What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Business Analyst

When you search for Business Analysts jobs online, you get plenty of them (more than 12000 on almost all job portals including LinkedIn, nakri.com, etc.). You can find that Business Analysts fetch smart salaries. Many established companies are looking for Business Analysts to make their businesses thrive. 

Even the branch of analysis that has been here for decades, called Financial Analysis, is also growing, though at a modest rate of 11%. Many other aspects have a growing demand for BAs(Business Analysts) across the globe. 

Digitization is the driving force behind the increasing demand for Business Analysts. According to IBM, the job openings for different flavors of BAs will reach 2.7 million by 2020. Also, a report by McKinsey states that the US only faces a shortage of around 1.9 million people with analytical skills. In addition, IBM states that the required 2.8 million professionals need to be ‘analytical savvy’ and bridge the gap between vacant positions. 

This is the main reason for increasing professionals enrolling for online courses to get business analyst certification online and give a good boost to their career. 

Let’s now discuss the role of a Business Analyst in brief.

What is a Business Analyst?

Let’s see how Wikipedia defines Business Analysts.

‘A Business Analyst is a person who analyzes and documents the market environment, processes, or systems of businesses. They help businesses improve their processes, products, services, and software through data analysis and software.’

According to the definition by Wikipedia, a BA typically helps businesses in improving and therefore increasing productivity. So, BAs are agile workers who are intended to straddle the line between business and IT to improve efficiency. 

Business Analysts are often referred to as ‘agents of change’. They are professionals who analyze a business, document its processes and systems, assess the business model, identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and come up with feasible, cost-effective solutions. 

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What does a Business Analyst Do?

As a BA, you are expected to bridge the gap between IT and business by utilizing analytics, determining requirements, and then delivering data-driven recommendations and reports to executives and concerned professionals. 

But how will all this get accomplished? 

You have to engage with users and business leaders to determine the ways data-driven changes to products, services, processes, software, and hardware can add value by enhancing efficiency.

According to IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysts) which is a non-profit organization, business analysis is a ‘disciplined approach for introducing and managing change to organizations, whether they are for-profit businesses, government, or non-profits.’

Hence they are termed as ‘agents of change’.

Levels of Business Analysis

The four levels of business analysis are:

  • Strategic Management: At this level, you have to evaluate strategies to find out if the strategies are working as required or not.
  • Analysis of Business Model: At this level, you evaluate policies that are currently being applied to the business. This analysis enables you to measure the policies and create new ones. 
  • Designing of Processes: This level requires you to use your skills to model the business processes that include designing and modeling.
  • Technical Analysis: the technical systems of a business are also required to be analyzed properly. This level requires you to do the same.

Roles and Responsibilities of a Business Analyst

According to Robert Half, the responsibilities of a Business Analyst are:

  • Making a detailed analysis of business, outline problems, opportunities and recommend solutions for business.
  • Budget and forecast
  • Plan and Monitor
  • Variance Analysis
  • Price
  • Report
  • Identify business requirements and intimidate them to concerned stakeholders

Typically, as a BA, you have to create new models to support business decisions by working with IT and finance teams to establish initiatives and strategies to optimize costs and improve importing.

Then comes the identification of technical and functional requirements and prioritizing them. 

Next comes eliciting the requirements and utilizing those requirements to understand clearly what a client wants and getting IT on board accordingly.

You have to answer some of the questions that include:

  • What are the systems required to do?
  • How will they do it?
  • Who do you get input from?
  • How to get everyone’s agreement on it?
  • What is required before we go and do it?

So, these questions clearly define the role of a Business Analyst and state that your job role revolves around identifying and prioritizing requirements and having feedback and approval on the same. 

The most important point to be noted is that the role of a BA is consistently evolving. The main reason behind this is that companies depend more on data to advise operations in a business. Every company has its issues and a BA is expected to address them. These issues may include dealing with old and outdated legacy systems, broken processes, changing technologies, poor customer or client satisfaction, or large organizations that are often siloed. 

Business Analyst Salary

The median annual salary of an IT business analyst is around USD 67,762, as per the data from PayScale. 

At different positions, the salaries vary as follows:

Business Management Analyst: USD 60,428

Business Performance Analyst: USD 60,678

Business Analyst II: USD 64,981

Junior IT Business Analyst: USD 65,330

Application Business Analyst: USD 66,882

Business Intelligence Analyst; USD 66,791

ITSM Business Analyst: USD 66,891

Technical Business Analyst: USD 71,489

Agile Business Analyst: USD 74,000

IT Business Analyst: USD 74,000

Business Solutions Analyst: USD 75,243

Business Analyst III: USD 78,107

Senior IT Business Analyst: USD 90,201

Conclusion

You can observe from the above-mentioned list that business analysts can fetch huge salaries. You can upgrade your career to become a Business Analyst, a role that is in huge demand. 

To become a BA, you can take up an online training course from an accredited institute. This is because you get many amenities like free access to the study material, 24*7 learners’ assistance, self-paced learning, doubt sessions, and career guidance at the end of the course. 

Enroll Yourself Now!!

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