How Business Analysts Can Identify and Reduce Sales Gaps?

 

Sales are worked for and don’t happen by chance. The marketing and sales departments need the sales funnel, the pipelines and effective strategy to translate them into currency. Your Business Analyst can help you grow your sales as these great marketers show you the way.

Why sales persons need a BA?

CEO Warren Kurzrock, of Porter Henry a sales-training consultancy says that salespersons don’t have enough time to track their activities, leads, and efforts. The solution lies in the statement of Aventri’s market strategy director John Kearney that you will be able to spot patterns and figure out why your leads turn into a loss, win or no go when you look through the data analysis lens and analyze performance. It helps you measure performance in terms of a lose-win ratio during the whole cycle of sales.

Motivation through effective reviews:

In the words of CEO Matthew Cook of SalesHub, it is the sales team’s motivation that drives your bottom-line, productivity, and company culture. If this is true then BA can drive the levels of sales-adrenaline up through effective reviews to help conversions. Who needs better motivation?

The gap-analysis puzzle:

Consultant Catherine Yochum at ClearPoint stresses the need to extrapolate the present state to the future goal to understand the process and resources to scale them to the future. The first step to improve your sales process through analysis is to conduct a gap analysis. This is the process of reviewing your resources and processes and predicting how they will scale into the future. 

Chief Editor Aaron Orendorff of Shopify Plus advises a gap analysis of potential Vs performance could outstrip expectations. They turn businesses to finding the right factors of success rather than dealing with solutions to problems. That for you is a solution that can be scaled and extrapolated.

Solve the cold-leads issue:

B2B marketer Amanda Nielsen of New Breed Marketing specifies the solution lies in attaching weights to qualify leads potential into levels like 

  • Marketing-Qualified ones worth the investment
  • Sales-Qualified ones ready-to-reach
  • Worth-talking-to opportunities

Opportunities mean clients. And clients mean business and brand-ambassadors.

Copy-what-works strategy:

The whole purpose of BA is to find the winning strategy which reduces leads loss, generates better strategies and provides you with insights and training on why errors occur and how not to replicate them. A satisfied customer is akin to asset acquisition.

Empower your staff:

Motivation runs high when you can forecast efficiently and juggle the leads to improve the sales funnel through an effective strategy. BA provides your sales and marketing team with the tools to succeed. It shows them how to achieve and equips them with the required timely knowledge and strategy.

In conclusion, BA sets the pace, helps you with timely strategy, reviews, causes for failures and helps literally set the timetable for work. That’s as easy as it can make your job. One must, however, being in sales convert those leads with people-skills that only the human touch can add value to.

What is The Meaning of Business Analytics?

What is Business Analytics?

According to the definition of business analytics, it means, “The study of data through the statistical and operations analysis, the formation of optimization techniques and the communication of these results to customers, business partners, and college executives.”

Business analytics is supposedly a quantifying mechanism, which works with big data and performs various functions of business modelling and decision making for furthering the business prospects of various companies.

Big data basically refers to a huge volume of data, meaning information that could be both in a raw format or a properly structured format. This is also known as unstructured data and structured data in the business analytics jargon.

This information that is available on such a massive scale to companies, is usually used by them by the method of analyzing of the same. When firms analyse this information, they are basically making use of business analytics to do so. This way once the process of analysis is done, the companies are able to get the proper insights that are required for them in order to take more effective business decisions and strategist in terms of their future endeavors.

More and more companies have begun to make use of business analytics, in order to make data-driven decisions these days. As the process of business analytics is actually able to mine this data, process it and derive the proper kind of insights, which then help the companies in achieving the much sought after competitive edge over their contemporaries.

This is the reason why more and more firms and professionals today are getting attracted to the process of Business Analytics or as it is popularly known BA.

Business Analytics gains importance. It is business analytics courses that makes it possible for the organisations to connect to their data, and use it effectively to identify new opportunities.

This further leads to a better business environment, where you can make informed decisions, create an efficient operations environment, gain higher profits, and acquire happy customers.

