Everything you need to know about the Role of Business Analyst in an IT Company

As the global community faces a multitude of challenges every year where an already saturated and competitive market requires businesses to use every tool and resource that they can to succeed, a business can only hope to thrive when smart educated decisions are made through reliable information.

The recent COVID-19 is a prime example of how data-driven strategies can make a big difference in the success and failure of a business and loss in business value. 

To fulfil the needs of modern businesses and keep up with digital transformation the profession of business analysis value is growing rapidly and improving over time. If you enjoy working with data and crunching numbers and are passionate about information technology. As an IT Business Analyst, you can use these skills to solve big business problems.

What is business analysis and why we are discussing it here?

A business analyst’s role isn’t usually clear-cut, Wikipedia describes business analysis as a discipline that identifies business needs and determines solutions to business problems. These solutions can include process improvements, organizational changes, and strategic planning and policy development in supporting IT operations in a company.

As companies seek to grow and change consistently while meeting the needs of their customers and clients, business analysts are becoming increasingly popular. Organizations hire these individuals to assist them with solving problems, setting goals, add to business value and achieving desired results. 

To fully understand why business analysts are in demand, it’s essential to understand how they operate.

Business Analysts: Their importance in IT Industry?

Among the many roles and responsibilities of a business analyst, some involve software system development. IT, of course. Often, they communicate their findings and assist with processes, products, services, and software through data analysis with others throughout the business operations and company hierarchy. 

• Determining and ranking functional and technical requirements
• Analyzing big data sets using SQL and Excel to increase business analysis value
• Identify user trends by utilising real-time user data and analytics programmes.
• Putting together charts, tables, and other data visualisation elements
• Creating financial models to help with business decisions
• Understanding business values, strategies, goals, and requirements
• Enterprise architecture design (the structure of a business)
• Budgeting, forecasting, and financial analysis

What Tools Do Business Analysts Use and for what?

Business Analysts use a wide variety of analytics tools and software to perform user testing, make data-driven decisions, and steer projects. We will discuss some of the best BA tools and their uses in assisting business analysts below. 

1. Need Assessments and Management

   The expectations of and for a business must be clearly defined. By using Business Analysis tools, analysts can collaborate more effectively, collect and sort data, document business requirements, analyse use cases, manage workflows, and prototype creation. Since there’s a lot to deal with there. All aspects of their work are automated with these tools, keeping them organized and ensuring nothing is overlooked. 

2. Customer Relationships Management of (CRM)

   Monitoring clients’ onboarding and departures in the internet age is a job you can’t skip. Keeping customers happy is also a crucial job for an analyst. CRM software like Dynamics 365, facilitates the automation of these follow-ups, and interactions and, more significantly, records data that can give business analysts extremely beneficial insights into the thoughts of their clients. Also, to target profitability and enable the business’s value propositions to end customers, they differentiate and prioritize requirements.

3. Visualisation of data

   Business analysts perform a major task involving persuasion, and nothing is more persuasive than factual data presented through eye-catching, easy-to-read images. As heavily rely on business intelligence tools and advanced analytics. In data visualization, information is represented graphically, such as a pie chart, graph, or another type of visual depiction. As one of the best Business analysis tools among top analysts, Microsoft Power BI allows business analysts to visualize and share business insights using multiple data sources across the organization.

4. Tools for collaboration

   Every time a BA makes a change in requirements, it must add to the business value by communicating with the involved teams such as development and project management. However, collaboration can only be effective when communication is productive. Every business analyst needs to use some best-in-class tools to ensure effective collaboration for the achievement of business and project goals. To perform strategic, tactical, and operational continuous improvement projects.

5. Project Administration

   Business analysis typically focuses on single projects rather than ongoing initiatives and aims to reach its objectives within a specific period. But often they while managing business operations face situations a little and vice versa. Fortunately, project management tools are available to keep track of all these shifting pieces. Project management tools help business analysts manage and prioritize projects on the go. With tools like Dynamics 365 Project Operations, they can perform various tasks and track and manage multiple projects as well.  
   
   Including:
   • Use a work schedule and estimates to plan projects.
   • Calculate and monitor project costs and revenue.
   • During the sales process, use project estimates.
   • Estimate resource requirements for projects in the works.
   • Successfully deliver projects while tracking progress and cost consumption.

Career as a Business Analysts

1. A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or Information Technology, as well as an accredited qualification in Management Consultancy or a related field.
2. Proven track record of technical business analysis in a related industry.
3. Strong documentation skills for clearly capturing business requirements and preparing techno functional solutions, as well as experience with content writing.
4. Experience with the Agile / Scrum framework, user story creation, backlog management, sprint planning, and so on is required.
5. Knowledge of strategic planning, business analysis, market research, gap analysis, and wire framing.

Average Salary of Business Analyst in USA

According to Glassdoor, the average salary for business analysts in the United States in December 2021 is $77,218 – $89,727.

“Business Analysts salary range can also be vary depending on few important factors such as Qualifications, certifications, additional skills, and the number of years you have worked in your profession.”

Here we conclude