How Business Analysts Boost Productivity Within Operations Teams

Here’s an undeniable truth: Highly productive companies generate more revenue.

However, establishing optimum productivity isn’t always as easy to pull off.

This is where Business Analysts (BAs) come in handy.

Business analysts can increase your operations team’s productivity by helping them meet the set goals, boost their performance, and drill down on key areas for improvement.

BAs can even provide business analysis as a service to help Chief Information Officers (CIOs) deliver successful strategies by leveraging the right technology.

If you’re not convinced yet, read on to learn more about how business analysts can boost your operations teams’ productivity.

1. Determine operational needs

Business analysts offer the skills and expertise to help your company and teams identify operational needs through in-depth analyses of your targets and requirements.

For instance, a critical yet easily overlooked aspect that can impact your operations team’s performance is inefficient employee scheduling.

Managers could spend productive hours manually scheduling employee shifts, recording attendance, and processing payroll.

These paper-based methods eat up a lot of time and effort and can be open to errors that seriously impact your employees’ productivity and even cost you money.

Business analysts can help your operations teams address this by drilling down on your specific operational needs and help you find the right approach and implement the appropriate tools.

For example, BAs could help you look for, adopt, and implement the best-fitting online employee scheduling software to automate your scheduling process and solve productivity gaps while saving tons of time and energy.

That said, business analysts can help shape your operations team’s decision-making process by understanding the operational needs and the best strategies (and tools) to improve productivity and achieve success.

2. Identify gaps and provide effective solutions

Business analysts have the training to “jump into” your existing processes and workflows quickly and work with your team members to pinpoint problems and work together to solve them efficiently.

They have the focus, time, and expertise to dig deep into your existing operational methods, strategies, workflows, and tools to see bottlenecks and gaps and steer your team members toward the right solutions.

For instance, business analysts can help you identify and analyze aspects in your customer service processes that eat up too much time and resources, affect their performance, and keep them from achieving optimum productivity.

BAs can then use the data and results to help you choose and deploy the right solutions. This can include streamlining critical parts of your client support workflows through robust customer service automation software.

With the help of business analysts, you can seamlessly optimize your operations team’s workflows, ensure they meet targets, and improve performance.

3. Streamline workflows to reduce operational costs and risks

While you can’t eliminate all the risks that usually come with operations, business analysts can help you reduce them, including lowering your operational costs.

Hiring qualified BAs allows you to tap into professional strategies and skills to manage your operational risks while reducing expenses.

For instance, a business analyst could assess your existing business processes and recommend investing in asset maintenance tools to improve productivity and lower operational costs.

If you run an equipment rental company, one of your business analysts’ strategic recommendations can be using digital equipment inspection forms to streamline and automate your workflows.

Doing so speeds up performing your equipment inspections and increases the accuracy of your results. This helps you manage your assets efficiently while ensuring you keep all your equipment in optimum condition.

You can reduce repair costs, keep operations running smoothly, and, in turn, save time, labor, and money while increasing your operations teams’ and company’s overall productivity.

Also, since online all your equipment inspection and associated data get stored on the cloud, everyone with the right credentials can easily access them. This can streamline your workflows and reduce manual, paper-based processes that can eat up a chunk of your resources.

4. Implement data driven strategies

Business analysts offer valuable expertise by helping your operations team leverage data to supercharge your processes and boost productivity.

BAs can help your operations team analyze and extract actionable insights from your data to achieve a seamless operational process.

Instead of bungling through the sometimes deep learning curve of advanced data analytics tools, you can work with a business analyst to walk your team through the process.

This allows your team to gain and leverage data insights quickly, helping your business get results faster.

For instance, BAs can help you analyze your customer experience data and determine the appropriate strategies and adjustments to improve client experiences with your brand. This can include adopting computerized cash registers into your systems.

Business analysts can help translate your raw data into useful information and turn them into easy-to-digest ideas, proposals, and even projects to make your operations more efficient.

5. Play various roles across your company

Most operational processes cut across multiple areas within a company. This makes business analysts valuable since they can often apply their expertise in many departments, such as sales, marketing, customer service, Information Technology, etc.

BAs can wear many hats and are not limited to just one area or department within your business. This allows them to help improve various processes and boost your company’s overall efficiency and productivity.

A dependable business analyst’s diverse skill set lets them start with one department and move through other parts of your entire operational process.

This allows business analysts to extend their services to other critical areas or all levels within your company that require business analysis support.

Working with a business analyst allows your operations team and other departments to work more efficiently and productively while ensuring your operations align with your organizational goals.

Also, business analysts help with your internal and external-facing processes while helping your teams keep up with industry trends, so your company maintains a competitive edge.

Wrapping up the role of business analysts in productive operations teams

A dependable business analyst can help ensure your business operations are highly functional, efficient, and geared towards optimum productivity.

BAs provide the necessary expertise, skillset, and experience and help your team find and deploy the right strategies and tools to help your operations team achieve optimum productivity.

The more productive your business operations are the higher your company’s profitability.

While working with business analysts can require a bit of an investment, the benefits of hiring one can far outweigh the costs and help your company sustain long-term growth and success.