Introduction
It’s hard to imagine a business that operates without data today. Meanwhile, during the current economic downturn as well as COVID, it’s more important than ever to make rational and data-driven decisions. If you don’t – at best, your company will struggle to grow; at worst, it may not survive. :(
Using data in day-to-day operations is not easy. It requires a few specific skills that usually only a few people in the company have. In this article, we provide five reasons why it’s worth investing in business analyst training for everyone in your team.
This article should be especially helpful to execs and team leaders working within operations, marketing and product at marketplace, fintech, or e-commerce companies.
What is a Business Analyst skill set?
At its core, the goal of a business analyst is to use data to guide their business in improving its processes, products, and software.
To be successful, business analysts need to have a combination of technical and soft skills. More specifically, a good business analyst should know:
1. How to access and work with (if necessary, large amounts of) data
2. How to organize and shape data and turn them into insights
3. How to present insights and make them easily understandable to other team members
The reality is...there are several very strong reasons why everyone on your team should have these skills. The benefits are huge, and we'll go over them shortly.
The good news is that anyone on your team can learn these skills with the right, structured training and mentorship. As you will learn from this article, the upside is definitely worth it.
5 Examples of How Training in Business Analyst Skills Will Help Your Company
1. Your team will execute on tasks faster
Making good decisions is hard by itself. Making good decisions with limited or no access to existing data and information makes it so much harder.
Here’s an easy way to understand if your team has this problem. If you ask your developers for a simple yet custom report, how long will it take before it’s in your hands? Is it more than a day? If so, that’s a problem that affects your growth.
Here’s how business analyst training for everyone on their team helped a talent marketplace Jyve start making data-driven decisions 10X faster.
2. Your team will improve their thought process
Knowing which business metrics are important is a good foundation that helps prioritize projects and resources.
Knowing WHY those business metrics are important and more specifically HOW those business metrics are collected and calculated – that’s the key to domain expertise and knowledge.
3. You will save expensive analyst and developer time
For many companies, access to data is a tremendous blocker. When only a handful of developers know how to query a database, their backlog of tasks just keeps growing and eventually slows down everything.
By enabling your team with a business analyst skill set, you’ll help your developers (and data scientists if you have them) in your company spend less time on non-core activities.
4. Your team will find anomalies in data and fix things
Have you ever had that feeling when a number in a report just doesn’t seem right? Or maybe your e-commerce shop received a big order from a foreign IP that you found suspicious?
What if anyone on your team could quickly look up and investigate any anomaly and take action?
You’d be surprised how many bugs and unexpected things are waiting to be found. And if you work in payments or e-commerce space, some of those “data anomalies” might cost you a huge amount.
5. BONUS! You will improve overall collaboration among employees
Imagine if your technical and non-technical employees spoke the same language?
Okay, now imagine if they actually understood one another and were on the same page during technical discussions?
We’ve trained hundreds of non-technical professionals at Enki. Every learner mentions that their new skills helped to form a stronger relationship and more effective communication with technical members of their team.
3 Roles That Benefit From a Business Analyst Skill Set the Most
1. Marketing professionals
With business analyst skills, marketing, and growth professionals can make better business decisions, optimize marketing costs more granularly, and present solutions more effectively.
2. Operations professionals
With business analyst skills, operations professionals can use data to find low-hanging fruit when optimizing processes, customize performance reports, and better collaborate with developers.
3. Anti-fraud and payment professionals
With business analyst skills, anti-fraud and payment professionals can find anomalies in data, prevent fraudulent transactions, and maintain a database of bad actors.
Closing
In the age of data, it’s increasingly important to have a business analyst skill set integrated into your whole team DNA.
As we learned from the examples in this article, investing in business analyst training can save you money, help you grow more quickly, and will turn your employees into productivity superheroes. It also helps build meaningful relationships between the technical and non-technical teams of your company.
Take Action!
By combining remote experts with efficient software, Enki can empower any non-technical employee with a business analyst skill set - in 4 weeks and no time out of work. With a course completion rate of over 90%, Enki is the most efficient way to ensure your team has the data skills they need today. Get in touch to learn more.
