The role of Business Analyst (BA) is increasingly talked about on the job market. This role is often poorly known, or even misunderstood, because it does not clearly resonate in the public imagination. While everyone can easily understand the role of a Product Manager or an HRD (Human Resources Director) within a company, it is harder to grasp the role and mission of a BA.

So what does this role involve and why is it increasingly in demand on the job market?

What does a Business Analyst do within an organization?

Depending on the maturity level of a company’s Information System (IS), the data used for the various business processes and applications is often voluminous but not necessarily well exploited.

Indeed, the change in data storage and exploitation methods as well as the advent and spread of non-relational databases (NoSQL) since the beginning of the 21st century confirm companies’ desire to process colossal quantities of data, which are currently handled within one single company, none other than the giant Google.

Faced with this state of affairs, BAs are increasingly called upon to exploit these very large volumes of data in order to deliver a clear synthesis or to make relevant connections.

The analyst begins by looking for the source of the information being analyzed, then proceeds to an extraction, possibly a more intelligible presentation, using connections between data that sometimes have no obvious relation.

Like BI (Business Intelligence) software that analyzes receipts in order to deduce unlikely but relevant correlations for commercial profitability, the BA’s work brings out causal links between data with no apparent connection so as to arrive at new knowledge relevant to the profitability of the organization concerned. Similarly, the procedures and processing that carry this data through an IS can sometimes suffer malfunctions that impact the company’s profitability. Understanding and improving these processes within a department or a division by the BA proves in this case just as profitable as acting on the data itself. Proposing suitable architectural solutions to a given problem or innovative technological solutions to remedy a proven failure represents another lever of action for the BA.

Why use a Business Analyst more and more?

In a context of excessive globalization, a company’s competitiveness sometimes becomes a guarantee of its survival. Talking about competitiveness therefore necessarily implies better management of production costs.

In a context of excessive globalization, a company’s competitiveness sometimes becomes a guarantee of its survival. Talking about competitiveness therefore necessarily implies better management of production costs.

Moreover, climate hazards (global warming) and health hazards (the COVID-19 crisis in 2020) are unavoidable current parameters that significantly influence the job market. We even speak of climate or health “refugees”.

The result is a glaring lack of visibility for entrepreneurs and investors, which inevitably leads to reluctance or even a freeze on investment and hiring. It therefore becomes obvious that better risk management is needed to cope with these current uncertainties. Besides these unforeseen events beyond companies’ control, one of the major axes of performance within these organizations lies in optimizing information processing times.

This optimization, from customer subscription to after-sales, thus becomes an important issue. The adage “Time is money” takes on its full meaning to illustrate this aspect. Every internet user can easily understand the frustration of a prospect or customer faced with an IT system that is too slow in its interactions or complicated to use. This situation can lead to disparagement implying lost revenue for the company, or even mass cancellations, which then mean outright losses.

Alongside subscribers, the users of these IT systems (sales prospectors) are also concerned by the performance of the IT tools made available to them. Incidentally, in this regard, the hunt for superfluous clicks when improving digital tools for sales / prospecting is one of the most prominent commercial issues in large companies. All the needs mentioned above explain the growing use of BAs. They strive to meet companies’ commercial expectations as well as environmental imperatives through more controlled management of costs and risks.

Business Analysts then carry out analyses that generate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) highlighting the most relevant choices for better decision-making in view of the company’s strategic stakes. They also contribute to the improvement of information processing processes to guarantee better performance.