Why Should You Choose A Business Analytics Career in India?

Q: What are the key challenges of a Business Analytics Career?

Unclear requirements – Many times the management is not clear about their objectives and the business analyst is not briefed on clear goals. The analyst has to navigate through these unclear requirements. Changing standards and market conditions: market conditions and working standards may change more frequently than expected. The analyst is expected to keep a cushion on their estimates and budgets to absorb these changes. The requirement to continually update Knowledge and skills: Business analysts may not work in the same industry or business sector all the time and they are expected to update their knowledge and keep themselves updated with the latest advancements and skills. Stakeholder conflicts: Stakeholders may have conflicting requirements but the Business analyst is expected to work as a bridge among all of them and arrive at the most appropriate solution.

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023 Aparna Sinha Roy 0 Comments

Many big organizations and even Govt. of India use data analysis to arrive at logical business and policy decisions. Companies using analytics are more likely to outperform the non-data-driven environment. If you have a passion for numbers, love to translate numbers into facts, have a knack for problem-solving, and have business acumen, then Business Analytics Career is just right for you. In this article, we will discuss why and how should you become a business analyst, a rising career option in India.

Who is a Business Analyst?

Business analyst analyzes business processes, services, customer behaviors, market trends, competitor information, software performance, or policies to increase the efficiency of a business and provide recommendations. For example, Business Analysts at a financial institution would be conducting surveys and controlled exercises to get an insight into user behavior, and preferred products such as loans, insurance, etc., and provide strategic decisions to create or improve products and services.

Business analysts could also be defined as someone who use their expertise to provide direction for future action while analyzing the glitches, roadblocks, or successes of the past.

What Does a Business Analyst Do?

Business Analyst gathers and uses data in various ways to develop the most efficient solution or suggest improvements to existing systems and processes. They identify the business areas, which require improvement and work with all levels of management to present their findings and implement a solution. Broadly business analyst tasks and responsibilities can be summarized as:

Identify organizations needs
Use statistical methods and techniques to analyze data
Compiling charts, graphs, etc. to visually represent the findings
Gain business insights
Provide strategic solutions
Suggesting financial solutions to implement strategic suggestions.
Planning, forecasting, and budgeting

Why is the Businesses Analytics Career on a Rise?

Due to the digitalization of businesses, an enormous amount of data is produced continuously, however, it is of no significance unless insights can be drawn from it. Companies need a business analyst to take this data and provide insights from them. These insights could be future business direction, analysis of past achievements or failures, customer preferences, or business plans.

The analysts use various scientific tools to collect and decipher data, which provides visualization and modeling. Analysts present these findings in simple language to the end user, company management, and policymakers. Companies are realizing the importance and advantages of business analysis and it is becoming a highly valued and rewarding profession.

The US bureau of labor statistics has predicted nearly 11% growth in Business Analytics career opportunities between 2021-2031 worldwide with the main focus on healthcare and information technology sectors.

Process of Business Analytics

Business analytics deal with a lot of data to find answers, identify trends, and draw insights. This process is quite complex comprising four main pillars of analysis. A combination of these must be chosen to meet the business objective and output data required. Each analysis type is discussed below for a clear understanding:

Descriptive Analysis:

This analysis is the first step of the analytics process and is performed to determine business status based on past data. It verifies against the key performance indicators to analyze the state of the business. Key activities involve:

Identifying business units that will effectively fall in line with the KPIs
Identifying data important for the current state of business.
Collecting and sorting data
Analyzing to map the performance
Presenting data in non-analytical formats for general understanding
Highlighting general trends.

In short, the descriptive analysis provides insight into what has happened and what is currently going on in a business. The descriptive analysis could be most basic involving Google analytics tools, social media traffic, customer interaction, demand trends, or complex involving financial statement analysis.

A simple example of descriptive analysis is an e-commerce platform trending product tool based on customer behaviors. This analysis may be used by the business to increase revenue, improve product lines and retain customers.

Diagnostic Analysis:

The diagnostic analysis is a scientific method of analyzing descriptive data and delving deep to find out the cause of the outcome. This analysis focuses on the main question “why”. The key objectives of this analysis are:

Find the root cause of the outcome using insights from descriptive data.
Detects patterns of behaviors and the reasoning behind that
Variables affecting business outcomes

Types of diagnostic analysis involve analyzing market demands, explaining customer behaviors, identifying technological issues, or defining company policies. An example of diagnostic analysis could be HR analyzing employee feedback surveys to improve company culture and policies.

Predictive Analysis

This analysis is used to predict the direction of future inferring insights from historical data. The analysis is meant to answer the question “what will happen in the future”. The success of this analysis is dependent on the accuracy of the descriptive and diagnostic analysis carried out earlier. The key objectives of this analysis are:

Provide a statistical model for future predictions
Predicting requirements related to technology and manpower
Risk evaluations
Product, sales, and market conditions-related predictions.
Cash flow predictions

Prescriptive Analysis

The natural progression from the predictive analysis is to provide a prescriptive analysis. This is an expensive analysis to guide businesses regarding the course of action that must be taken for the desired outcome. This data-driven analysis tool is used to provide the:

Strategic analysis –provide a strategy based on where the business needs to head.
Cognitive analysis –using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze and prescribe.

