A job as a business analyst (BA) might be right for you if data and how it relates to business processes fascinate you. You can spend your days delving into numbers and coming up with insights thanks to business analysis. To succeed, you must fully understand your data. But there's much more to it than that, as knowledgeable business analysts would attest. It's essential to have the ability to make data engaging for people, especially those in management.
The following are what separates a top analyst from the competition.
1. They know their data
Data is at the foundation of what a business analyst does: You’re expected to provide data-driven advice on how your business needs to grow and adapt. That doesn’t mean just throwing numbers into a spreadsheet; it means understanding where that data comes from and how it was gathered before digging into it and looking for insights.
2. They know their business
But data is only the beginning of what a business analyst does. The real heart of the BA’s role is understanding how their business works so they can apply the lessons from data to improve things, and it’s important not to lose sight of that as you dive deep into data science.
3. They communicate well
Those analysts that Travis butted heads with seemed to be missing a key skill in the BA’s toolkit: the ability to communicate effectively with other team members. It’s not an uncommon gap, but it’s an unfortunate one.
4. They don’t make themselves indispensable
Remember that your goal is ultimately to help your team members do their job better, with a better understanding of the data that underlies their business, and better processes for acting on that new understanding. That means working directly with those team members to make sure you understand how they do their jobs — and they understand how those jobs will change.
5. They adjust when things go wrong
More often than not, business analysts will run into hiccups, and when they do, they need to learn to adjust on the fly.
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