What is Business Analysis?
The term business analysis is very suggestive of the work it entails. It can be understood as a research discipline that helps to analyse the business, figuring out the needs and requirements in the process and designing solutions that address those needs and helps the business to grow in a sustainable manner.
Business analysis is the key to developing a robust framework before initiating any big project. It takes the holistic view of every aspect of the business and other indirect factors that might have an influence over the functioning of the business. It also considers the technical aspects, such as the software development component of the business. Solutions to business problems might include process improvement, strategic planning and policy development, development of software-systems, etc.
How Does Business Analysis Help?
We have established what business analysis means, now let’s look into how it adds value to an organization.
• The business analysis process takes a holistic view of the business and helps you in understanding the organizational structure and other business dynamics.
• It helps stakeholders in understanding the challenges that the business faces and how to overcome those hurdles strategically.
• The process of business analysis is solution-driven and helps in remedying any shortcomings identified during the analysis of the business.
• The business analysis process is not just limited to providing challenges to existing problems faced by the organization but it also helps in suggesting implementing new ideas and strategies that can help the business to perform better.
Given the importance of business analysis in the contemporary landscape, the vocation of Business analyst has been popular among the workforce. Business analysis certification courses are gaining popularity with the increased demand for Business analysts.
Major Trends in Business Analysis
The past decade has been all about bringing revolutionary changes to the masses and making it mainstream. Digitization has been on an unprecedented scale and data has been the driving force of every other industry that leverages cutting-edge technology to operate. With the proliferation of start-ups, the need to analyze and use bulk data to stay ahead in the competition has never been high. Given the high intensity of data, manual data processing could take decades to gain something useful. Here comes the business intelligence industry into the picture saving the day for the businesses quite literally. Let’s talk about the major Business Analysis trends in the contemporary.
Data Quality Management (DQM)
Every organization is on the run to leverage data and gain actionable insights for their businesses, there is a significant need to record data. It’s not always known beforehand what data might be useful in the future so every form of data is collected and stored. Analysis carried out using such a huge chunk of data from different sources might not produce conclusive results and therefore, the need for data quality management today is paramount. The context in which data is being stored to use is equally important, the need for using high-quality data to carry out business analysis has never been higher.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been the buzzword in the technology industry today. Artificial intelligence is all about teaching machines to carry out complex tasks that earlier required human intelligence and intervention. Organizations today are not just limited to using historical knowledge in decision making, real-time information is being taken into consideration to make valuable decisions for the sustainability of the business, thanks to AI. The Business Analysts also leverage AI in obtaining improved data insights, AI adds value by automatically analyzing big piles of data to give you actionable and contextual insights.
Data Governance
The field of data science is fairly new; given the demand for data is creating cutting edge technical solutions to problems the need to regulate and govern the use of data is significant. The last few years have shown high rates of cybercrime that ranges from identity theft to financial losses. The need to preserve the privacy of the people who might be at risk by putting out personal information is the utmost. Recognizing these needs, companies have prioritized the governance of data and many of them have already established guidelines regarding the use of data and have limited access to a few members of the organization.
Also Read: What are Business Analysis Techniques
