Gaining Real-World Experience and Skills

In the first part, we covered the fundamentals of what is a business analyst (BA) role. Now, we are moving on to the real-world commensurate actions and experiences that will help you become a business analyst. The emphasis will be on acquiring practical experience, enhancing your skills, and using these skills in practice.

Step 1: Understand the Industry and Business Environment

Before getting into the technique or even any specific tool for business analysis, the first thing that must be clear is the business environment they will be working in. Each industry comes with its own problems; being a BA, one must understand such differences.

For instance: An Insight into the E-commerce sector Issues, Challenges, and Rewards.

Let’s say there is an opportunity to work as a BA at one of the e-commerce companies that you probably be interested in. The first thing to do, in this case, will be to explore the e-commerce market. Consider concepts such as m-commerce or personalization, or even same-day delivery. You would also have to look into particular issues such as inventory management across various distribution centers or improving customer churn.

Relating separately to such problems allows voicing appropriate ideas and finding ways to implement them.

How to get this knowledge

Read reports from large players in the industry (e.g. for e-commerce read reports of Shopify or McKinsey). Visit such conferences as eCommerce Expo to shake hands with hired people and hear out their problems.

Moving on Stage 2: Build Practical Experience for Essential Technical Skills.

Of course, it is unlikely that a business analyst will be required to become a programmer. However, virtually every business analyst will need some basic knowledge of technical tools connected to data analysis, process mapping, or delivering a solution. There is no need for abstract metrics. Rather, search for solutions that enable you to process and analyze information, design process flows and monitor progress on the implementation of activities.

Illustration: Implementation of Excel in Solving Actual Business Problems

To illustrate, assume that you work with a small retail company and it has a problem of managing inventory. You see that there are times when there are stock outs of some products whereas some others do not leave the warehouse for months. This makes it possible to come up with an analysis of how inventory turns and how it can be improved. You find out that a given category of item is more sought after during a particular period of the year. Therefore more orders should be made for those items during that period and the slow moving items orders cut back.

This simple but very effective analysis will help one maintain a certain optimal level of inventory and optimize on profits.

Certifications to consider:
Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA)
Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)

Tools to focus on

• Excel: Learn basic data analysis then practice building pivot tables and creating graphs.
• SQL: This is to be used for extracting raw data from the database to answer the questions at hand. For example, you could obtain data on customer purchases to analyze their pattern of purchase.

Step 3: Tackling Small Business Problems for Experience Growth

To get practical experience, one should begin with small problems, which one is able to finish. You don’t need to be in a formal BA role to do this. Let’s say you are currently working, find a problem within the organization and tackle it. If you are not, ask a friend who owns a business or a local charity if you can help them.

Example: Improving the Process of Customer Onboarding in a Small Company.

Let’s say you have a friend who owns a small software house and they have problems with onboarding clients. At the moment, there are several emails exchanged, ‘customers’ information is entered in manually, and some customers get lost. An example of this is how you could step in as a business analyst and help them decide how best to build the onboarding process using Lucidchart tools.

Then you figure out that it is the bottlenecks that are the problem and you recommend the use of a CRM system such as HubSpot. This low-level automation helps decrease mistakes in such processes, increases customers’ satisfaction, and cuts down hours of manual work done by the business in a week.

Amending titles or moving furniture is not advisable in this case because it is not clear which clients’. It is better to shift to Guifo because Oyo followed the frequent customers and promised to prolong the courtesy within Canada. They further intend to lessen the dependence on the North American market and chase other customers.

What is the way to get this experience: Identify inefficiencies in the current role, no matter how unrelated it is to business analysis.

Give some time to freelance or volunteer work. Use your skills for the good of process improvement in small firms or charities.

Step 4: Accumulate Forms of Practical Work Done

In such a case, the portfolio becomes important to every potential employer since it outlines what the candidate has been able to do in practice. As you finish more and more projects (however half). Make a video of what you did and how it went. It does not necessarily have to be formal business analyst roles, any situation where you were involved in resolution of a problem counts.

