Business analyst

A business analyst (BA) is a person who analyzes an organization or business domain (real or hypothetical) and documents its business, processes, or systems, assessing the business model or its integration with technology. Business Analyst helps in guiding businesses in improving processes, products, services, and software through data analysis.[1]

Business administration
Management of a business
Accounting
Business entities
Corporate governance
Corporate law
Corporate title
Economics
Finance
Types of management
Organization
Trade
  •  Business and economics portal

The role of a systems analyst can also be defined as a bridge between the business problems and the technology solutions. Here business problems can be anything about business systems for example the model, process, or method. The technology solutions can be the use of technology architecture, tools, or software applications. System analysts are required to analyze, transform, and ultimately resolve business problems with the help of technology.

Areas of business analysis

There are at least four types of business analysis:

  1. Business developer – to identify the organization's business needs and business' opportunities
  2. Business model analysis – to define the organization's policies and market approaches
  3. Process design – to standardize the organization’s workflows
  4. Systems analysis – the interpretation of business rules and requirements for technical systems (generally within IT)

The business analyst, sometimes, is someone who is a part of the business operation and works with Information Technology to improve the quality of the services being delivered, sometimes assisting in Integration and Testing of new solutions. Business Analysts act as a liaison between management and technical developers.[2]

The BA may also support the development of training material, participates in the implementation, and provides post-implementation support. This may involve the development of project plans, dataflow diagrams, and flowcharts:

  1. To-be processes, e.g. dataflow diagrams, flowcharts
  2. Data models, i.e. data requirements expressed as a documented data model of some sort
  3. Business case, a financial analysis containing shareholders risk and return
  4. Roadmap, a strategic plan

The BA records requirements in some form of requirements management tool, whether a simple spreadsheet or a complex application. Within the systems development life cycle, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of IT services.

Industries

BAs work in different industries such as finance, banking, insurance, telecoms, utilities, software services, government and so on. Due to working on projects at a fairly high level of abstraction, BAs can switch between industries.

The business domain subject areas BAs may work in include workflow, billing, mediation, provisioning, reporting and customer relationship management. The telecom industry has mapped these functional areas in their Telecommunications Operational Map (eTOM) model, Banking in the Information Framework (IFW) and Emergency agencies in the Prevention Preparation Response and Recovery model (PPRR).

Finally, business analysts do not have a predefined and fixed role, as they can take part in operations scaling, sales planning, strategy devising, developmental process or be part of an Agile software development product team.

This occupation (Business Analyst) is almost equally distributed between male workers and female workers, which means, although it belongs to an IT industry, the entrance to this job is open equally both for men and women. Also, research found that the annual salary for BA tops in Australia, and is reported that India has the lowest compensation.[3]

See also

References
  1. Mary K. Pratt and Sarah K. White,"What is a business analyst? A key role for business-IT efficiency", cio.com, April 17, 2019.
  2. "How to Become a Business Analyst | Business Analyst Salary". Master's in Data Science. Retrieved 2018-09-06.
  3. Schreiner, K. (November 2007). "The Bridge and Beyond: Business Analysis Extends Its Role and Reach". IT Professional. 9 (6): 50–54. doi:10.1109/mitp.2007.122. ISSN 1520-9202. S2CID 206469274.
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