Companies using Big Data Analytics gain value by :

Cost Reduction, Cloud-Based Analytics, Hadoop, and similar technologies can not only bring down the cost of storing large amounts of data but at the same time they can bring about more ways of doing business.

Quicker Decision making, with the availability of in-memory analytics, and to add to that the ability to analyse the new sources of data, businesses can analyse real-time data, and make immediate decisions based on what they have learnt.

Segmented Products and Services, the power of analytics is that it can gauge customer needs so that organisations can create product catering to specific needs of the said customers.

Business Analysis
The only pitfall that organisations applying big data analytics initiatives need to be alert on, is the lack of internal analytics skills and the high cost of hiring experienced data scientist and data engineers to bridge the gap. If you are a fresher looking at career opportunities, with interest in data analytics, then getting yourself trained in techniques of Big Data Analytics, will be a fantastic career choice.

For companies, in particular, this field offers a host of benefits in terms of conducting various procedures such as data mining, completion of statistical and quantitative analysis in order to discern how results actually are achieved. Business analytics even helps companies by testing all of the previous decisions by using multi-dimensional testing methods as well as predictive modelling and predictive analysis in order to forecast future results.

It is this very field of operations which provides firms with the support that they need in order to make the most proactive and tactical decisions and also to make their decision making processes automated, in order to enable them to support all the real-time responses.
Business Analytics
Another concept which is quite similar to business analytics is business intelligence. Here it refers to only and only the process of collection of data from all of the sources that are available and only preparing it for Business Analytics. This includes automating and monitoring of all the sources basically for the main purpose of analyzing them and then being able to provide proper results and insights for the same.

Today as the presence of data in our world becomes quite strong enough, there are a number of professionals who actually go get certified in business analytics from many esteemed institutes like Imarticus Learning in order to enter this field.

Would a master’s degree be required for a career in Big Data analytics or Data Analytics?

 

Run any search for jobs in Business Analytics, and you find there are ample opportunities for aspirants with zero experience. All they ask for is skills in business and data analytics.

Here are the skills required to succeed in business analytics career. 

  1. An Inquisitive mind:
    A keen solution finder uses a large data set to understand the how’s and why’s of any complex financial situation and works to find the correct solutions. This trait is absolutely essential for the role of a BA.

  2. Communication and perceptive skills
    Actionable solutions, domain expertise, and experience in interpreting the solutions are essential when designing a service or product, making decisions and working on large volumes of data. To form the right strategy, one needs great perceptive and communicative skills to implement the solutions which are data driven.

  3. Conceptual understanding of methodology and tools
    Knowledge of Excel, SAS etc. is a good starting point. However, applying these thoughts to data analysis with them will take you places. These are vital skills for every BA coupled efficiently with intelligence to use the results practically.

  4. Observing small details
    Keeping the small details in the big picture meticulously in mind ensures correct perceptions and insights.

  5. Numerical and Quantitative Skills
    Figures, mathematical formula and Big Data will be constant companions. To make a successful career, you will find that the BA job roles call for a fusion of project management and analytics. A foundation in engineering and mathematics with excellent communication and analytical skills is essential.

    While engineers tend to move towards the information management and data engineering fields, aspirants with some business experience easily transform into roles as a Business Analyst. An MBA graduate should enhance skills by doing a business analytics course in Thane.
  6. Those graduates with an MBA who already have some background in business should opt to enable a career as a BA by upgrading skills with online short courses. Such aspirants will be empowered with a good skill set in business analytics that helps start a career with some certification.

    Requisite technical skills
    : A Business Analyst must have proficiency in the application of statistics with conceptual knowledge of suites like SQL, R, SAS, testing framework, SPSS, Hive and tools in BI such as Tableau, Excel, Spotfire, Qlik, among others. Skill sets required change depending on the infrastructure and organisation’s requirements and functional roles needed.

    These courses offer a good grasp of fundamentals, concepts, theoretical knowledge, practical skills and certifications that could help enhance your resume and career. They also offer boot camps, short term workshops, and basic knowledge of SAS and R. 

