All about Business Analyst role, responsibilities, qualifications, job openings, trends and salaries.

Note: Do not make your career decision based on this article. You can always become what you want to be with determination and hard work. Sometimes, the destiny comes to you, you just embrace it.

Note:
this role is explained by keeping Business Areas making decisions based on Data. It can be Business using Business Intelligence, Data Science, Data Warehouse, Reports, Dashboards and so on. Business Analyst role could be little different in ERP (SAP), CRM(Salesforce), Banking Applications, Insurance Applications, Education Applications and so on.

In this article, we are trying to explain all about Business Analyst role, responsibilities, qualifications, salaries, job trends and openings.

Person who interacts with Business Users and understand business needs then works with IT teams to communicate the Business Needs using business terminology to get what Business is expecting from IT teams.

Note:
Few years back Business Analyst need not be a technical person who can write SQL, write macros in Excel and so on. But in recent years, companies are expecting the Business Analyst to have high level technical knowledge such as basic SQL knowledge to interact with data, macros knowledge using Excel… and so on. Currently some companies are asking Business Analyst to have advanced SQL knowledge, advanced Excel macros and so on.

• Able to define business requirements for reporting, dashboards, analytics and ad-hoc reporting for various Business Areas.

• Work with stakeholders identifying and defining operational problems, plan project strategy, and define data requirements.

• Analyze complex data to provide recommendations for maximizing profitable revenue, traffic conversion opportunities, and reducing costs to support business objectives.

• Perform data analysis to support executive decisions.

• Perform complete queries across multiple databases and data warehouse.

• Dive into complex data sets to analyze trends, identify opportunities and quantify the potential value of new initiatives.

• Collect and evaluate data gathered from multiple sources and abstract up from low-level information to a better understanding to present to management and executives.

• Effectively communicate findings to non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership.

• Bachelor’s degree, preferably in the area work – example: Finance domain prefers – Bachelors / Master’s degree with finance major, marketing domain prefers Bachelors / Masters with Marketing major.

• Strong communication skills – oral and written.

• Quantitative mindset and analytic capabilities.

• One or more domain knowledge such as Banking, Insurance, Analytics and so on.

• 2 or more years of relevant business analysis experience.

• Hands on basic / advanced experience with SQL.

• Experience with Business Analytics.

• Advanced MS Excel (e.g., pivot tables, MS query, array formulae, user-defined functions, macros etc.).

• One or more Data visualization Tools experience such as Tableau, Power BI and others.

• Some companies may ask statistics as a mandatory skill based on the need.

All the Business Analysts doesn't perform Business Analytics work. Business Analysts in the Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse or Data Driven Decision-Making areas – perform Business Analytics as part of their responsibility.

Analytics represents Analysis based on the data. The data can be from any Business domain such as banking, insurance, retail and so on. Irrespective of Business domain, Business Analytics related activities are part of Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse and Analytics departments.

Note: Some Business Analysts work as ‘Subject Matter Experts’ because of their domain experience. Example – Business Analyst with Insurance policy processing related knowledge acts as a Policy Processing supporting Business Analyst instead of working on Analytics area.

No. Please refer to 'What are the general qualifications of Business Analyst?' in this article.

Note: Do not make your career decision based on this article. You can always become what you want to be with determination and hard work. Sometimes, the destiny comes to you, you just embrace it.
Depends on your strengths. In general, these positions are less in India and more in the USA. If you are very strong in communication skills and domain knowledge along with average technical skills, Business Analyst role works for you.

LinkedIn USA Business Analyst Jobs Link

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LinkedIn INDIA Business Analyst Jobs Link