The Business Analyst is a change agent. Business analysis is a methodical strategy for initiating and managing change in organisations, whether for-profit, government, or non-profit. Business analysis is used to discover and express the need for change in how organizations operate and help organizations implement that change. We identify and specify the solutions that will maximize the value given by an organization to its stakeholders as Business Analysts / FP&A Team. Key Tools for Business Analysts / FPA are Benchmarking, Balance Scorecard, Porters’ five forces, McKinsey nine box matrix, BCG Growth-Share Matrix and Core Competencies.
Key Tools for Business Analysts / FPA
To flourish in their organization, every Business Analyst must employ specific BA tools. Collaboration, requirement elicitation, project management, use case analysis, workflow management, and prototype creation are all areas where Business Analysts employ Business Analytics technologies. In an organization, business analysts are critical in bridging the gap between IT and business. They assist companies in improving their processes, products, and services. To accomplish this, business analysts employ a variety of data analysis techniques. There are a variety of Business Analyst tools available to help BAs do business analysis activities more efficiently.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is a simple approach for a company to evaluate its operations by looking at what other companies are doing and filling in the gaps between its current processes and best practices. For example, a company may compare its production process to another to determine the differences in performance between the two companies and the causes that cause the differences. While strategic benchmarking focuses on attaining company goals, competitive benchmarking examine industry practices intending to gain a competitive advantage in the market by analyzing competitors’ processes.
Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard is a strategic planning approach used in business analysis to guarantee that an organization’s purpose and vision are translated into clear and actionable objectives. It also helps you to track how well your company is performing in terms of attaining these objectives. The key strength of the Balanced Scorecard is that it integrates traditional financial measures with non-financial metrics that are critical to the business’s success.
Porter’s Five Forces
Porter’s Five Forces is a strategy for determining an industry’s vulnerabilities and strengths by identifying and analyzing five competitive forces that define every business. A five-forces analysis is widely used to describe the corporate strategy by identifying an industry’s structure. Porter’s model can be used to understand the amount of competition within an industry and improve a company’s long-term profitability in any sector of the economy.
The GE-McKinsey Nine Box Matrix
The framework’s name comes from a 1970 contract between General Electric and McKinsey & Company, a strategy consulting firm, to help GE manage their vast and complex portfolio of critical business units. The GE-McKinsey Matrix is similar to the BCG Matrix, a portfolio analysis technique used in corporate strategy to analyze strategic business units or product lines based on two variables: industry attractiveness and a business unit’s competitive strength. A corporation can plot their business units accordingly by combining these two variables into a matrix and determining where to invest, keep their position, and harvest or divest by combining them into a matrix.
The BCG Growth-Share Matrix
The BCG growth-share matrix is a planning tool that employs graphical representations of a company’s products and services to aid in determining what should be kept, sold, or invested more heavily. The matrix is a four-square matrix that depicts a company’s offers, with the y-axis reflecting market growth and the x-axis representing market share. In 1970, the Boston Consulting Group introduced it. The BCG growth-share matrix is a tool that management uses internally to evaluate the present condition of the value of a company’s units or product lines. The growth-share matrix helps the corporation decide which products or units to keep, sell, or increase investment.
Core Competencies
A business analyst’s position is dynamic and demanding, requiring you to be a quick, critical analytical thinker as well as an outstanding communicator. Because the business analyst has various high-level tasks, you must be flexible in agile software development.
- Communication Capabilities.
- Skills in Critical Thinking.
- Problem-Solving Techniques.
- Leadership and Management Skills.
- Knowledge of the project’s technical tools and techniques.