    While certification definitely helps you need to be an excellent communicator and work diligently to acquire the best analytical and business skills. Another advantage in such courses is of mentoring by certified and experienced industry aces that helps garner the latest best practices, techniques, skills, and practice on the latest trending technologies in the field of Business Analytics.

    Payouts: BAs bring analytic and business skills to the table and receive good remuneration. The average annual salary is 859,025 INR/ year for a Senior Business Analyst as per the figures of Pay scale. The annual average payouts of a BA is INR 6,44857/year as per Glassdoor. 

    Top Employing Enterprises: Some high-ranking companies in Business Analytics to watch for are Cognizant, TCS, IBM, Wipro, Infosys, Accenture, HP, Deloitte, Capgemini, Genpact among others and in no particular order. Some startups like Mu Sigma Analytics, Fractal Analytics, AbsolutData can offer you the best opportunities in the field of business analytics.

    Though these technical skills will definitely help you for a career in Big data analytics, still it is a beneficial if you have master’s degree, which will also boost your career in business analytics.

How can You Pursue a Career in Business Analytics?

Business analytics helps companies with gainful insights from large volumes of data it generates to automate and tweak business processes. Today, Big Data is the largest asset of companies which they deploy through statistical analysis to perform predictive business analytics, find relationships, patterns, and understand future outcomes.
The roles and functions of BI and BA are used in conjunction with the key differentiators being that BA deals with statistical analysis, data mining, multivariate testing, and predictive modeling. A career in business analytics is today the preferred and popular choice in ITES and IT sectors. The BA with an analysis in real-time supports decision making works closely with peers, and the organizational management to aid matters of marketing, product development and so on through data-driven decisions.
Here is how you can jump-start a career in business analytics. There is booming constant demand in modern times for business analysts and MBA qualified candidates in the developing ITES and IT industries. The areas where demand for BAs outstrips the supply are retail, healthcare, banking, hospitality, e-commerce, and manufacturing amid many others.
Jump start your career  
On the road to a bright career today, you find that the BA job roles call for a fusion of project management and analytics. A foundation in engineering and mathematics with excellent communication and analytical skills is essential.
However, those who already have some background in business opt to enable a career as a BA by upgrading skills with online short courses. These aspirants are empowered with a good skill set in business analytics that helps them start a career with some certification.
Requisite Skills: A Business Analyst must have proficiency in the application of statistics with conceptual knowledge of suites like   SQL, R, SAS, testing framework, SPSS, Hive and tools in BI such as Tableau, Excel, Spotfire, Qlik, among others. Skill sets required change depending on the infrastructure and organization’s requirements and functional roles needed.
While engineers tend to move towards the information management and data engineering fields, aspirants with some business experience easily transform into roles as a Business Analyst. An MBA  graduate should enhance skills by doing a business analytics course in Mumbai.
These courses offer a good grasp of fundamentals, concepts, theoretical knowledge, practical skills and certifications that could help enhance your resume and career. They also offer boot camps, short term workshops and basic knowledge of SAS and R. While certification definitely helps you need to be an excellent communicator and work diligently to acquire the best analytical and business skills. Another advantage in such courses is of mentoring by certified and experienced industry aces that helps garner the latest best practices, techniques, skills, and practice on the latest trending technologies in the field of Business Analytics.
Payouts: BAs bring analytic and business skills to the table and receive good remuneration. The average annual salary is  859,025 INR/ year for a  Senior Business Analyst as per the figures of Payscale. The annual average payouts of a BA is INR 6,44857/year as per Glassdoor.
Top Employing Enterprises: Some high-ranking companies in Business Analytics to watch for are Cognizant, TCS, IBM, Wipro, Infosys, Accenture, HP, Deloitte, Capgemini, Genpact among others and in no particular order. Some startups like Mu Sigma Analytics, Fractal Analytics, AbsolutData can offer you the best opportunities in the field of business analytics.

What Is The Scope Of Business Analysis?

The scope of the business analysis is all-encompassing as it works across the broad aim of business improvement with technology or without it. The spectrum of activities that fall under this field is a bit of management, finance, strategy making,dealing with both external and internal customers, ensuring regulatory and compliance issues are dealt with, strategising for better efficiency, cost analysis and everything that falls in between.

