Why You Should Opt For Business Analyst?

During my initial career, at many times, I have heard people mocking

“What does Business Analyst do?” “Do they just prepare documents?” “Its such an easy job anyone can do.”

At many companies, people including the top management hardly used to know the importance of a business analyst and what work are they suppose to do. So in that case, it happens that irrelevant work can be assigned which a business analyst is not responsible for and Boom! Your career is in danger.

So, after 2 years of experience, I would like to share the role and importance of business analyst which can be helpful for the people who has just initiated or are thinking to opt for business analyst role. Also, this post is for people who doesn’t know why they should hire a business analyst and what major changes can a business analyst bring in their organization.

So here it is!

Piling or modernizing your eCommerce site is a mammoth project, one that needs a great coordination and administration in order to keep everything run swiftly. But the entrepreneur people have already got enought tasks to get their head spin by managing the budget and getting all the things ready to go live successfully in an estimated timeframe. That’s where exactly a business analyst comes in. Specifically in today’s demanding online world, business analysts are becoming an in-demand trend and can make a definite difference between a project knocked out due to miscommunication and a successful project delivered in a defined timeframe.

So what exactly does business analyst do? What are their roles and responsibilities?

Here’s a brief analysis of some (but certainly not all as the role might change subject to company’s defined rules and regulations) of the business analyst’s responsibilities in any project:

Communicating with the client to gather the project requirements via skype, email or call whichever is preferable and convenient to the client

Eliciting business requirements into technical requirements

Preparing work break down sheet which means breaking down the requirements into smaller tasks and making it more clear and concise

Researching and evaluating all possible solutions for the client

Checking the feasibility of the requirement

Documenting a project plan with tasks sorted efficiently

Conducting a kick-off meeting with project managers and providing them an understanding of the project and solving their queries, if any.

Handling questions as and whenever they arise.

Preparing SOW, BRD, FRD, Wireframes, Mockups as required

Getting approval from client and freezing the requirement

Coordination with client and project managers

Follow up to ensure the project is going well without any hassles.

So basically a business analyst (BA) is constantly in touch with the client and project managers to ensure the proper working of the project.

They also suggest various services and platforms that are currently in trend and would work best in order to get the client’s business more successful. Business analysts are well versed with a number of eCommerce solutions and recommend accordingly to ensure the client is receiving the best solution.

Once the project requirement is freezed, they start eliciting the requirement into small, specific tasks that are easy to understand for the development team. They name this document as “Work Break Down Sheet”. They send this to manager and then the manager develops a tailored project plan prioritizing the tasks to ensure that the tasks are completed on time and efficiently.

A BA then is in constant communication with the client and project manager in order to track the progress and updates, and in case any of them faces a loop, BA again comes into picture and solves it.

Also, in some cases if Project Manager is not available, then BA coordinates with developer and provide updates to client via scrum call, PMS etc whichever is preferable by the client. This is done to ensure that the members working in a particular project are in same page and if there are any modifications required, they can get it done at the same time which in fact saves a lot of time.

BA works with varied clients in a diverse array of industries and know from experience which solutions fit best for which clients.

So we can say that BA plays an important role in swifting the project lifecycle process and also the clients are more tend to be happy to receive suggestions that can be beneficial for their business.

And Happy Clients means Happy US! What else would any organization need?

So what are your views for a BA role? What is your experience so far being a BA or your thoughts for opting for this role? Would you like me to write specifically on any particular topic? If yes, please let me know in the comments below.

If you have any questions related to the roles of BA, let me know in the comments or you can also email me at khayalishah29@gmail.com – I’d love to help

Thanks.

The Inspiring Memoir of Jack Ma – The Founder Of Alibaba

Alibaba Founder and Chairman Jack Ma is the most richest person in China. His life story is really inspiring and it teaches us many worthwhile things that we should latch on to.

