What Skills Will You Learn In A Business Analysis Course?

Last Updated on July 25, 2022 by Kylie Morrison

Business Analysts have to be highly skilled professionals given their role’s responsibility. So when choosing a business analysis course for yourself, you need to make sure that this course will teach you all the skills you need to succeed in your role.

The role of a business analyst isn’t for everyone. A business analyst has to be well connected with professionals from various departments. This means they need to possess a wide set of skills, including technical, soft, and core skills. Depending on the job and the industry, the skills required will change.

Many industries understand the importance of having a business analyst professional on their team. As a growing company, you need at least one analytics person on the team who will keep track of the company’s progress and success. Many companies have a team of business analysts, so you can stop worrying about whether business analytics is a career with any scope.

Let’s look at the skills a post-graduate program in business analysis teaches you.

Technical skills for Business Analysts

Here is the list of technical skills a business analysis course should cover:

• Different Programming Languages

Business analysts are data analysts with a few more duties. So if data analysts need background knowledge of programming languages, do business analysts. There are a lot of programming languages like Java, Python, C++, Visual Basic, JavaScript, PHP, etc. However, as a business analyst, a lot of work becomes easier if you learn the basics of R and Python. You will find libraries and packages you can use for data analysis, data visualization, data manipulation, and more. These programming languages can also create a business model for making business predictions.

• Create reports and dashboards

Presenting the analysis to various stakeholders and management is a massive part of a business analyst’s job. This analysis needs to be put into a report for everyone to understand it effectively. So a business analyst needs to be able to create reports that are accurate and understandable to all. Using technical tools to create dashboards to track the progress of a business is also necessary. These dashboards will eventually help in creating an accurate report.

• Database And SQL

Besides your basic programming languages, a business analyst must also know SQL. You must use databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL database when processing and storing heavy data. So having some hands-on working experience with SQL will give you an easier time figuring out all the data you are analyzing for the business. With SQL, you can study, manipulate, access, and retrieve, all the information anytime you want.

• Hands-on soft skills for business analysts

Here is the list of soft skills a business analysis course should cover:

• Documentation and presentation

Documenting every one of your analyses will not only make the presentation part easy in the end, but it will also help you keep track of all the activity, making it hard to miss anything.

Business analysts must present the problem and the solution to stakeholders and clients, so they need to have good presentation skills if they want to get around their message.

• Problem-Solving

Problems and solutions are what businesses are made of. And the primary role of a business analyst is to identify issues in a business and find the most appropriate solution for them. So problem-solving is an essential skill.

Problem-solving skills not only help a business analyst in the more significant sense of finding the ultimate solution, but it also helps them overcome the minor obstacles they might encounter in their job. 

• Communication

Business analysts have to communicate with a lot of people in an organization. From stakeholders to employees, anyone can present a problem to business analysts. Therefore, their communication skills must be the best if they want to communicate with people from all levels in an organization effectively. They need to understand the problems others are facing, and they to be able to communicate their idea for the solution to them.

Core Skills For Business Analysts certification

Here is the list of core skills a business analyst must have:

• Decision-making

A business runs on the decisions suggested by the business analyst. So these decisions need to be good enough as they will directly affect the company’s performance.

Decisions a business analyst makes must be made after a lot of thought. There is also the chance that the management team won’t like the decision, so you need to have solid reasoning behind your decision to convince them.

• Negotiation

Often a business analyst acts as a middleman between departments when inter-departmental issues are concerned. So during this time, a business analyst must be able to negotiate on behalf of the departments and come up with the best solution to favor the business’s success. Other than that, a business analyst must also be able to negotiate with the stakeholders when the time arrives.

• Critical thinking

To identify a problem in the business, a business analyst must have a critical eye. They should be able to see the issues no one else sees. While a company’s success remains its priority, it shouldn’t compromise on solving the consumers’ problems. Also, critical thinking should be used in every step when figuring out a solution. This is how they can ensure that the solution they end up with is the best under the circumstances.

Final words

Business Analysts are highly skilled individuals who must be well informed on every aspect of a business. A post-graduate degree in business analysis will help you gain the technical and non-technical skills you need for the job. 

Business analysts have a vital role to play in an organization. Today, you’ll find more and more businesses hiring business analysts to improve the working of their organization. The expertise these professionals bring to the table could be the key to a successful business. So being a certified business analyst will help you immensely when looking for an excellent job.