Firstly we’re going to get into the introduction to business analytics, then we’re going to discuss why it is a relevant field today, and then the average salary of a business analyst and then the career path of a Business Analyst we’re going to discuss all of this.
Introduction to Business Analytics:
So let us get into this, so what is business analytics? Let us understand that first before we get to what a business analyst is, business analytics refers to the skills technologies practices for continuous iterative research and investigation of past business performance. To gain insight and drive business planning so let us visualize what this means.
Your company has been operating for a while now, and you have generated some sales data and a lot of other data, so you have this past data available to you, right. A business analyst’s job is basically to derive insights from this past data to get graphs to get statistics. He has to determine the future business planning. He has to help the higher management decide what to do to gain more profits or achieve more customer satisfaction and pick your first business analytics tool, so tools are chosen with the following criteria.
Availability and Usage:
The tool should be accessible by everybody. It should be available easily to your organization depending on that tool’s licensing information or the price point. You must take everything into account before purchasing or subscribing to a device.
Easy to Learn and Use:
The tool should be easy to learn and use because many people uh get into business analytics from a non-technical background, so it should be easy to use and should require no prior technical knowledge.
Quality of Data Visualization:
The quality of data visualization is present in the tool, so whatever device you will pick for your business needs should have great data visualization utilities available to it then finally.
Cost and Ease of Setup:
The cost and ease of setup, so the cost of the tool should be below the maintenance charges of the tool, should below you should not need to have a team that is dedicated to maintaining that tool, so basically, all of these factors are taken into consideration before you select any of the business analytics tools.
What is The Need for Business Analytics:
The need for business analytics in today’s marketplace; so this is where things get interesting. You get some motivation to get into this profession to understand its background.
Trend:
So let us look at the trends for starters now. The term business analyst has gotten progressively relevant over the years, so if you go on google and type in business analyst jobs, business analyst salary and business analyst openings, and all of those things, you can see that there are a lot of results that are available because essentially this particular profession has blown up over the years as businesses are moving towards implementing technology into their day-to-day workings because that ultimately drives success.
And even if we look at the google trends data of this particular term the search term business analyst we can see that the trend has gone progressively higher as time has passed by since 2004.
How Does Business Analytics help Organizations:
Why is this happening? Why is the term business analyst more relevant today than it was before so? To understand, we need first to know how business analytics helps organizations.
So any organization which adopts business analytics achieves a massive competitive advantage over businesses that are not doing the same, so if you have enough data, enough sales data, or enough customer data as an organization to implement business analytics in your day-to-day working and if you’re not doing the same what will happen is other competitor organizations who are implementing business analytics will have the edge over you. They will take away your business or your customers, so it’s important to be with the times.
And the other major aspect is that with visualization tools more so higher management and non-technical members of your team can have a better understanding of how their strategies are working and how their sales have been going and where to implement newer things, and which plans would have the higher probability of working.
Identifies The Gaps:
so the first thing that a business analyst does for an organization is that he identifies the gaps that are available in the market and the shortcomings in the organization itself with the current directives and plans, so with the data that is available to the business analyst, he does all of this and once that has been done
Fixing Shortcomings:
The organization tries to fix all of these shortcomings first that are present within the organization, and the next thing is after the gaps have been identified and the new directives and plans have been made.
Informed Business Decision:
We can now make an informed business decision; once we have all of the relevant data available to us and all of the insights, we can then make an informed business decision, so this is why organizations need business analytics and their day-to-day work.
Better Product Development:
So all of that results in better product development, so once you know what the customers want, once you know where the gaps in the market lie, you can basically uh manufacture or create your products according to that.
Targeted Content:
Then targeted content so all of your marketing campaigns and whatnot could be targeted towards a particular consumer base, so you now know where to invest your marketing money.
Operational Efficiency:
So once you’ve identified the shortcomings in your organization, you can now understand where you can eliminate strategies and methodologies that are not working anymore or are not commercially viable and save your company time and money.