Ma has proved that nothing is impossible. This is the story of the exceptionally optimistic entrepreneur who has changed the facet of business and Internet in China and across the world.

I would like to share his famous quote.

“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine” – Jack Ma

Ma grew up in a poor family in China. Failed twice in his college entrance exam. He was rejected many jobs including KFC.

But one thing that was exceptionally amazing was he was unruffled no matter how many defeats he would have faced in his life. He has always been curious to learn new things. As a teenager, Ma wanted to learn English so he used to offer visiting tours of the city to the tourist in exchange for English lessons.

Ma did not had any knowledge or experience with computers or coding but he was always enchanted by the internet. Ma’s first online search was “beer” and he was surprised to know that there was no such information for Chinese beers. At this point, he decided to build an internet company for China. His first two ventures failed and after four years he visioned about building Alibaba. Ma setup Alibaba in 1999 as B2B market place site. The site facilitated Chinese exporters to link with overseas buyers.The site facilitated Chinese exporters to link with overseas buyers. SoftBank and Goldman Sachs invested $20 and $5 million respectively.

Once this was done, Ma wanted to build a platform for consumer-to-consumer. In 2003, Taobao was formed. His plan of action to keep it free affected the profits and he faced many criticisms, but he was calm and unaffected. Taobao gained majority of market share in two years. It was impeccable to have a courage to take on an established giant like eBay.

Alibaba group is diversified into nine major subsidiaries.

Jack Ma is truly an inspiration to an entire generation.

So what do you think about the life story of Jack Ma and his Entrepreneur journey? Shout out your thoughts and comments about this business tycoon below.

How to Create Professional Email Signature in Gmail

The Ink Blog

Creating a professional email signature in Gmail is sometimes the last item on a laundry list of burgeoning tasks for a small business professional or entrepreneur. However, creating a professional looking and socially optimized email signature will contribute to increased connections with your customers, colleagues and collaborators!

These steps for creating a custom webmail signature are based on using the web version of Gmail and requires the use of a personal Facebook account.

PART I: Find and Save a Small Logo and Social Icons

1. Save a very small version of your logo to your computer hard drive
2. Find social media icons for each social site you want to include in your signature.
   1. Use Google’s Image search functionality to find icons that are exactly 20 x 20 pixels.
   2. The image size specs can be defined on the Google Image Search page in the navigation boxes at the bottom left of the…

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I have Rs.70. Where should I invest to get better return?

I must say it is a luxury to have Rs. 70 and wanting to invest!

Below I m sharing a very simple, doable plan which will help you make the most of these Rs. 70:

 

1. Locate the busiest office area around you where you can expect maximum number of executives and well dresses top management people. Notably, these places will have shoe shiners.

 

2. Dress very well and ensure your dress allows you to sit on a low stool.

 

3. Strike a deal with one of the shoe shiners and give him Rs. 50 for an hour’s use of his console.

 

4. Use your marketing skills to bring in customers. Usually people, especially men will shy away seeing a woman shoe shiner but you must get them on board. They will make up the lion’s share of your target consumer.

 

5. Give the console owner rent on an hourly basis and assuming you get 25 clients in a day’s job of 2 hours. You can make Rs. 500 as revenue. Your profit being Rs. 400.

 

6. Do this for another day. Increase your working hours to 6 and target 80 people. Your potential earning could be Rs. 1,600 in revenue and Rs. 1,300 as profit. Invest in your own console and repeat the same for a week.

 

7. If all goes well and you provide excellent service, you can expect an average of 50 to 70 people walking up to you. This effectively means you will have Rs. 3,600 by the end of the 5th day.

 

8. Assuming your console with all your tools cost you Rs. 350, you are now left with a profit of Rs. 5,250. (Forgive me for minor calculation errors!)

