Top 7 Skills Your BA Leader Should Have

Do You Have What it Takes?

The role of a business analyst is absolutely essential to the success of a company, which can make it an intimidating position. Among other duties, a business analyst’s core responsibility is to understand the goals and operations of a company and use this data to make an informed decision on how to improve its workflow. This typically requires the business analyst to assess several departments within a company and know their key responsibilities as well as how they work together to reach an objective. In this article, we’ll discuss seven of the most important skills for a business analyst to have and explore how they impact their productivity.

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• Leadership Skills

It is necessary for your head business analyst to have leadership skills because they will likely be working with a number of people across many departments. They need to be capable of supervising their team while also collaborating with any relevant source outside of that team. Your head business analyst needs to feel confident in their ability to rally a team behind a common goal and give them a clear direction for how they should achieve that goal. It would be wise to invest in a leadership development plan to ensure that your head business analyst has the leadership skills necessary to run such a complex operation.

• Communication Skills

As previously mentioned, business analysts will have to work with multiple internal departments as well as their own team to come to the best conclusions. This means your business analyst must be a strong communicator otherwise, they would be incapable of gathering the information they need to do their job properly. If your business analyst cannot consistently speak to a variety of people effectively, then their productivity will be limited. Being a good communicator will also help your business analyst get along with their peers, which will lead to better overall productivity.

• Planning Skills

A major aspect of being a business analyst is being able to think ahead and create plans to help a company address future issues. Your business analyst should be detail-oriented and capable of developing a plan that holds up well against scrutiny. This plan should be informed by all of the data they collect from collaborating departments and offer recommendations for how to streamline or improve a company’s operations and increase productivity.

• Analytical Skills

As the title suggests, business analysts spend most of their day analyzing business operations. They should be capable of gathering information on workflow across departments, stakeholder inputs, and operation expectations before analyzing this data to make worthwhile recommendations. Your business analyst needs to be capable of tracking many details simultaneously and understand their implications for a business’s productivity. A good business analyst will also be able to shape these implications into an actionable plan that benefits the brand they work for.

• Technical Skills

Business analysts use a number of different programs to complete their tasks. For example, they may use a spreadsheet to compile data, another application for wireframing, and a third program for introducing their results to a board of operations. And in our technologically advanced world, business analysts are only going to encounter more programs that they must be able to navigate. This means that business analysts need to have the technical skills to operate different software applications without too much of a struggle.

• Critical Thinking Skills

Oftentimes, business analysts will come across problems that do not have a definite solution. New problems arise all the time for brands everywhere and a business analyst needs to be able to understand them quickly and create a solution for them. This is where critical thinking skills become absolutely crucial for a business analyst to have. Without the ability to think critically, a business analyst would not be able to adapt to different scenarios effectively. Your business analyst needs to be confident in their ability to consistently address issues as they arise for your company.

• Listening Skills

To be able to gather good data, your business analyst must be a good listener. Good ideas can come from anywhere, but if your business analyst is incapable of properly understanding their peers then it’s unlikely, they’ll find good solutions. This goes hand in hand with the importance of communication skills because your business analyst will likely be working with several people across multiple departments.

Go Above and Beyond

Being a business analyst is a tough role that requires a large skillset to do their job effectively. They are vital to the productivity of a brand but can easily become overwhelmed if they are not equipped with the skills needed to address a company’s issues. Hopefully, by focusing on the skills we’ve covered in this article your business analyst will be better equipped to tackle their daunting role.