Ask A Business Analyst

[Ben Davis]

Why can't Trump run a casino without bankrupting it?

That's a quick and easy one. He's a study subject for what not to do.

Simply put, he never controls exec spending, uses corporate finances like his own personal bank, doesn't check his competition and assumes that everything he does will make money, simply because he's the one doing it. In a nutshell, he has no business acumen.

[brewer]

Which financial industry have you worked the most for? Or, how about a descending list?

[Ben Davis]

I think he helps set up businesses?

No, I help businesses achieve their potential. I prefer mature businesses to start-ups

What are the different business models

There's a lot of context here. At the highest level, there's the legal entity decisions: should you be a Private Limited Company? Public Limited? Mutual Society? A Sole Trader? There are over 20 different types of legal set up that you can select and all those choices have ramifications on the legislation that applies to you, how you'll be able to trade and where, how much regulation you'll have to adopt, whether you'll have shareholders or not and much more besides.

At the next level, how do you structure your operational model? That will depend almost entirely on what you're selling and how you want to. What business components will you need? You could manufacture your goods yourself or you could license out manufacture and focus on distribution and marketing only, for example. You could support a Finance department or you could have an accountancy firm do it for you. Then what distribution channels will your sales & service run on? High street only? If you're a sole trader, maybe. How tiered do you want your management? Do you separate out task management from people management? Do want to organise around innovation systems? How about scaled management for software-specific delivery? Do you want centralised or decentralised operations? How about splitting your organisation in to many different companies of different types? There are many questions to answer and part of my job is to make sure that businesses can answer them and most importantly, understand why they arrive at their answer. That way, they can make the best of the choices available and stand the best chance of success.

What was your really toughest project, share a fun.  story??

Toughest? My current one. It's simply so large and complex. It's surprising sometimes how big companies can fail to take full advantage of the data available to them, even with examples like Google or Facebook leading the way in analytic exploitation.

My most fun one? Well, working in the Financial Services industry may sound dull but the people certainly aren't. It was helping a company organise the rewrite of their online sales and self-service tools. We constructed an entirely new digital proposition, with bespoke products, journeys, support and analytics. It was a young, dynamic group of people who were never shy, worked hard and played hard. It was literally fun every day with plenty of legendary nights out. As a result of our work, the company decided to create an entirely new company to house their Digital organisation so I was proud to lay some of the foundations for that. The icing on the cake was that I had my first-born whilst on the project.

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What sort of education does such a thing require? Do you have a background in finance, business or both?

Hi Shell, the best BAs tend to be polymaths with key strengths in communications and either business management or analytics. I'm qualified in English (lang. & lit.), Economics, Physics and Comparative Theology with specific professional BA qualifications, sponsored by the British Computing Society, of which I'm proud to be a qualified member. My experience is broad: manufacturing, sales & service, business management, stats & analytics, process engineering and change management. It all stands me in good stead here in the UK but the discipline is quite young so I don't know what the international standards are, although my BCS qualifications are accepted anywhere in Europe.

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Bet.

Not as much as you'd think. I spend time studying feasibility and viability before I even take a project on properly. There are factual analyses that will give you data on its likely success/failure and they're surprisingly accurate. I've not had a prediction go wrong at the Boolean level and a key part of my job is predicting (within margins of tolerance) the returns on investment for the project layout. I'm always within tolerance.

What I can say though is it's surprising how many times I've advised that there's no chance of a project delivering it's promises, only for the project to go ahead anyway and fail. It seems that people don't always pay attention to the facts, even in business.

No offense to the OP, while there are CERTAINLY decent businesses it is still a crap shoot. Half of all startups fail in the first 2 years. It is really no different than evolution when you say most attempts at life fail. Just like sperm, only one gets to the egg and the other millions die.

Indeed, most start-ups do fail and I can tell you why: most start-ups don't employ BAs from the pre-inception phase of corporate set-up. Ones that do, typically find success. I would advise anyone who's looking to start a business to employ a decent BA with experience in their industry who can help them really understand if their business has even a fleeting chance of viability, let alone success. There's nothing like a dispassionate, third-party analysis to splash cold water in the face of your dreams.

No, that is not to say don't try, certainly try if that is what you want. But when a business fails it can also simply be the market and competition and not always the owners fault. 

But that is the owner's fault. It's the owner's job to make sure they understand the market forces at work, the nature of the competition and the way they should structure their business to give themselves the best chance of success. And that's what BAs do best. So even if you think you know everything about the market you're entering in to, you should hire a BA to fact-check you.

It is still ultimately risk taking and a bet. But if you choose to start one, it isn't as simple as "just do it", if you do it, you do have to educate yourself as to the startup cost, model and the market you wish to start it in.

Of course, there's always risk. BAs help build understanding of those risks so that the business can make smart decisions regarding them. And even if you know everything, do everything right, there's still a chance that someone else might be doing it better and you still go out of business. But the better informed your business analysis is, the less likely failure becomes.

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I'll help; A business analyst can focus on IT or business solutions or jump back and forth between the two. Business analysts typically work with businesses to pinpoint areas for improvement in operations and processes, gather a boat load of info and data from whatever form is available, work with business managers and experts to identify issues and needs for the business and/or the customer(s), help in the design or changing of business systems, builds documents for the function and design of those systems, solve problems, identify technical solutions, ensures new systems are set up and function as intended, And/or can help with system testing and user manuals and work instructions.

In a nut shell; they make stuff work more profitably and more efficiently.

Yes that's part of it. At a higher level though, there's the understanding of feasibility and viability; helping companies understand what they should or shouldn't be doing based on external and internal assessments, in context of their business environment. And at a lower level, there's the accountability for the quality of projects, making sure they deliver what they said they would by assessing and collating business requirements, conducting systems, solutions and process analyses and facilitating information between parts of the delivery team.

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Sure.

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My current assignment is to help an organisation meet its obligations under data legislation more effectively. It's included helping the organisation understand how, where and why it's capturing, using (or not) and storing data, describing the relationships between data assets and the associated data journeys across the landscape, contextualising regulator interpretations of data legislation, identifying where improvements can be made and consulting on the suitability of potential solutions, generating risk assessments, structuring improvements to the organisational models to better embed enduring controls, provide the business with a defensible position for regulatory assessment and structure delivery of IT and business processes. It's a large scale programme across many business units and IT landscapes.

Non-specifically, the type of problems I typically encounter are businesses with no inspiring vision/mission for their direction, misalignment between corporate objectives and what they think their mission is, operational structures which fail to provide the types of strategy required to deliver their objectives, a lack of understanding of the businesses strengths and weaknesses which cause it to miss opportunities and fail to identify threats, misunderstanding of the political, economic, sociocultural, technological, legislative and/or environmental context in which their business operates and of the competitive forces that effect them. Any of that work can generate programmes or projects to deliver innovations or improvements.

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Does that answer your question more fully?

Yes, in quite eloquent corporate speak. (no offense, I use to live there also)

No offense taken. It's a very useful language and its utility is described in the success of my projects

[Ben Davis]

Which financial industry have you worked the most for? Or, how about a descending list?

1. Insurance. It's where I cut my finance milk teeth and I understand the business intricately.
2. Mergers and acquisitions
3. Audit

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Can you tell us what exactly you do in one sentence?

[Ben Davis]

Can you tell us what exactly you do in one sentence?

From the post on page 1, a business analyst ensures that businesses are capable of delivering on their promise of value.