Business Analyst
A business analyst bridges business needs and technical solutions by gathering requirements, analyzing processes, and ensuring delivered solutions meet organizational objectives.
Read summarized version with
What is a Business Analyst?
A business analyst (BA) acts as the crucial link between business stakeholders and technical teams. The BABOK Guide defines a business analyst as anyone performing business analysis tasks, regardless of their actual job title. In practice, these professionals dig into organizational business processes, evaluate business models, and document requirements to make sure technology solutions actually address what the business needs.
The business analyst role has grown more important across industries like finance, healthcare, retail, education, and government. Organizations chasing digital transformation and operational excellence rely on business analysts to turn complex business needs into clear technical requirements. It takes a mix of analytical thinking, strong communication, and domain knowledge to make projects succeed.
You'll typically find business analysts working across IT, operations, marketing, and finance. They pinpoint problems, crunch data, and suggest improvements that can save money, streamline operations, or make customers happier.
Key Characteristics of Business Analysts
- Requirements Expertise: Business analysts are skilled at pulling out, analyzing, and documenting business and functional requirements through stakeholder interviews, workshops, and simply watching how processes work. They often consult with subject matter experts to ensure accuracy.
- Analytical Thinking: BAs look at data, spot patterns, and pick apart processes to find inefficiencies, gaps, and places where things could work better.
- Communication Bridge: They're the translators. Technical jargon becomes plain English for business folks, and business needs get reframed for developers. Everyone ends up on the same page.
- Solution Evaluation: Business analysts weigh proposed solutions against requirements, help run user acceptance testing (UAT), and confirm that what gets built actually meets business objectives.
Business Analyst Examples
Example 1: Enterprise Software Implementation
Picture a business analyst at a manufacturing company leading requirements gathering for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. They sit down with people across departments, map out how work currently flows, note what frustrates everyone, and write up detailed functional specifications. Throughout the project, they keep communication flowing between end users and developers so the final system actually supports how people work day-to-day.
Example 2: Process Improvement Initiative
A healthcare business analyst notices that patient registration creates bottlenecks and long wait times. They run a gap analysis, draw up process maps showing current versus ideal states, and suggest workflow changes. After implementation, they track key performance indicators to show that patient throughput went up and wait times dropped.
Business Analyst vs Process Owner
Both roles deal with business processes, but they play different parts in an organization.
| Aspect | Business Analyst | Process Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Analyzing requirements and connecting business with technical teams | Owning and improving a specific business process |
| Accountability | Project deliverables and solution quality | Process performance and ongoing optimization |
| Scope | Works across different processes and projects | Responsible for one or more defined processes |
| Duration | Often tied to specific projects | Usually a permanent operational role |
How Glitter AI Helps Business Analysts
Glitter AI takes the tedious documentation work off a business analyst's plate. Whether you're documenting processes, gathering requirements, or putting together training materials, Glitter lets you capture screen recordings with automatic annotations and generate step-by-step guides. No more spending hours on screenshot editing and document formatting.
When doing process analysis, business analysts can record current-state workflows, get visual documentation automatically, and share it with stakeholders for quick feedback. During implementation, BAs can create user guides, training materials, and knowledge base articles in minutes instead of days through streamlined process documentation. That means end users get the documentation they need for successful adoption without the usual wait.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a business analyst do?
A business analyst gathers requirements, analyzes business processes, acts as a go-between for business and technical teams, and makes sure the solutions that get built actually meet what the organization needs.
What skills does a business analyst need?
Strong analytical and communication abilities are essential, along with requirements gathering experience, process mapping skills, the ability to manage stakeholders, and familiarity with frameworks like BABOK.
What is an example of business analysis?
Say a company's order fulfillment takes too long. A business analyst would document the current workflow, find the bottlenecks causing delays, and recommend system changes or automation to cut processing time from 3 days down to 24 hours.
What is the difference between a business analyst and a project manager?
Business analysts figure out what needs to be built by gathering requirements and analyzing business needs. Project managers figure out how to deliver it by managing timelines, resources, and execution.
Do business analysts need technical skills?
They don't usually need to write code, but having some technical literacy helps. It makes it easier to understand what systems can do, talk with developers, and judge whether a proposed solution is actually feasible.
Turn any process into a step-by-step guide