How to Become a Business Analyst – A Complete Career Guide

The technology is continuously evolving, and the procedure is constantly changing. Every organisation needs to adopt new systems to thrive in this competitive world. Here’s a business analyst who is in charge of understanding the continuously evolving needs of the business while providing technological solutions to improve the processes and systems accordingly. A business analyst is often the link between the business and IT departments.

There is a huge demand for professionals in every organisation who have a comprehensive knowledge of business analysis and completed the relevant certification or degree courses for business analytics. In this article, we will share a complete career guide stating how to become a business analyst.

What Do Business Analysts Do? 

Business analysts are responsible for working in various sectors, using their knowledge to analyse business workflow to optimise and increase the organization’s productivity. Further responsibilities of business analysts are mentioned below:

• Identifying flaws in the organization’s systems, processes, or policies includes a comprehensive examination of the company’s data, methods, and backup data.
• Making suggestions for improvements and recommending them to management.
• Evaluating the efficacy and potential consequences of the improvements.
• Verify the change requirements and start implementing new processes once approved.
• Reporting the results based on their analysis to the management and other relevant people.
• Record and monitor the effectiveness of changes made in the workflows.

To communicate the results effectively with internal departments and stakeholders, a business analyst must have complete knowledge of the organization and industry, related trends, and business practices. Their goal is to bring positive change to the organization by lowering costs, increasing efficiency, identifying new profitable opportunities, and finding other beneficial ways to change the business’s functionality.

They accomplish their role by collaborating with the IT department on developing technological systems that, when tested and assessed, will demonstrate an increase in the business’ efficiency and profitability by comparing data sets collected before and after implementation.

Average Salary of Business Analyst

The salary package of a business analyst is highly competitive and depends on the experience they earned, the type of industry, geographical location, and the organization’s size. The average salary package lies in between the range of $22,000 to $157,000. 

The career of business analysts moves horizontally, depending on their skills and experience. As a business analyst, your career path can lead you to titles such as senior business analyst, business analyst specialist in specific areas, business manager, business architect, enterprise architect, and director/VP-level positions.

Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Business Analyst

Suppose you are planning to start your career in business analysis and are willing to become a professional business analyst. In that case, you need to follow some simple career steps that are mentioned below for your reference: 

1. Education

First, you must equip yourself with complete knowledge about the field and the process involved in efficiently analysing the business by educating yourself with a relevant degree, certificate, or diploma. Obtain a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Finance, or Accounting, focusing on computer programming and business practices. Both business and IT skills will be required to become business analytics. You can learn the following abilities while pursuing your degree:

• Documenting a business case.
• Analyzing and interpreting Business workflow systems.
• Elicitation (offering preferred methods and how they would benefit the organization to stakeholders in an intelligible manner).
• How to use various business modelling tools and methodologies.

2. Get Practical Experience

To attain real-world experience in the business analysis field, you should join volunteer roles or internship programs before looking for a full-time job as a Business analyst. Joining internships is key to enriching your future career opportunities and helping you in deciding a specific role to do as a business analyst.

3. Continue Learning 

Never stop learning even when you have successfully joined an organization as an intern, volunteer, or full-time person. To keep up with the industry trend and understand the market deeply, you need to learn daily. You may consider obtaining professional certifications or other courses for business analysts, such as the PG certificate program in Business Analytics and Data Science, for an extra level of legitimacy.

4. Develop a Business Analytics Portfolio to Showcase Your Work

Once you have developed the required skills and attained a good experience, it’s crucial to display them by putting the information about your education and experience you’ve developed and the code you’ve written (even as part of your coursework) up on GitHub or a similar online portal to show what you can do and begin building your professional portfolio. 

Required Skills To Become A Business Analyst

To become an influential business analyst, an individual must have a combination of soft and hard skills, including communication, technical, analytical, critical thinking, problem-solving, and research skills. A business analyst must have the ability to hone in on specific issues that requires information mining, documentation analysis, making procedural observations, and speaking with subject matter experts.

Conclusion

Business Analyst is the highest paying job role and has tremendous career scope in the future. Suppose you are a working professional looking to upgrade the skills that can help you make a better career for a better future. In that case, you can pursue an online certificate program in business analytics and become a professional business analyst. The Hero Group, one of the biggest business houses in India, introduced Hero Vired as a premium learning company offering industry-relevant programs and world-class partnerships to create the change-makers of tomorrow.