Essential Skills for Business Analytics Professionals

Essential Skills for Business Analytics Professionals

It is important to fetch the answer to WHY before starting to identify the roles and responsibilities that might be required for the new analytics personnel. One should start by focussing on the customer. By doing so, one will be able to categorise a broad application of analytics for which the organisation will be responsible.

Any key analytics professionals will focus on the following:

• To find insights related to customers, products and operations, any key person will focus on building big data collection and analytics capabilities.
  
  
• Analysing data sources and suggesting ideas that would assist the organisation in strategic planning solutions to challenges on a onetime or periodic basis.
  
  
• Helping the organisation to reach a data-driven decision.
  
  
• Developing useful insights for customers and developing analytical models. They might also be involved in creating applications for employees that help in driving more efficiency or revenue.

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Skills for Business Analytics

One of the barometers of the success of the project is that how the project was handled and how many loopholes were detected. The role of any business analyst is very important, mainly because he is the one who acts as a bridge between customers, all the team members, and stakeholders.

Any good business analytics professionals will require to have the following competencies:

Communication skills

It is very important to effectively and communicate the right information in a proper way to all the people in a meeting. One should be aware that the words spoken should not be misinterpreted. Asking the right questions at the right time and carefully listening to what others have to say is as important as speaking clearly. By listening carefully, now will be able to interpret better.

One should also focus on making notes from the meeting; this will help in maintaining a proper record of what was discussed in the meeting. This can be of help in cases of any disagreements in the future.

Domain knowledge

Any business analyst needs to have a good knowledge of the domain in which he is working.

Critical analysis skills

Critical thinking is something that should come naturally to any business analyst. A business analyst needs to understand the complexity involved in the business he will not be able to think about all aspects of the project.

Problem-solving skills

Once a business analyst has understood the complexity that is involved in the project. A business analyst must figure out the potential problems and he should also be able to produce potential solutions to those problems.

Management and leadership skills

A business analyst is not just required to manage the project or functional and non-functional requirements of the project; he is also required to manage the team with his behavioural skills. To manage the teams involved efficiently, it is very important for the business analyst to regularly polish his/her leadership skills and project management skills.

Technical awareness skill

To handle a project efficiently, a business analyst is required to be aware of the various technical terms and jargon that are used in the industry. He should be able to work closely with technical people, such as developers and testers that are working on various tools and technologies. Doing so will help an analyst in knowing the various tools and techniques that are being applied to develop the application.

Time management skill

A business analyst is responsible for maintaining the timeframes of the project as well as the corporate schedules. He should ensure that the project meets the pre-agreed project milestones along with daily tracking schedules being fulfilled by the development team. He should priorities activities separating critical ones from the others that can wait, and focus on them.

Literary and documenting skills

Being a business analyst, you are supposed to deliver numerous types of documentation, such as requirements documents, specifications, reports, analysis and plans that will go on to become projects and legal documents later on.

So, you need to ensure that your documents are created concisely, and at a comprehensible level for the stakeholders. Avoid specific jargons to a particular field as they may not be understood by all stakeholders and later may create confusion or other complexities with their interpretations.

Develop your modelling skills

As the expression goes, a photo paints a thousand words. Procedures (such as process modelling) are compelling tools to pass on a lot of data without depending on the textual part. A visual portrayal enables you to get an outline of the issue or project so that you can see what functions well and where the loopholes lie.