A lot of algorithm-based analytical tools may be required for this analysis and the key objective for this is:

Provide investment decisions
Sales pipeline scores to identify the most probable
Product developments and improvements
Fraud detection
Algorithm recommendations

Predictive and prescriptive analyses are more exhaustive and expensive, hence are employed mostly by big businesses. Business Analysts would be more in demand if they have expertise specialty in these analysis types. Business analysts use much software to retrieve and analyze data. The main software required are;

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) – to gather and manage data provided by many companies like Oracle, SAP, NetSuite, etc.
CRM- (Customer Relationship Management)- to manage customer data. Provided by Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho, etc.
ELT (Extract, load transform) – it’s a data integration platform. Provided by Integrate.io
Project management tools.

Skills Needed for a Successful Business Analytics Career.

Business analysis is the key link between IT and management. To succeed in this profession besides technical skills many soft skills are also essential.

Key Soft Skills:

Communication Skill:

Clear communication is extremely vital for this role, as business analysts are required to communicate with management, clients, developers, and users. Ambiguity in understanding and communication can be detrimental to the business. Also in the post-pandemic world due to virtual interaction in many situations, verbal communication has become equally important as written.

Technical knowledge may provide the tools for performing the task successfully, however, it is more than imperative to be able to communicate the findings and solutions to all levels of management, client, and other stakeholders.

Problem-solving Skills

Analytical and problem-solving aptitude is a must for this job.

Decision-making, Critical thinking, and negotiation skills

Predictive and prescriptive analysis requires decision-making, critical thinking, and strong negotiation skills to communicate and convince the management of the findings.

Presentation skills

The analyst must have decent presentation skills and convincing power. They should not hesitate to communicate with senior management if the finding and solutions are beneficial for the business even though they may seem tough.

Time Management
Team building

A business analyst cannot work in silos and is required to be a key team player and may be required to even lead a team at some point.

Technical skills

Basic understanding of Data analytical tools –SQL, Python, Oracle BD
Analytical skill-data review, gap analysis, forecast
Methodology skills- Six sigma, business process modeling
Industry-related – healthcare, fiancé, etc.

Generic business knowledge is acceptable for an entry-level analyst but to command authority, one must continually update themselves with the specific business stream, competition, latest research, and developments.

Data Insights

Although it is not mandatory for a business analyst to have coding skills, however for a sound understanding of useful data extraction alongside programmers and coders is important. It is highly recommended that business analysts gain a fair understanding of the business sector they are meant to represent and be updated with the latest market trends.

They are usually the main flag bearer of all changes or amendments. These changes could be as small as policy changes or big changes like cost cutting, reducing manpower, or changing the product line and services altogether. BA would need to streamline processes and liaisons between various departments.

A business analyst’s job is very critical. While they are responsible to identify growth factors, the essence of the business must not be lost.

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Educational Qualifications Required to Begin a Business Analyst Career?

Unlike other professions like doctors and engineers, a clear study path to becoming a business analyst is not defined. Since the skills required for this profession are very versatile following study path could be summarized in three simple steps:

Undergraduate degree in BBA / Finance / Accounting.
Gain some work experience in data analytics through affiliations and internships
Proceed for Masters in data management/Business analytics or Business management with a focus on data analytics.

Besides the degree, obtaining Competency Certification in Business Analysis (CCBA) and Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) Certificate can enhance job prospects tremendously. The International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) is the main governing body providing these certificates.

There are eligibility and competency guidelines provided under five main areas of knowledge, planning, monitoring, data collection also known as elicitation, and life cycle management. For the aspiring Business Analysts entry-level certification (ECBA – Entry certificate in business analytics) are also available.

For the India region, various chapters of IIBA are located in

Bangalore – Bangalore IIBA
Chennai – Chennai IIBA
Delhi NCR- New Delhi IIBA
Hyderabad – Hyderabad IIBA
Mumbai – Mumbai IIBA

Which can provide certifications to business analysts.

Progression Path in Business Analytics Career

Skills needed by business analysts are universal, however, processes differ according to the industry, products, services, or organizations they are applied. This makes the profession very interesting, as one could take the learning from one business type and apply it altogether in a different context on another business type.

Starting out, a junior or trainee analyst with 0-2 years of experience would be required to work under the guidance of senior analysts to extract or collate data as instructed. Focusing mainly on the descriptive analysis process. Between 2-5 years, a progression into senior analyst can happen depending on performance and skills.

The senior analyst’s main focus is diagnostic analysis. Progressing to be a lead analyst in the next 6-8 years is required to then focus on predictive and prescriptive analysis types.

The lead analyst will not only be responsible for making decisions based on the data presented by the analyst and reviewed by the senior analyst but also make recommendations for business choices. A further progression could also be to become a product manager and be responsible for a particular product line.

Common Titles in Business Analytics Career

Broadly known as business analysts, some other titles are also commonly used depending on the responsibilities and combination of business functions. So while looking for an opening it is advisable to also consider the following job titles:

Business Process Analyst

Business process analysts gather and analyze data to recommend process improvements. They monitor, measure and provide feedback on the performance of business processes.

Average salary:

The average salary of a Business process analyst is 5.7 lakhs per annum