Business analyst works as a bridge among stakeholders, to elicit, analyse, communicate, and validate the requirement for development of business process, policies, and information systems. Business analyst is a person who has knowledge of both IT and Business functions. They are responsible for ensuring that the solutions delivered by the developers meet the client’s requirements. And for the dev team they work as a client’s proxy as well.

Business analysts (BAs) work with business leaders and users to understand how data can be used to improve processes, products, services, software, and hardware. They identify opportunities for improvement and develop solutions that are both data-driven and feasible. BAs must also be able to communicate their ideas effectively to stakeholders.

Roles and Responsibilities of Business Analyst

The roles and responsibilities of a business analyst can be divided into three segments.

1] Core Capabilities: According to the IIBA some of the most essential experience and skills for a business analyst are:

• Oral and written communication skills
• Interpersonal and consultative skills
• Facilitation skills
• Analytical thinking and problem solving
• Having a keen eye for detail and a strong commitment to accuracy
• Organizational skills
• Knowledge of business structure
• Stakeholder analysis
• Requirements engineering
• Costs benefit analysis
• Processes modelling
• Ability to apply knowledge of networking, database management, and other technologies to solve problems

2] Business Analysis: It is a research method of identifying business needs and determining the solutions to business problems. Business Analyst assess how organizations are performing and help them improve their processes and systems. They are the bridge between the business and the technical teams, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

3] Pre-Sales activity: There is another area where business analyst can play a vital role, Business Analyst can support sales productivity:

• Engaging with clients directly - driving initial scope discussions as well as working with the delivery and sales team on quotes and proposals
• Working with other members of the sales team to ensure that presentations are coordinated and consistent
• Work directly with sales teams in the hunt of new business
• Participating in RFPs, and PoCs

How Business Analyst Help to Rescue the Total Project’s Cost

Every professional undertakes to reduce the cost of the project at various levels, I would like to focus here, on, ‘how a business analyst helps to reduce the project’s cost:

A] Ensuring right requirement are documented: Business Analyst helps to make sure all needed requirements are available to support the project. All these requirements are documented and maintained, and this helps to be more efficient and organized at work, which helps in reducing any costs that might have occurred.

B] Reduce Re-working: How does a BA (Business analyst) reduce the re-working? As a BA, they always ensure that they only focus on the requirements that will help the project to be successful. BA gathers all needed information and ensures that all required stakeholders are well handled and participate fully in the project, so everyone is aware’ ‘what has been approved’. This helps to reduce the future issue of reworking, because the gathering process of all available requirements is thoroughly searched and well-kept by a BA, so there will not be more delays when the entire process of the project starts, and this aspect helps to cut any costs.

C] Help to shorten the length of the project: When a business analyst is engaged in a project, without a doubt, they will make sure everything is in order. As a fact, whenever everything needed is available, then it means that the project will be done faster and quicker compared to ‘when the materials are not fully accessible’. Also, when the number of days to handle a project is shortened, that means that the cost of finishing the project will be cut considering the number of days reduced. Such resources will then be used for the next projects, which means the potential revenue will highly be increased in business at large.

D] They Help to save stakeholders' time: When Business Analysts are engaged in a project, then they can manage stakeholders well and ensure that their time is used effectively.

A Business Analyst can also reduce the project’s costs by allowing some stakeholders to be freed up to work on other business activities. Business Analysts will always ensure that they do the appropriate business analysis, create better designs, flow charts, and make quality decisions that save time for stakeholders.

The business analyst still works to their best and ensures stakeholders get the information they need for the projects and clarification, and this always handy information saves a lot of time for stakeholders.

E] They help in discovering cost effective solutions: Business Analysts always engage in business projects and end up discovering more solutions to be used to ensure that plans are cost-effective. They continually research the problem first and identify quality solutions from their findings that reduce costs to the business.

Conclusion

A Business Analyst is the one who helps to add value and look for opportunities to keep the business organization growing. BA always focusses on business outcomes, seeks out benefits and reduce pain points across the business that enables the business organization to reduce costs and become more efficient.

So, if you are not doing so already add a Business Analyst to your project to add value to your organization.

About Author

Vipin Titoria is Senior Business Analyst at Chimera Technologies. In addition to writing, he enjoys watching movies and discussing spirituality, astronomy, and space science. He also loves to travel to new places, especially mountains.