Example: Setting Up Automated Sales Reporting for Local Retail Outlet

Let us put the story that you assisted a small community marketplace which had weekly sales reports manually made. You made reports every week for sales but linked it with the old obsolete stock as it can be a quick overview by getting the summary page of one report rather than hunting for odft and image scans and trying to organize them in bulks, no reports were taken off until restocking was needed. Thus the retail outlet saves 2 hours weekly and as such can make decision about restocking rather quicker.

In your portfolio, you would document

The problem is reporting sales, and doing so in an old-fashioned manner, i.e., by hand and over several weeks’ worth of effort).

The solution is making Reports, this time using excel, avoiding the manual bit of reporting).

The outcome (Time saved, improved decision-making).

Also, do not forget to add images, workflow and results of your work in the portfolio. Thus, prospective employers will know about your skills in practice.

Step 5: Shadowing Business Analysts – Gain Experience Through Shadowing

Nothing builds understanding as to what a business analyst does like watching someone do that job as opposed to reading about it. It is possible to accomplish this by following an experienced BA or getting involved in projects with the participation of a BA.

Example: Shadowing a BA in the Healthcare Industry

Let’s state that you have a project management post in a healthcare organization but intend to rise to business analysis. There is a business analyst on your team who is focused on making the process of collecting patient data more efficient. You request to shadow them because they seem to lead a productive project by bringing together stakeholders, requirements, and solutions testing.

From this experience, you understand the dynamics of working in large cross-functional projects and the need for effective communication if different teams work on a project.

How to find opportunities

Request that you be part of meetings or any other projects which involve business analysts.

Participate in projects that span more than one department so that you are able to work with various teams.

Certifications to consider:
Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA)
Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)

Step 6: Taking Stretch Assignments – Program

However, if you are already performing a role that isn’t a business analysis, request an extension at work which encompasses BA tasks. For example, this may consist of mapping flows, analyzing data, managing clients, etc.

Example: Assessing the Efficiency of Call Centres in the Customer Support Industry.

Picture yourself in customer service, and the customers on your team continuously complain about delays. You recommend performing a call volume analysis to check busy hours and how often customers call with the same concern. Upon analyzing the call data, you discover that most of them consist of routine account changes which an IVR system could serve better.

Such work was proposed to be handled through an addition of a self-service option on the company’s web pages. Once this turn is made, the average annual wait that customers experience reduces by twenty five percent and customer retention, satisfaction levels increases.

In conclusion, this stretch assignment provides you with real exposure to data analysis, solution development and process improvement activities which are the essential role of a business analyst.

Step 7: Continuous Learning and Certification

Although behavioural accounts and real work are essential in any career, you will have to learn some theory and their associated certificates as a validation of such work experience. This does not simply raise one’s profile but it also provides a pathway to getting higher positions.

Sample: Obtaining a Qualification Milk Earned towards a Designation

Once you have obtained some hands-on experience by participating in workplace problem-solving activities, you make a decision to study the Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA). This officially endorses your knowledge and gives you an edge in the job market. Your practical experience combined with the certification you attained makes it possible for you to seek employment as a business analyst on a permanent basis.

Conclusion

There is no quick way to become a business analyst and instead requires some time, effort, and experience in addressing real-life problems, acquiring technical expertise, and creating a decent portfolio. Each of them, be it preparing reports for a small company or helping a senior BA in a project, is invaluable in building your competence and confidence in this amazing field. To know more about he certification click on below link-

FOR ECBA : https://bit.ly/3VNlXWC

FOR CBAP : https://bit.ly/3POO57U

FOR CCBA: https://bit.ly/3PONTpc

Now, stay with us because in the next part of this series, we are going to discuss how you can develop specializations within business analysis and what are the possible career paths, from data analysis to product management.