 

9. Use the Rs. 5,250 you made to create a portable stall you can walk around with. Sell freshly made sandwiches with unique flavours. Decide on 5, include 2 non-veg flavours too. Assuming your investment in buying all things and getting your stall ready was Rs. 1,200 (Portable stall, bread, utensils, spreads and vegetables, fruits, non-veg item etc.). You have Rs. 4,050 left with you.

 

10. Let us say you are able to sell 20 sandwiches walking around a busy commercial street worth Rs. 50 each. You made Rs. 1,000 on your first day. Congratulations!

 

11. After 5 days of hard work, let us say you sold on average 35 sandwiches daily. By the Friday evening, you will have made Rs. 8,000 (Rs. 1,000 on day One and Rs. 1,750 each on the following four days). You now have Rs. 12,050 in profit.

 

12. Do this for another week of five days and you will have made Rs. 8,750 this week. Excluding your investment in quality items in preparing your orders, your final corpus should be a handsome Rs. 18,050.

 

13. Go Online. Find yourself a spot where you can prepare sandwiches for walk in customers as well as take orders for lunch. Distribute flyers for your online ordering platform to walk ins and to security guards in each of these commercial buildings. Assuming you used a cyber cafe to make your own website, your expense will be about Rs. 1,500 to go online. Further Rs. 300 to Rs. 500 for flyers and/or other marketing tools.

 

14. After two weeks of selling sandwiches, and starting with a corpus of Rs. 18,050, you now must be left with Rs. 14,500 (approximately) after having to buy extra raw material to cater to both your online and offline consumers.

 

15. First day of being online and offline: You get a positive (not great) response. You were able to sell 70 sandwiches! You made Rs. 3,500 in total revenue. Not bad at all!

 

16. For the next 19 days (working days; Monday to Friday) you seem to be finding it difficult, though manageable, the volume of business you get. Selling an average of 60 sandwiches a day, you raked in a total revenue for 20 days of Rs. 60,500. Wow! You now have a cool revenue of Rs. 75,000 or Rs. 65,000 in solid profit! Add 10 new flavours.

 

17. Hire two delivery boys for Rs. 8,000 a month. They need containers/bags to carry orders. No cycles though. You also have to buy more raw material and a slightly better portable stand. You will invest about Rs. 4,000 on raw material and Rs. 2,000 on your stand. Remember, the salaries will be paid at the end of the month.

 

18. Assuming your business reacts mildly to this upgrade and you are only able to sell about 75 sandwiches a day for 20 days for the month (excluding Saturdays and Sundays and public holidays), your revenue at the end of the month should be about Rs. 75,000. Excluding your cost of operation for the month, your final profit should read about Rs. 50,000 (approximately). You now have a corpus of Rs. 1,15,000.

 

19. Hire a guy who is good with computers and decently educated to manage the portable console and the online orders, allow online orders anytime between 10 AM and 6 PM. Give him a helper who’d help make sandwiches for all orders. You have 4 employees now. Three working on Rs. 8,000 salary and one working at Rs. 12,000. Your updated monthly cost of operation is Rs. 46,000 (Rs. 36,000 salary and Rs. 10,000 raw material and maintenance).

 

20. Let’s say your 15 flavours of sanddwiches, sold 8 hours each day, online and offline rake in a daily order volume of 110 sandwiches, you should be able to make a revenue of Rs. 1,10,000. Your solid profit read Rs. 64,000. You now have made yourself Rs. 1,81,000 in pure profit. From investing Rs. 70 to ending up with Rs. 1,81,000, your return on investment (%) is a whopping 2,58,571%.

 

P.S: The above scenario has been assumed. Multiple factors will improve, depreciate your final outcome. As an addition, you may also consider broadening your product portfolio and invest in various marketing options to generate higher revenue. Opportunities are endless and this is tough to achieve but surely not impossible!

 

EDIT: Your Actual profit will be Rs. 1,81,020 (forgot the Rs. 20 left after you paid the shoe shiner Rs. 50.). Your final return on investment (%) will be 2,58,600%.

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