12 Important Skills that make you the best Business Analyst

Business analysis is a very wide field. A business analyst working in the healthcare industry will have different roles and responsibilities than a BA working in the insurance industry. A healthcare business analyst would take care of good patient experience while an insurance industry analyst would take care of insuring people’s life. While the job responsibilities may vary industry to industry but there are some common properties that each business analyst must have and we will discuss all of them in this post.

Are you planning to make a career in the Business Analysis field and thinking about how to become a good business analyst? Making a career in one of the most demanding fields – Business Analyst may seem easy but here the competition is extremely tough. While organizations are strictly looking for IT experts as business analysts but they are not ready to compromise with the quality in the modern competitive business world. 

Let’s discuss some of the most important qualities that you would learn and also require in your business analyst training:

Strong communication Skills

Having strong communication skills is an important criterion for the business analyst profile since they have to communicate with various users, clients, development & operations team and the management. The success of a project depends on how well business analysts people discuss and share information regarding project requirements, modifications, testing results, technical specifications, etc. Excellent communication and good writing skills are extremely important to stay ahead in the business analysis career.

Technical Expertise

To help businesses with effective solutions, analysts must know IT applications and the latest technologies. By utilizing these technical platforms, business analysts can develop solutions for businesses that can solve problems and help in generating effective outputs. Testing business applications and creating business models also require technical expertise. Gaining respect among technical and business professionals, analysts must have enough knowledge to speak confidently about technical and business products.

Amazing Analytical Skills

To translate all customer’s requirements into business applications and operations models, analysts should have great analytical skills. One part of this skill utilization is analyzing a large set of data or documents, user input, survey results and other parts of the skill is filtering out important decisions based on this analysis that can solve business problems. Gaining expertise in analytical skills is important to be a successful business analyst.

Critical Thinking

Providing an ideal solution can’t happen like that. It is not like that the exact answer to a problem will come in your dreams and you will use it. Analysts use their critical thinking ability to create new ideas for business solutions. Sometimes the most obvious reason may not be the exact reason for a problem rather there may be some other cause of the issue. Before taking any decision, analysts need to ask other team members and managers where they are struggling and what solutions they want. Looking into the problem deeply and using reasoning ability, they provide an ideal solution for problems. 

Problem Solving Ability

Creating a technical solution for business problems is a common task for business analysts but the challenge is how successfully they perform this job. Businesses come under various frequent changes nowadays, whatever is working apt today may be useless tomorrow. Hence, to cope up with changing the environment and always ready to take up challenges and providing an effective solution for each problem should be the property of a business analyst so that they can help organizations in successful project completion

Process Modeling Knowledge

Visual or process modeling is also a part of the analysis. In this process, the whole information is presented in the form of visuals means graphs or diagrams. This type of analysis is common in process management where there are various processes depicted in the form of visuals to provide a better understanding. This is not a mandatory criterion but knowing presenting data in visual form would be a plus since human beings understand visuals more than raw information. 

Decision Making Skill

Taking prominent decisions is one of the most important qualities of a business analyst. An analyst works as a consultant or advisor for a company. Sometimes he comes across a situation where multiple options are given and asked him to choose one out of all. To take an effective decision and justify how it can help in organizational growth. People willing to make a career in the business analyst field should have the ability to analyze a situation, ask suggestions of stakeholders and choose a correct course of action for a problem.

Create Clarity

Business analyst skills include soft skills as well as analytical skills. With the combination of these two skills, business analyst develops clarity. Here clarity doesn’t mean getting into the detail of data. Rather, they use analytical tools to drill into the raw data and filter out useful information. They use the verification and validation process to ensure the filter info is right and contains proper clarity.

Analysis of Management Skills

It may sound weird but their business analysts are not like project managers and they completely know why they are not project managers. This is true that a good business analyst is someone expert in managing the analysis of a business. They should be good with the deadline management. They involve stakeholders, ask their suggestion and keep the whole process moving in the right direction. They always look for the scope first. 

Relationship Building Skills

Developing a strong relationship is the first and foremost soft skill of a business analyst. It helps them create a strong bond with the stakeholders. A stakeholder always contributes to the project development hence, analysts have to communicate and build relationships with stakeholders of technical as well as a management team. With strong relationship building skills, a BA can develop trust and bridge a gap between various teams. 

Self-Management Skills

Business analysts are not project managers but as mentioned earlier they are committed to deadline and manage the analysis perfectly. To be a good BA, a person should have the ability to understand a situation, check various aspects of a problem, developing a solution for the issue and, performing and testing whether or not the analysis process is moving correctly. Therefore, business analysis should be self-managing. 

Domain Expertise

What do you understand by domain expertise? You might be thinking that you should gain knowledge in finance, insurance, HR or some other domain, right?

But, most people know all the domains means they will never become a business analyst.

There is no need for domain or industry knowledge to be a BA. And, this is not possible too. If you have domain expertise, it would be a plus for you and you can use this skill in your organization to deliver better results but if you have no information regarding the domain, there is no harm. You can use your business analysis skills to show your expertise. 

Conclusion

The business analyst role is technical and non-technical both. Therefore you must have soft and technical skills both. With strong analytical skills, you must know how to approach someone and build a good relationship. A business analyst sits with various team members, understands their needs and then involves stakeholders to take the right decision. Therefore, if you are planning to start a career as a business analyst, first develop the above-mentioned qualities and then take up the role.