Increase in Sales :
and all of this increases sales obviously because once you’re developing a better product, once you’re targeting your development towards a consumer base that is more likely to buy it with your business analytics skills, you will see an increase in sales that is a given and
Customer Engagement and Satisfactions :
Secondly, you are also increasing your customer engagement and satisfaction. You’re retaining your customer base, but you’re simply just not doing that. You’re also growing it, and you’re also making them happy so that they remain your customers for a much longer amount of time.
Why Should You Choose Business Analytics as a Profession:
So why should you choose business analytics as a profession? Let us understand this with all of what I have said before it naturally is pointing towards the fact that organizations do require business analysts, so that means that in the current market space where businesses have adopted analytics for commercial superiority, there are two fundamental aspects in play and those two essential aspects are
- analysts are in demand
- when they are in demand
- Average Income
there is a job abundance, right so with that being said, let us look at the salary of a business analyst so we can see that in the united states, an average business analyst earns about 80 000 us dollars in India, a business analyst earns about 6.1 lakhs per annum, and in the UK it’s about 45 000 pounds
Learning Path of a Business Analyst:
so let us get into the learning path of a business analyst, so how to become a business analyst in the first place, so some core skills are required
so the first skill is documentation, so you should be able to create clear and concise documentation for your business cases so that it is understandable by higher management wherever you’re writing so there are formats for that there are tutorials available for this the point being that your writing skills should be impeccable and clear
Then there are analysis skills, so you should have sharp logical reasoning and analytical skills to use them to your benefit. So you have some data available to you you should be able to identify uh some peculiar aspects of that data should be able to identify trends in that data be able to derive insights from it, so all of those things are very important because after all it’s business analytics
And then you should have familiarity with business analysis tools, so on the surface level, you should have some understanding with basic programs like Excel and PowerPoint, but if you want to dwell into more complex technologies, there are also complex ba tools available for you and yeah so you should be able to understand this.
then you have data visualization, which is almost the most important part of business analytics because you need to be able to tell what your results are, so being able to visualize what your products are from an excel sheet to a chart to show to higher management is an essential and fundamental aspect of becoming a business analyst because eventually, this leads to non-technical members of your staff and upper management being able to understand what you’re trying to tell them
and finally, we have elicitation skills, so you should be able to run meetings called elicitation sessions to communicate the requirement of the project to your stakeholders so whatever your project needs, you should be able to deliver that to your stakeholders with ease, so this is one of the other fundamental aspects of becoming a business analyst so let us go through this one by one
firstly elicitation skills so brush up on that understand how the process works how you should communicate your requirements to your stakeholders
- we move on to collaboration skills, so collaboration essentially refers to being able to share your elicitation to your higher management so that your needs are carried out
- understanding team rules, so you’re going to be working in a team in whatever organization you’re working as a business analyst, so you need to understand what each member of your team would be responsible for to have an efficient workflow
- then information management so information management refers to how you take in the data that is given to you and how you manage it, how you use it to the organization’s advantage, and how you’re deriving insights from it, so this is also an essential aspect of business analysis
- then governance skills so governance alludes to leadership so you’re going to be working in a team and you’re eventually going to get to a position that is of seniority, so you need to be able to coordinate everybody who is working under you to be able to achieve your result in the predefined amount of time and resources
- then we have ba tools and techniques so uh we can start from the basic like word excel and PowerPoint and move on to the more complex ones regardless of the use case that your organization or you may have these tools are important and need to be learned and
- then we have documentation alongside communication and presentation, so this refers to the part where you take up your insights and your suggestions, and your results and you document them or put them into a PowerPoint presentation or whatever and you then forward those results to your uh superiors or you get into a meeting where you display the expression that you have
- So the important aspect here is the upper management: your employer should be able to understand what you’re communicating to them, so you should have excellent vocational skills. You should have clear documentation and presentation of what you’re trying to tell them. With all of this done with all of these skills refined, you can finally become a business analyst and get the job you want in this particular domain.
