Role of Business Analyst in an Organization

Business Analyst is a very important role in any industry; BA lays the foundation for successful project implementation and the success of the organization. He is the person who will talk to the client, take requirements, understand the business process of the client and convert them into the respective documents which will be used by the Stake holders, Project Managers, Technical Team and End users. 

Every Organization needs a Business Analyst to analyze the business requirements at the Initial stage to the Production and Maintenance also. The BA is the very important person for the every organization for projects implementations.

The BA is the one who involved in all the phases of the Project implementation and have more knowledge on the different industry verticals which is very essential.

Few Business Analysts are included in Pre-Sales activities also.

The important phases that Business Analyst involved in are:

Pre – Sales Activities:

• Product demonstration: Based on the first client call, BA will configured the respective system (CRM/ERP/ECM etc.) with master data, configure required business workflows and demonstrate to clients in the system.

• Preparing Proposals: Based on the Product demonstrations, the BA will define the estimate time for the complete project implementation. The complete requirement should be divided into multiple modules, so that the BA can estimate the time correctly.

• Gap Analysis: Comparing two systems old system and new system (which is going to be implemented) in order to determine the difference or “gap” that exists between them.  

• System Study: System study is conducted with the help of the System administrators (Linux/Unix administrators).

Project Implementation:

• Project Initiation: In this phase, the Business Analyst covers the High level Project Scope, Milestones and Objectives of the project.

• Extract Requirements: In this phase, the BA should gather the detailed requirements and have very clear understanding on the requirements to implement those requirements in the system. He is the one who has to explain those requirements to the Project Managers (some times) and Technical team.

• Deep Analysis and Documentation: Business Analyst should keep analyzing the requirements, so that simple requirement is not missed. All the requirements should be documented in respective documents like System Requirements Specifications, Functional Specifications, Technical Specifications, etc in iterative approach.

• Communicate Business Requirements to Technical Team: The entire business requirement should be explained very clearly to the technical team, as they will be doing coding for the system based on the requirements explained by the Business Analyst.

• Verify the solutions meet the requirements: BA should be involved in the project even after the technical team takes over for usability issues and to assure that the requirements are being satisfied. BA also used to write and review Test cases and work closely with QA team and to assist with the entire testing process.

• After Project Implementation: The Business Analyst should give support to the end users, helping the end users in using the system and also the change management process for new requirement/enhancements for next release/version.

If the Business Analyst has Technical knowledge, he will be also performing Project Lead roles and responsibilities, this will give more exposure to the Business Analyst. Most of the times, the Business Analyst will be involved in Pre-Sales and Project Implementation activities.