The role of Business Analyst (BA) is becoming increasingly popular in the job market. This function is often poorly known, or even misunderstood, because it doesn’t think clearly in the general public’s imagination. Just as it’s easy for anyone to understand the role of a Product Manager or Human Resources Director within a company, it’s hard to understand the role and mission of a BA.
So what does this job entail, and why is it increasingly in demand on the job market?
What does a Business Analyst do within an organization?
Depending on the level of maturity of a company’s Information System (IS), the data used for the various processes and business applications is often voluminous, but not necessarily well exploited.
Indeed, the change in data storage and exploitation methods, and the advent and spread of non-relational databases (NoSQL) since the beginning of the 21st century, confirm the desire of companies to process colossal quantities of data, which are currently handled by a 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 produce clear summaries or relevant reconciliations.
The analyst begins by identifying the source of the information under analysis, and then proceeds to extract it and, if necessary, put it into a more intelligible form, by reconciling data that may be unrelated.
In the same way that BI (Business Intelligence) software analyzes tickets to deduce unlikely correlations relevant to commercial profitability, the BA’s work can reveal causal links between seemingly unrelated data, leading to new insights relevant to the profitability of the organization in question. By the same token, the procedures and processes used to route this data within an IS can sometimes present malfunctions that impact on the company’s profitability. In such cases, the BA’s role is to understand and improve these processes within a department or division, just as much as it is to act on the data itself. Proposing architectural solutions adapted to a given problem, or innovative technological solutions to overcome a proven failure, represents another lever for action for the BA.
Why do we need more and more Business Analysts?
In a context of unbridled globalization, a company’s competitiveness sometimes becomes a guarantee of its survival. When we talk about competitiveness, we inevitably mean better management of production costs.
In a context of unbridled globalization, a company’s competitiveness sometimes becomes a guarantee of its survival. When we talk about competitiveness, we inevitably mean better management of production costs.
In addition, the vagaries of climate (global warming) and health (the COVID-19 crisis in 2020) are unavoidable parameters of the day, with a consequent impact on the job market. We’re even talking about climate and health “refugees”.
The result is a blatant lack of visibility for entrepreneurs and investors, which inevitably leads to a reluctance or even a freeze on investment and hiring. It is clear, therefore, that better risk management is needed to deal with these current hazards. In addition to these unforeseen events, which are beyond the control of companies, one of the key areas of performance for these organizations is the optimization of information processing times.
This optimization, from customer subscription to after-sales service, becomes an important issue. The adage “time is money” is a perfect illustration of this. Any Internet user can easily understand the frustration felt by a prospect or customer when faced with an IT system that is too slow to interact or too complicated to handle. This situation can lead to denigration, resulting in loss of earnings for the company, or even mass cancellations synonymous with dry losses.
As well as subscribers, the users of these IT systems (sales prospectors) are also concerned by the performance of the IT tools made available to them. In fact, the hunt for superfluous clicks when improving digital tools for sales/prospecting is one of the most high-profile commercial issues in large companies. All the above-mentioned needs explain the increasing use of BAs. The latter are striving to meet companies’ commercial expectations as well as environmental imperatives, thanks to a more controlled management of costs and risks.
Business Analysts 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 challenges. They also contribute to improving information processing processes to guarantee better performance.
