When it comes to business process, organizations can choose to hire the services of a business analyst or operate without one. The decision to hire an analyst is one of balancing costs and benefits.
Business analysts help the business understand its change needs, assess the impact of the said changes, capture, analyze and document requirements to improve the organization and achieve specific goals. Aside from introducing, managing and facilitating critical changes to the organization’s business model; a business analyst supports and facilitates communication between stakeholders and project team.
There are companies that tend to view business analysts as an added cost. This could not be further from the truth – the business analyst function actually helps reduce company costs and benefit the business’ bottom line in many ways.
1.Business analyst increases your return on investment, ROI
Businesses implement various solutions with the aim of cutting costs while maximizing revenue. Return on investment (ROI), is the value the business realizes from the solution it implements, less the cost of that solution. As such, your ROI measures how efficient a business solution is. The bigger the ROI, the more profitable the investment.
A business analyst can impact both the key variables of ROI. They can implement changes that increase the value that your business realizes from the investment solution, while actively reducing the implementation costs by helping the business unlock cost-efficient solutions.
With a bigger value per investment solution and lower costs of implementation, what the business ultimately gets is a much bigger ROI.
2. Business analysis lowers your costs
Business analysts do more than just find cost-effective solutions for your company. Their work helps facilitate better understanding of project requirements. This reduces project rework by directing project teams on the right requirements. In effect, the company can save on the project spending that could be wasted on rework. Business analysts also reduce requirements churn and underutilized functionality when they drive efficient, logical decision-making processes, document discussions and track open issues. As a result, there is reduced confusion and time expenditure on previous discussions.
The element of cost reduction can be counter-intuitive for those managers who are not familiar with business analysis. However, the amount of time and resources analysts save can translate to huge cost savings – both directly and indirectly.
3. There is increased number of successful projects overall
A business analysis is a key recipe for project success. The analyst collaborates with stakeholders and project teams to ensure the right requirements are communicated and followed. Business projects fail because a poorly defined project scope misled the team. Inadequate management of risk or poor management of stakeholder expectations may also lead to failure. With good business analysis training, an analyst can eliminate all these factors and save your project from failure. The business analyst’s work entails making sure that the project manager steers the project correctly.
Last words
A lot of companies still operate without the business analyst function. The matter of fact is, you can never tell just how much potential value you can unlock until you experiment with an analyst. If your company is yet to hire an in-house business analyst, this decision should come to the top of your to-do list.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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