Business Analytics Career: Everything you need to know

The business has ruled the world for decades. People who understood economics, finance, business tactics have always been well set up in the business. Most of the organizations, from top MNC’s to NGO’s, have become heavily reliant on big data and they have access to information like user experience, web traffic or client satisfaction this has made business analytics one of the most “sexiest jobs of the 21st century”, and the glamour of the business analytics career hasn’t decreased at all.

1. Who is a Business Analyst?
2. What do Business Analysts do?
3. Soft Skills for Business Analysts
4. Technical Skills for Business Analysts
5. How to become a Business Analyst?
6. Top Business Analytics Careers
7. Advantages of Business Analytics Careers
8. Get started with a Business Analytics Career

Who is a Business Analyst?

A business analyst can be defined as the guide to improve the business process, products, services and software through data analysis. The goal of the business analyst is to work for either businesses or clients by analyzing the problems and improving the overall business by using technologies.

What Do Business Analysts Do?

Business analysts play a critical role in business as they provide direction and support to the business’s bottom line and understand the need for both technical and business skills and serve as translators. They also help in converting technical jargon into more user-friendly terms for management and non-technical stakeholders. 

The business analyst must have specific skills to real the goals faster and find the solution. If you wish to take up a business analytics career, make sure you have specific skills as mentioned below:

Soft skills for Business Analytics

Problem Solver: The job of the business analyst is not only to data-mine but also to identify the problem and find out the acceptable solution 

Critical thought process: Business analyst has to scrutinize the data which they have collected. Each and every part of the data has to be critically analyzed to solve the problem.

Communication: Though it sounds very non -technical, the business analyst must have good communication skills to convey their ideas, information to their teammates.

Technical skills for business analytics

Programming Skills: With the advent of technology the amount of data that flows in is large and digital, so business analyst professional should not only have skills in data miming but also in programming. 

SQL : SQL is one of the most important tools for analytics professional as they write queries to extract the data from the transactions database and develop visualizations to present to stakeholders.

Statistical languages: Knowledge of programming languages like R and Python can be beneficial when analyzing big data sets, but is not vital.

Statistical software: Statistical software such as SPSS, SAS, Sage, Mathematica, and even Excel can be used when analyzing data.

How to become a business analyst?

To become a business analyst follow these 4 steps:

1. Earn a bachelor’s degree: A bachelor’s degree is a must to enter this field. Often students come from the accounting, finance or business administration and engineering field to pursue their career in business analytics.

2. Supplement your undergraduate education with an advanced degree in business analytics, data science, statistics, finance or economics: You may have to complete an advanced degree in business analytics or an MBA program to pursue a business analytics position at a management level. Consider enrolling in a master’s in business analytics or a master’s in business administration program to stand out in the crowd.

3. Get Certified:  Graduates can earn certifications to gain critical supplementary knowledge and those who are advancing to a new position can earn these certifications to highlight their competency. There are many courses available online from top universities that generally last for weeks.

4.Gain real-world experience: If you are a fresher get an early jump by pursuing summer internships in related fields.

Top Business Analytics Careers

Business analytics careers have a wide range of entry-level prospects and leadership positions. These roles are described in detail below.

Data architect: Data architect highly technical role that involves the usage of extensive programming tools to design secure data frameworks and ensuring the data is accessible to the organization.

Statistician: Statisticians evaluate information from surveys and experiments in order to help organizations to bring out the best solution to the problem.

Data analyst: Data analysts gather and evaluate the data in order to provide clear insights on improving the business strategy.

Senior Data Analyst: Senior data analysts oversee a small team of analysts who helps in developing the report based on data insights, and provide maintenance and support to data systems as needed.

Analytics Manager: Analytics managers mainly concentrate on extracting information, statistical analysis to data sets and develops end-user reports that effectively communicate findings.

A free statistical analysis course will help you get started with the concepts of statistical analysis.

Principal Data Analyst: Principal data analysts often take on a leadership role in an organization to design complex data systems and develop an intricate understanding of an organization’s business needs.

Analytics Director: Analytics directors supervise entire teams of business analysts and guide these professionals to process and cumulate their various data-based conclusions into actionable strategies.

Job Description of Business Analyst 

Business Analysts lead market analyses. Here is the set of responsibilities of business analysts: 

• Making business examination, laying out problems and finding out solutions for a business. 
• Planning and forecasting 
• Budgeting and observing 
• Financial modelling 
• Change Analysis 
• Evaluating 
• Reporting 

Advantages of Business Analytics

Learn Advanced technology: Business analytics requires third-party software to decrypt hordes of data. However, in order to make the best use of these software’s, professionals must require training and must keep an eye on trending technologies. These professionals should also learn advanced machine languages, like Python, which can be used to write problem-solving scripts.

Better Decision Making: Business Analytics is a subset of data science. This uses business-related knowledge to grasp actionable intelligence from raw data. Since these collected data are of the highest accuracy, this can be used to make very specific and profitable decisions that will help the business grow.

 Relevant Job Sector: Companies are looking to use machines and automating most of their work. Behind this automation, will always require a human being to maintain and automate a task in a given manner, this makes it a very secure job.

High Salaries: This field has become an inevitable part of the organizations, they are looking for skilled professionals to execute their work and ready to pay the highest salaries. Therefore, any professional who has come to this field will be picked up by companies and are paid high salaries for their expertise.

3 Reasons to consider while pursuing a career in business analytics

• The supply is still lower than the demand
• Business analytics can be applied to any industry and is an easy switch from other careers
• A career in business analytics is dynamic and makes room for professional development

Get Started in a Business Analytics career with these courses and books

Here are some recommended resources to learn business analytics.

Online Courses:

• PG Program in Business Analytics: This business analytics online course will help you learn the analytical skills along-with the technical skills required for you to build a successful career in Business Analytics. The course is conducted online over a span of 12-months, post which you will receive a certificate from Texas McCombs.

Business Analytics Books:

• Business Analytics: The Science of Data-Driven Decision Making
• A Practitioner’s Guide to Business Analytics: Using Data Analysis Tools to Improve Your Organization’s Decision Making and Strategy
• Behind Every Good Decision: How Anyone Can Use Business Analytics to Turn Data into Profitable Insight
• Business Analytics
• Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Business Analysts FAQ’s 

1. What are the skills required for business analytics?

Ans: Skills required for business analytics is as follows:

• A good communicator
• Inquisitive
• Problem solver
• Critical thinker
• Visualizer
• Good at programming

2. Is business analytics a growing career?

Ans: Yes, business analytics a growing career. Right from the top 10 fortune industries to small companies are depending on data. This is enough to understand that business analytics a growing career.

3. How do I start a career in business analytics?

Ans: To start a career in business analytics, one must have an undergraduate degree, and supplement the primary knowledge with certification courses, take up an internship to get real-time experience. These are the ways to start your career in business analytics.

4. What do you learn in business analytics?

Ans: Business analytics involves analyzing data about a business’s past performance. One can learn how to make decisions and bring a suitable solution to the problem and can learn advanced technologies.

5. What do Business Analysts do?

Ans: Business analysts work with organisations to help them in identifying opportunities for improvement in business operations, designing or modifying business systems, solving business problems and finding technical solutions.

6. What is the average salary of a Business Analytics professional?

Ans: Average Business Analyst salary is around Rs 606,574 according to payscale.

7. What are some excellent Business Analytics career opportunities?

Ans:
Some of the excellent business analytics career Opportunities are: 

• Machine learning engineer
• Research Analyst
• Data architect 
• Statistician 
• Data Analyst
• Chief data officer (CDO)
• Application architect