3 Key Responsibilities Of Business Analysts

Business analysts play a critical role in businesses as they contribute to the development of products, services, processes and practices within businesses. They achieve this by bridging the gap between the technological and business units of organizations. BAs work to facilitate the fruition of an organization’s ideas and capabilities.

The duties and responsibilities of a business analyst vary widely depending on the business, from eliciting business requirements, analyzing and modeling future state processes, to testing out new solutions. The role of business analysts is essential in an organization as it involves facilitating the generation of new ideas, developing and implementing them and ensuring they are functional.

In order to function at optimum capacity in their role, business analysts need to have proper communication skills, problem-solving skills, and other analytical skills, in addition to formal education. In some cases, business analysts may need to work with data, which is why technical skills in areas such as programming, big data, predictive and statistical analysis are desirable (but not essential).

This article highlights some of the benefits a BA brings to the table.

1. Understanding Business Requirements

Business analysts may work in various departments of an organization to identify, collect, analyse and manage business requirements. Their presence in different departments and levels of an organization, coupled with the information they collect, means that they are in an optimal position to understand the business.

Business analysts are beneficial to organizations when it comes to offering actionable insights to the business. They do this by researching and analyzing current market trends as well as highlighting value-adding opportunities or projects.

2. Planning

Another vital role of a business analyst is in carrying out strategic planning to support business growth and development. Business analysts can add value to the development of strategic plans using the internal data collected by researching and running diagnostics on organizational processes and performance. 

3. Decision-Making & Problem-Solving

A successful and smooth-running organization is dependent on good decision-making. Business analysts contribute to this by highlighting systematic errors and making recommendations to management. This is further reinforced by developing a system of learning to avoid making the same mistakes all over again. Organizations are also better at making decisions and solving problems if they are open to change.

Business analysts are important to an organization’s performance because they are usually in constant communication with different departments. To survive in a dynamic workplace, organizations have to continually update their techniques, approaches and courses of action; this guarantees optimal results in an ever-changing business environment.

It doesn't matter whether your organization is a small or large one; every organization could use the service of a business analyst.