Conducting OK business analysis is easy but conducting excellent analysis is a whole other ballgame! Improve your skills with these six easy tips.
There’s no shortage of information on the web about business analysis frameworks, or even how to use them. As a result, conducting OK business analysis is easy enough with the many step-by-step guides that are out there. However, conducting excellent business analysis is a whole other ballgame! In this article, we’ll be giving you some tips to help improve your skills as a business analyst.
1. Know Why You Are Looking
One of the easiest changes you can make in your business analysis is to know why you are doing so. Are you simply doing a routine business check-up, or are you looking to find the cause of something in particular? If it turns out that it wasn’t you that decided to conduct business analysis, then ask whoever assigned you the task. Once you know what the purpose of your analysis is, you can begin to focus on some of the more important factors without any extra effort.
2. Use A Variety of Tools
Business analysts have a wide variety of different tools available to them -- so many so that it’s almost impossible not to forget about a few of them. If you want to step up your game as a business analyst, then be sure to combine a number of tools and techniques to get the ‘biggest picture’ you can. Some of our favorites are PESTLE analysis, SWOT analysis, and Porter’s Five Forces analysis. Do you have your own stash of tools you use for business analysis? Be sure to share them in the comments section below.
3. Consider Positives and Negatives
While you might impress your superiors or feel better yourself if your business analysis only shows that everything is operating smoothly, you can become a much better business analyst just by equally weighing the positives and negatives. Exploring both sides of the picture will allow your organization to make use of what they are good at, and work on what they are poor at.
4. Look for Underlying Causes
If you see that your organization is performing poorly because it is not making enough sales, don’t just stop there: dig deeper! Try to find out why your products aren’t selling -- are you not making enough impressions with your advertisements? Is your sales funnel poorly built? In general, you should look to find the underlying causes for different problems, not just the problems themselves. If you can fix the root cause once and for all, you won’t have to keep undoing the damage it does.
5. Understand Your Organization
It’s also very important to have a deep understanding of your organization when carrying out business analysis. You should know what the primary goals and pitfalls of your business are, so you know where to look for opportunities and what to look out for otherwise. Understanding your organization will also help you to provide conclusions that are useful in pursuing the mission that your business set out to achieve.
6. Present Conclusions Meaningfully
Finally, you should make sure that the conclusions you end up with are appropriate, understandable, and as a result, meaningful. If this means converting raw data into more natural visuals, or filtering out some of the less relevant fruits of your work, then be sure to do so. Not only will this allow you to come back to your analysis and understand it with more ease, but it will also make life easier for everybody who has to review the results.
As you can see, it’s not too hard to improve your business analysis skills with these six easy tips. Although, before you begin applying these tips, you should definitely read up some more about the basics of business analysis before continuing.
Have you got more advice to becoming a better business analyst? Do share it down below, along with your other questions and comments.