What Is The Business Analysis Process Model?

Big data in business analytics: Talking about the analytics process model

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“’Data is the new oil’ is a popular quote pinpointing the increasing value of data and — to our liking — accurately characterizes data as raw material. Data are to be seen as an input or basic resource needing further processing before actually being of use.”

Understanding the Business Context

It is obvious that solutions are not needed where there are no problems! As a business analyst, your first step would, therefore, be familiarizing yourself with the environment in which this business operates. The question here is “What is this about?”. Understanding the business context is key to ensuring that you will not be recommending the wrong solution, but a sensible solution, and one which the end-user will connect with.

This phase is also an orientation into the project and the current state. If it is a new project or if you have just joined an organization, you get to understand the stakeholders, learn the history of the project, and also understand your role in the project better.

I have worked on many government contracts, and this stage is a great time to try and understand what the department does, why it is needed, and how it measures value. This is because governmental organizations may have a “social good” perspective, which means that the role of that organization will be to increase social good or benefit and not create a profit (which is what the majority of firms do).

Understanding this is key as it tends to give you a flavour of the viewpoints of the stakeholders. It is also an excellent time to understand the existing solutions and the current state of the business. Including how decisions are made and what are the objectives of the business.

In this technique, you focus on: Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategy and Tactical aspects of the business. This technique is instrumental in ensuring alignment between solution recommendations and the strategic goals of the enterprise. Otherwise, you risk recommending that which will be shot down quickly by the senior stakeholders.

This simply is an analysis of the current solution, its strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This technique helps in mapping out a sustainable approach in the implementation of the proposed solution. While strength and weakness are an internal aspect, the last two are external. This approach requires you to give elaborate feedback after engagement with stakeholders to focus on the important issues.

STEP 3: EXPLORATORY DATA ANALYSIS (EDA)

Once the data is collected, cleaned, and processed, it is ready for Analysis. As you manipulate data, you may find you have the exact information you need, or you might need to collect more data. During this phase, you can use data analysis tools and software which will help you to understand, interpret, and derive conclusions based on the requirements.

From the above visualization, we can infer that people belonging to the upper class were given the highest priority during the rescue operation, followed by middle, and lower classes. Lower classes also had the highest mortality count.

Sources:

https://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2019/05/14/big-data-in-business-analytics-talking-about-the-analytics-process-model/
https://baanswers.com/ba-skills/what-is-the-business-analyst-process-model-and-how-to-use-it/
https://medium.com/@kunal_gohrani/the-5-steps-of-the-data-analysis-process-2512ba6ac31e