What Is The Future Of Business Analysis?

Uninteresting example is the development of the iPod. It was known that Hitachi had developed a mini-storage of 1 GB data capacity and were unable to take it to the market. At the same time, Apple had developed a music app that could not be used independently of storage capacity.Steve Jobs put these two together to produce the hugely popular invention he called the iPod. He was a successful entrepreneur.

The above success story can not only be inspirational, but it can also clearly demonstrate how a smart business analyst can use ML, AI, data analytics and predictive technology to create innovative products and steer the enterprise to success and huge profits.

Across the board the last decade has seen technological advances and replacement of repetitive jobs by AI. The need for business analysis and profits for the enterprise will never end. Technological advancements will also continue happening. However, most importantly the need for smart analysts with domain-expertise has far exceeded the supply.

Why Do Business Analysis Courses?

With technology implementation, most roles across various departments are collaborative and involve other teams and specialists across the organisation. The scope for experienced and tech-savvy business analysts’ role is growing exponentially. The job role of the Business Analyst is lucrative and offers great payouts.

This role is one of the front line management roles responsible for a variety of management and strategy processes. The need of the hour is to have expertise in technology related to functioning. This would obviously mean acquiring a new skill set if you are employed or re-training those employees vital to the organisation.

Prerequisites:

A prerequisite to becoming a Business Analyst would be that you have a technological background (Ex: IT Graduates) or that you have relevant domain expertise (Ex: Commerce Graduates with knowledge of systems used). You will also need to have some relevant experience in the management of internal and external customers as well as in assessing and analysing requirements needs and issues for which you need to develop workable solutions.

Business analysis courses:

Retrain and re-skill at Imarticus Learning. They offer an IIBA-endorsed and recognized Business Analysis Certification Program. The topics covered here help you gain the much-required expertise and immersive exposure to Business Analysis, and the technology powering techniques and frameworks on BABOK 3.0 which has recently been prescribed as the norm.

The best feature here is that you learn in real time on relevant projects by working on case-studies, workshops,seminars and project work. You will thus have a well-rounded education and anew set of skills to handle multi-tasking with the best tools, techniques, and practices from industry-drawn certified trainers.

If you qualify then don’t wait any longer. Retrain and upgrade your skills today.

Also Read: Why Business Analysis is Important Part of Business

How AT and Analytics Work at OpenText Enterprise World

OpenText customers must surely understand the value that Artificial Intelligence Systems and analytics offers to them, by now. AI is quickly trending around the world as the go-to system for many tech enterprises since it offers the capability of processing a large amount of data within a short time to get some amazing insights and suggestions from that.
OpenText is one of the leaders in Enterprise Information Management, and works to create an intelligent, connected enterprise for the benefits of its customers. Such a structure can be created only after in-depth analyses of large amounts of data – however, it leads to some amazing insights for the customers to benefits from.
OpenText employs the best minds in the industry, with most of the employees learning to use business analytics and undergoing data science courses in some capacity or the other. This is done so as to get a competitive advantage over the others, and thus provide better services to the customers. Some of the questions dealt with in the OpenText conference, regarding their functioning includes the ones discussed below.

AI Or BI?

Business Intelligence refers to the long tradition of using analytics to get a competitive edge in business processes, by qualitatively analysing the data available. Artificial Intelligence or AI is a more recent development – using computers and machine learning algorithms, large troves of data are analysed so as to get an idea about the best way to move forward. AI deals more with predictive analysis so that the customer receives a clear idea about the benefits and negatives associated with a particular action.
So which way would be suitable for the current business scenario? The answer is that both, in a balance – AI and BI are now converging, and organisations are increasingly becoming insight-driven from data-driven.

How Data Can Help Build a Better World

The constant between both BI and AI is that both require a large amount of data to work well. Companies, therefore, have the opportunity to make a huge difference in the world with their philanthropic ambitions, if the available data is used well. Today, large amounts of innovations are coming out every day which deal with the methods using which AI can be used to make the world a better place with every passing day.
If you find yourself interested in AI and wanting to change the world, check out the business analytics training courses available on Imarticus Learning!

