What is BCS Business Analysis?
BCS Business Analysis refers to a set of professional certifications aimed at business analysts.
Earning your BCS Business Analysis certification shows that you’ve met the minimum standard of competence in business analysis as determined by the BCS. A BCS BA qualification is seen by many as an industry-standard in the profession.
Professional certification is the first step for many in becoming a practicing business analyst. BCS qualifications in particular carry a lot of weight as they are one of the oldest, most widely used and most well-recognized BA certifications on the market (see ISEB).
Read on to find out more about the roles of a business analyst, the qualifications needed and the history of both The BCS and ISEB.
What do business analysts (BA) do?
Business analysts bridge the gap between the highly technical IT aspects and those without technical know-how. BAs assess processes, work with users to determine business requirements and deliver reports to managers and stakeholders. BAs are often charged with finding solutions to business problems.
Half of a business analysts’ job is to know where to find relevant information that can be used to improve business practices, the other half is presenting this information to relevant parties in ways they can understand and use.
Done right, BAs help business leaders understand how to enact data-driven changes to improve products, services and software, adding value to the business. They must also figure out which decisions are financially and functionally feasible to help prevent business leaders from making costly investments that don’t provide adequate returns on investments.
Depending on the role, business analysts work with different data sets gathered through sales reports, personal interviews, customer feedback and more to improve a wide range of products or services.
Business analysts can sometimes fall under the category of ‘change managers’ and often work with dedicated change managers. The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) states:
"[Business analysis] is a disciplined approach for introducing and managing change to organizations, whether they are for-profit businesses, governments, or non-profits.
Business analyst roles
BAs have an ever-growing list of responsibilities. As such, many businesses have created teams that revolve around the duties and roles of their BAs, either creating product manager positions that work with BAs or having teams of BS reporting to them.
BAs may be assigned to several projects at a time if the projects are small, or a single project if it’s complex.
Business analysts are tasked with creating new models of operation that support business goals and decisions by working closely with financial and IT teams, developing strategies that improve development and optimize costs.
To be successful, they need a good understanding of regulatory and reporting requirements, as well as industry knowledge to aid forecasting, budgeting and KPI’s.
The general tasks of a BA may include:
- Creating a detailed analysis of business operations, outlining problems and proposing potential solutions.
- Creating budgets and forecasts.
- Monitoring daily business operations.
- Reporting to management.
- Defining requirements and relating them back to stakeholders.
BAs need to elicit requirements, then use those to understand what the client really wants. To do so they must ask: “What do the systems need to do, how do they do it and who do we need to get input from?”
The role of a business analyst is constantly changing. Every product, project and business will have different issues that BAs must address.
