Every organization employs business analysts through different titles, business units, reporting structure, etc. What I often found was a significant disconnect among the duties, organizational goals and qualifications of the employees involved. Here I am not referring to individual qualifications, instead how they fit in with the management’s vision of applied analytics to achieve organizational goals.
I have had financial analysts performing the tasks of a marketing analyst, a web analyst performing the task of a business analyst and so on.
I believe there are 3 key considerations in improving the effectiveness of a business analyst to an organization:
- Qualifications – a business analyst should be numbers savvy, have keen business acumen and be able to visualize and theorize (this is often the most ignored). However trivial this may sound, it is more common than one would imagine.
- Clear goal definition – business unit heads should clearly define the business analysts’ roles, More importantly, they should resist the temptation to “take on more” because the organization is budget constrained and analyst is the “closest fit” to the functional skills needed for say, a tech analyst, tagging/implementation/Q&A analysts, etc. This only helps to dilute the impact a pure thinker and data expert can provide to analyzing and improving the business operations.
- Direction from management – managers should provide continuous direction and help channelize the theories on business performance that analysts come up with based on their continuous interaction with data. The challenge is to stay focused on organization goals, identify high-impact analysis/recommendations and prioritize projects with clear ROI and benefits.
Being in a large organization, I have struggled with all of the above, which resulted in not being able to hire/retain good talent, and/or generate and apply good analytical insights to test our theories.
The issues in achieving the maximum efficiencies are sometime genuine, but without a qualified analyst, clear goals and leadership, we are not giving ourselves a fair shot at tackling them. Have a story? Share your experiences of how these hurdles were overcome in your organizations.