How AI Drives Innovation in Next Generation Cloud Business Intelligence?

Today, we have access to a huge amount of technology and other systems through the internet – Artificial Intelligent systems are one of those. AI is becoming a larger part of our lives with each passing day, and the chances are that AI systems would already have affected us in some way or the other.
AI, in essence, is a predictive technology. The main function of every AI system is to essentially make a prediction based on the amount of data and information that it analyses. Since it can sift through any large amount of data, it is thus a type of technology that improves our lives in a huge manner. Similarly, the role of business intelligence and business analytics has changed too – it is now something that deals with increasing amounts of predictive analysis rather than historical analysis, and is available to users as an interactive, easy-to-use tool.

Thought Spot

Thought Spot is one of the pioneers in the segment of Business Intelligence – the California based company can be credited for creating a Google-like search engine which can analyse large amounts of data quickly and completely so as to provide the user with some great insights into the data. Thought Spot’s Ad-hoc version of data analytics provides various amazing services, like extremely transparent calculations into how each insight was derived, accompanying of natural language narratives with the rendered charts and a guided, curated search experience which generates suggestions for the users based on the role, the data model and the search history of the person. Thought Spot and its data analytics model is truly something to watch out for, in the future.

Anticipatory Models

Companies like Thought Spot and other data-driven Business Intelligence organisations are considered to be the forerunners of the next, and perhaps the largest wave in Business Intelligence called the anticipatory intelligence. They aim to leverage the usage of AI in a number of scenarios, like anticipatory devices, conversations and contexts. In this first one, the aim is to automate something that a large number of users are trying to do in a small time period so that it happens quicker and better. In the second and third, natural language processing systems are used so as to predict what the users are going to say, and thus promote rapid communication.
If all of this fascinates you, you should definitely look at the business analytics training courses and the data science courses that Imarticus Learning has to offer.

6 Ways in Which Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing the Real Estate Business

Real estate is not simply buying and selling lands and houses – there is a whole, large industry dedicated behind those acts. It is a given that the age of technology has also affected something that seems so analogous, so much that a huge part of that process has also digitised today. Artificial Intelligence is currently playing a large role in making the work of the decision-makers in the industry easier – let us take a look at how AI plays a huge role.

Recommendations

A large problem for real estate agents was the act of finding or recommending the perfect plot of real estate for a customer. This might not have been clear even after lengthy talks on the subject, but AI has been making that much easier. Since machine learning and AI feeds on data, the larger the amount of data, the better – they can now find the perfect piece of land.

Availability

The making and use of chatbots have now become an established part of many data science courses, and these can help real estate developers too. Chatbots can be used to learn about customer preference round the clock, and customers now have something to answer their simple questions and grievances at any time of the day.

 Prediction

AI is also able to make a large number of meaningful predictions, from the data provided to it. This can be beneficial in various models, like tracing the price of a particular plot or the changes in customer preferences.

 Automation

Real estate is an extremely documentation-heavy field, so it can be a chore to carry out all the documentation constantly. In this work, the use of AI could lead to quicker uploading and scanning of jobs and documents.

Virtual Tours

Another one of the path breaking implementations, people can now visit any plot of land on offer from any point in the world – virtually, of course. Virtual tours of the homes in question are truly making a huge difference in customer satisfaction and business development.

Disaster Management

Using AI systems, it is now possible for planners to run simulations and build proper disaster-resistant houses so that such natural disasters are mitigated when the inevitable occurs.
If you want to learn more about such important tools like AI or business analytics, you should definitely check out the business analytics training courses offered by Imarticus Learning!

What is Big Data and Business Analytics?

Big Data has the potential to dramatically change the way organizations are making decisions, with the use of information and insights from it to enhance customer experience and build effective business models. No wonder then that Big Data is known as the most important technology trend of recent times. Does this mean that Big Data is this marvelous invention of today? Well not really.

