The Business Analyst Role in Helping Your Business Succeed

A business analyst is someone who analyzes an organization and designs its processes and systems, assessing the business model and its integration with technology. The business analyst role in an organization works with key stakeholders to have a solid comprehension of the policies, operations, and structures of an organization, ultimately providing solutions so that the organization may reach its strategic goals.

The role of a business analyst can also be defined as a bridge between the business problems and the technology solutions. Here business problems can be anything about business systems, for example the model, process, or method. The technology solutions can be the use of technology architecture, tools, or software application. So business analysts combine the use of technology to solve the organization’s wide range of problems.

Udemy offers a thorough and complete course on How to Become a Business Analyst.  This course is taught by Esta Lessing who is a degree qualified Certified Business Analyst Professional (CBAP)® currently living in Melbourne, Australia.

Esta started her career out with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa where she worked as a Technical Analyst on the trading floor 1997. She changed her career shortly after that to take up her very first Business Analysis role with Arthur Andersen in 1998. Esta spent a total of 6 years in London working for both public sector and private sector companies as a Business Analyst. She not only studied with the London University during this time but completed 5 BCS ISEB Business Analysis certifications. After all those long winters, she decided to migrate to Melbourne Australia in 2006. Esta certified as a CBAP shortly after arriving in Melbourne. Business Analysis career coaching, mentoring and development programs have been an integral part of her experience during the last 6 years. Esta remains in Melbourne where she is the managing director of her own Business Analysis Training company, Business Analysis Excellence Pty Ltd, aspiring to assist thousands of Business Analysts worldwide with her skills and experiences gained as a Business Analyst and Professional Career Specialist.

What the Business Analyst Does

The fundamentals of business analysis for the business analyst generally involves four disciplines:

• Strategic Planning

Strategic planning within an organization involves defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management. It is executed by strategic planners or strategists, who involve many parties and research sources in their analysis of the organization and its relationship to the environment in which it competes.

Strategy has many definitions, but generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). The senior leadership of an organization is generally tasked with determining strategy. Strategy can be planned (intended) or can be observed as a pattern of activity (emergent) as the organization adapts to its environment or competes.

• Business Model Analysis

A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts. The process of business model construction is part of business strategy.

In theory and practice, the term business model is used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose, business process, target customers, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies. The literature has provided very diverse interpretations and definitions of a business model. A systematic review and analysis of manager responses to a survey defines business models as the design of organizational structures to enact a commercial opportunity. Further extensions to this design logic emphasize the use of narrative or coherence in business model descriptions as mechanisms by which entrepreneurs create extraordinarily successful growth firms.

Business models are used to describe and classify businesses, especially in an entrepreneurial setting, but they are also used by managers inside companies to explore possibilities for future development. Well-known business models can operate as “recipes” for creative managers. Business models are also referred to in some instances within the context of accounting for purposes of public reporting.

• Process Design

Process design is the design of processes for desired physical and/or chemical transformation of materials. Process design can be the design of new facilities or it can be the modification or expansion of existing facilities. The design starts at a conceptual level and ultimately ends in the form of fabrication and construction plans.

Check out the business process analysis with this introductory course.

• Systems Analysis

Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, systems analysis is “the process of studying a procedure or business in order to identify its goals and purposes and create systems and procedures that will achieve them in an efficient way”. Analysis and synthesis, as scientific methods, always go hand in hand; they complement one another. Every synthesis is built upon the results of a preceding analysis, and every analysis requires a subsequent synthesis in order to verify and correct its results.

Learn more about use cases, the most common tool for business analysts.

A business analyst works through these four disciplines to achieve the maximum success for your business. The business analyst role focuses on making any and all necessary changes through the use of a multitude of tools to meet your goals.  Being a business analyst for an organization is integral when faced with any kind of problem.