It’s also a top skill of a Business Analyst if they need to be successful in their career. The reason why it’s such a significant task is that Business Analysts are an interface between the management and clients.
Understanding the project and realities and setting goals
Business Analysts usually take the leadership position in a project, understand obstacles, resource limitedness, and the opportunities on the way, and how to maximize different parameters to achieve the set targets with the available team members. They will discuss with the management and provide timely updates about the project to help both the parties, management, and the team to be on the same page.
Decision-making, functional and non-functional
A Business Analyst’s quick, effective decision-making ability will prove to be pivotal in how a project progresses. Functional aspects of projects include all those steps that involve how the project functions and ways to achieve targets. Non-functional aspects revolve around how a project or business must run.
Conclusion:
Here in this blog, you took a closer look at Business Analysts, their roles and responsibilities, soft skills, technical skills.
