An old friend from my college days called me few days back. We generally talked about life and how are things going, the professional life discussions came up. She was looking for a change of organization and requested to check with me if I am aware of any appropriate openings for her in my network. She has built a great professional career as a business analyst over last 10 years, prior to which she was in a technical role.
She took couple of interviews with prospective organizations. Each time, both the organizations perceived the BA role as an additional cost in the project. They had to staff the position as the clients mandated the positions. She was clearly upset with this mindset. “Tell me, how do I show the value add of a BA in the project? How do I prove my worth to the organization? How do we change this mindset?” Unfortunately, many organizations still believe that BAs are only for project documentation. They perceive BAs spending most of their time in meetings and thus delaying the project. They believe only real work lies in writing code, nothing more.
That’s when I realized that this is something that we business analysts need to constantly show the value add of a business analyst to the project sponsor / client. Business analyst as a role exists to solve business problems, create a positive change, design and describe solutions that deliver value and enhance the return on investment.
Following are 10 definite ways Business Analysts add value to their organizations.
- Enhancing organizational performance by adopting new technologies
- Increasing organizational revenue through technology
- Cost reduction through automation
- Delivering business value quickly through correct prioritization
- Enhance customer satisfaction through better product quality
- Saving organizational resources through requirements validation
- Saving organizational resources through requirements reuse
- Enhancing probability of solution success
- Protecting solution from malicious elements
- Delivering projects on time with complete requirements
Let’s take a brief look at each of the value adds.
1. Enhancing organizational performance by adopting new technologies
Technology is changing at a very rapid pace and providing unthinkable opportunities to organizations. Things that was considered near impossible even a decade back is now possible today because of technology. Organizations can reach out to customers throughout the world, can serve customers throughout the world, can use resources from around the world and the possibilities are really endless. As business analysts, we have the advantage of scanning the environment for new technologies and understanding how the new technologies can be leveraged to improve business outcomes.
2. Increasing organizational revenue through technology
Couple of decades back, technology did not play a significant role in sales process of an organization. With digital marketing, probably organization’s sales process will be driven largely by digital technologies than traditional advertisement media. Business analysts have an advantage that they understand business and they understand the technology. They can make the organization take advantage of advances in digital marketing technologies to enhance its sales and revenue.
3. Cost reduction through automation
Traditionally most business analysts have focused on cost reduction through automation which continues to be of value to organization. Any process which is repeatable and predictable should be automated so that valuable human resources can be released to perform tasks which are higher in terms of value.
Many of our customers at Adaptive US write to us how they have been able to save a lot of manual effort in testing/data entry as well as customer communication by simple automations in tools such as Google, MS Excel, Data Load etc
4. Delivering business value quickly through correct prioritization
Business analysts focus on requirements prioritization. This ensures that requirements with higher value are implemented first and the business gets the benefit of the solution as early as possible.
5. Enhance customer satisfaction through better product quality
Studies after studies have proven that close to 50% of customer reported defects origin in requirements phase. Good BAs coupled with good BA process ensures high quality requirements and subsequently a high quality product as well.
6. Saving organizational resources through requirements validation
Business analysts ensure that any requirement getting implemented in the project add significant value to the organization. They evaluate requirements having taken a close look at the return on the investment.
This ensures that the organizational resources are conserved and not spent on features which do not add value to the organization.
7. Saving organizational resources through requirements reuse
Requirement reuse can save a significant amount of money for organizations. In most organizations, it's often observed that the same features are developed multiple times by multiple teams. Any feature developed consumes significant resources as it is maintained over a long period of time. Focusing on requirements reuse by Business analysts can reduce the amount of development that needs to be done by the organization. At the same time, reused components tend to be of better quality than components being developed again and again from scratch.
8. Enhancing solution success probability
The primary customer for the business analysts are the stakeholder and the users of the system. Thus their critical success factor is the satisfaction index of the users and the usability metrics of the system. Hence it’s natural for the business analysts to try to make the solution as user friendly as possible. They also try to increase stakeholders support on the proposed solutions. This ensures that the chance of the solution delivering better value is higher.
9. Protecting solution from malicious elements
In today's interconnected world, systems can be attacked by both internal and external elements. Business analysts ensure that the information security aspect for the applications is taken care in the form of non-functional requirements. Hence they ensure the system being protected against malicious attacks.
10. Delivering projects on time with correct and complete requirements
Business analysts strive to collect requirements which are correct and complete. This reduces the number of requirement changes one would see when the system is rolled out. This way we get the system up and running with high stakeholder satisfaction in the very first time.
To summarize as a business analyst you are improving the bottom line and ROI of the organization.
Having a business analyst is in the project is in the best interest of the project as well as the organization.
Like it’s rightly said “A penny saved is a penny earned” each small saving in effort and budget is adding its effect to the bottom line.
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Author: Ananya (Ann) Pani, Co-Founder, Adaptive US
Ananya's mission is to help business analysts to build successful professional careers. She has touched the lives of 5000+ Business Analysis professionals in their skill development journey and helped them unleash their true potential and leverage it to achieve their dream career.
She co-founded Adaptive US, a Business analysis skill development organization working with professionals from 80+ countries in skyrocketing their BA career and staying ahead of the game.
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She is a strong supporter of encouraging women workforce in technology and bringing women back to work after long career breaks. 70% of Adaptive's workforce is working moms who have been brought back to work after a career break due to family and other priorities.
She is enthusiastic about fitness, a regular runner, and takes keen interest in imparting value based education to children, building a greener and healthier world.
Please write to Ann if your thoughts are in sync with hers or if they spark a thought in you.