Business Analyst - what, who, how?

on

Well I was talking to my wife and her friends about alternative career options for a banker and though of sharing this with a larger audience. 

Let me start by elaborating the term BA (Business Analyst).

A business analyst is someone who analyzes an organization or business domain and documents its business or processes or systems, assessing the business model or its integration with technology.

There is another term called BSA (Business Systems Analyst) or SA (Systems Analyst). The role of a systems analyst is defined as a bridge between the business problems and the technology solutions. System analysts are required to analyze, transform and ultimately resolve the business problems with the help of technology.

Let me simplify this in an Indian context.

Assume that a bank wants to develop a net banking portal for its users. In this case, the BA would know how a bank works and what are the functionalities required for a banking portal. BA would talk to various business owners/users inside various departments of the bank and would come up with a document (Business Specification) explaining the functionalities of the portal. This document would ideally not talk about the screen level details of the portal, rather it will talk about the functionalities/features to be provided by the portal and their acceptance criteria. For example: Details containing business rules for implementing “Show my account statement” function, “Online fund transfer” function, “Online customer service request” function, etc…

A BSA would also have required domain knowledge (in this case banking) and some exposure on the technology. He/she would extend the Business Specification document and create the System Specification document (or Functional Specification Document). This document will contain the details of how the business functions are going to be implemented. For example, for “Show my account statement” function, the portal should by default show all account numbers of the user. On click of any account number, open another page with the last 10 transactions etc… In fact, it will have some more details, like the list of columns to be shown on the transaction details page and link to go back or link for other functions etc. It will also contain the flow diagrams or screen mock up explaining the screen/page.

As I said earlier, a BSA (or SA) is a bridge between business problems and the technology solutions. Generally the technology solution provider (developers) do not know much about the business processes and are dependent on the Functional Specification to develop the solution.  Now since the requirements are given by a BA and a BSA, they would be required to test the system (in this case net banking portal) with all possible business scenarios and give the sign off on the implementation.

This was the case of a new development. In reality industries spend most of the time & effort in maintaining and enhancing the existing systems. Due to business changes or regulatory changes or compliance requirements, systems need continuous updates. BSA needs to know the system in and out and needs to understand such changes to convert them to the Functional Specification.

There are some other consulting areas where a business analyst can utilize his/her skills.

  • Business Model Analysis - Define the organization's policies and market approaches and help creating business model
  • Process Design and Process automation - Talk to various internal/external users to understand organization’s workflow, document process, standardize process
  • Process Automation - Identify manual and inefficient process and  remove inefficiencies


I hope, by now you have some idea of the BA & BSA roles. Please continue reading to understand more about the skills required to become a BS and some typical job profile of a BA.

Skills required (Divided into 3 parts)

1)      Functional / Domain knowledge (in this case banking domain)
  • Level 1 - General Banking, Level 2 (specialization) - Investment Banking, Cards & Payments, Equity and Demat operations, etc...
  • New age Digital Banking
 2)      Technology knowledge
 3)      Analysis skills
  • Problem Solving methodology
  • Root cause Analysis study
  • Requirement Gathering and Elicitation
  • Documentation - System Specification, Test Plan, Workflow diagram, presentation, etc…


Typical Banking Business Analyst Job Description
1)      Sample 1
  • Serve as a point of contact for business and IT teams
  • Partner with business communities to document requirements based on current and proposed business workflows
  • Participate in the development of project estimates, plans and schedules
  • Develop an understanding of business processes as well as expertise of our systems, workflows, data structure and culture
  • Evaluate information from multiple sources and reconcile competing interests
  • Facilitate meetings and brainstorming sessions
  • Deconstruct high-level information to identify technical details
  • Distinguish requests and ideas from solutions and requirements
  • Prototype to represent requirement information in various visual formats to accompany documentation
  • Interpersonal skills to help negotiate priorities
  • Work with development and QA (Quality Assurance or Testing) teams to design, implement, and test business requirements
  • Communicate information effectively and in the appropriate format to IT colleagues and business partners

2)      Sample 2
  • Responsible for review, interpretation, and analysis of collected data using different tools, statistical techniques and data management systems to provide accurate & reliable reports to the company
  • Develop a healthy data collection system & sound strategy for getting quality data from different sources to use it effectively and efficiently
  • Prepare presentations of collected data using graph and/or charts
  • Prepare various statistical reports on operational performance on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis
  • Performs daily review of the project management queue
  • Provides customer support to internal clients handling inquiries and resolving support issues


What does a business analyst do in a banking financial services sector?
--> https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-business-analyst-do-in-a-banking-financial-services-sector

Some real BA job postings from LinkedIn
--> https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?keywords=Business%20Analyst

Some real BA profiles from LinkedIn
--> https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=Business%20Analyst&origin=SUGGESTION

Some sample BA resumes
--> http://www.jobhero.com/resume-samples/senior-business-analyst#

Career path for BA
  •  BA stream (BA, Sr BA, Lead BA, Manager BA, Sr Manager BA, etc…)
  • BA to PM (Project Manager), PMO stream
  • Agile Stream - adopting agile model of development and contributing
    • BA to Scrum Master / Agile coach stream
    • BA to PO (Product Owner) stream
PS: This post is written in July 2018. Worth mentioning because the velocity at which the technology is changing, not sure if it is relevant when you are reading.

Disclaimer: I am not a career advisor and not advising anybody to switch to any particular role or advocating for any particular role.

Comments

Post a Comment