It is true that most organizations now understand the potential of capturing data that generally streams into their business so that they can apply analytics and get significant value from it, but even as long ago as the 1950s, way before the term big data was even whispered, its concepts were in use on a smaller scale.

Businesses were using business analytics, in its basic form, over spreadsheets manually created, to uncover insights and trends.

So why is this buzz around big data now? Quite simply because of the speed and efficiency it offers. While years ago analytics could be done over the accumulated data, the method would only allow making a future prediction for their business. Today businesses can identify insights for immediate consumption. It is the pure ability to work quickly and stay responsive, is that gives the organizations the competitive edge which was lacking before.

Big Data is not a single component, as accumulating information is easy in today’s time and technology. Big Data is a combination of Data Management Technologies that have evolved over time. When organizations talk about Big Data they mean, To Store, Manage, and Manipulate, humungous amounts of structured and unstructured data at the right speed and the right time to get the right insights.

And thus Business Analytics or Big Data Analytics gains importance. It is business analytics that makes it possible for organizations to connect to their data, and use it effectively to identify new opportunities. This further leads to a better business environment, where you can make informed decisions, create an efficient operations environment, gain higher profits, and acquire happy customers.

Companies using Big Data Analytics gain value by…….

  • Cost Reduction, Cloud-Based Analytics, Hadoop, and similar technologies can not only bring down the cost of storing large amounts of data but at the same time they can bring about more ways of doing business.
  • Quicker Decision making, with the availability of in-memory analytics, and to add to that the ability to analyze the new sources of data, businesses can analyze real-time data, and make immediate decisions based on what they have learned.
  • Segmented Products and Services, the power of analytics is that it can gauge customer needs so that organizations can create products catering to the specific needs of the said customers.

The only pitfall that organizations applying big data analytics initiatives need to be alert to, is the lack of internal analytics skills and the high cost of hiring experienced data scientists and data engineers to bridge the gap. If you are a fresher looking at career opportunities, with an interest in data analytics, then getting yourself trained in techniques of Big Data Analytics, will be a fantastic career choice.

 

What Are The Benefits Of Business Analytics?

For any business enterprise, the end goal is to gain lots of profit. Any capital intensive business would want to stay at least two steps ahead of its competition, mainly in order to offer both unique and highly satisfying products and services. Now in the earlier days, to achieve this coveted status of being in lead, in the proverbial race made a number of companies adopt, quite inefficient methods. Many of the models that these companies ended up adopting did not really reach the goals, or encountered a lot of errors or consumed quite a great amount of time.
But today, with the huge leaps that the field of technology has taken, there has been a new concept of Big Data and Data Science on the horizon of the industry. With this coming into the picture, there is a great amount of data that is available for all of these companies to actually run their various models with proper and efficient results for the same. This way, the models that the companies employ to bring in proper results and ensure that the business and profits keep moving in the right direction, which is most positively upward.

The above is a very generic and commonplace definition of what we mean exactly when we talk about the concept of Business Analytics. It is quite a common opinion these days that analytics would most definitely let your business grow in precisely the way you want it to. H

Benefits of Business Analytics

  • Business Analytics helps you quantify your business values: What many companies fail to accomplish is quantifying their business values, they either end up training their freshly recruited new employees or re-training their old ones instead. Rather than doing the long haul work, these companies could take the help of business analytics by actually being able to translate these very business values into numbers. Thus when numbers are involved the company mission statements are also quantified and this can thereby end up helping companies focus on their operating processes.
  • Analytics brings in smart decision making: Now it is obvious that when a company is able to get a hold of proper and good data, it would most definitely be able to take accurate decisions, thereby aiding it in leveraging businesses. Now we all know that there is quite a lot of unity in strength, but are we all also aware that there is also a lot of strategic benefits in strength. Analytics provides useful data that can be further analyzed by a major group of people and thus be analyzed for maximum benefit.

While these two may seem like benefits which are not really enough, but business analytics offers quite a number of other benefits too. With analytics, your business is able to get clearer insights mainly through a process known as data visualization, as well as be on top of things by being updated all the time. But more importantly, analytics is more beneficial for companies if they employ a proper, trained professionals to help them along the way.