BUSINESS INFORMATION ANALYSIS

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Q-1WHAT IS BUSINESS ANALYSIS?

Q-2THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS:
Q-3THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A BUSINESS ANALYST
Q-4STRATEGY ANALYSIS
Q-5 PESTLE ANALYSIS
Q-6 PORTER’S FIVE FORCES MODEL
Q-7MOST ANALYSIS
Q-8 RESOURCE AUDIT:
Q-9 BOSTON BOX:
Q-10 THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS PROCESS MODEL
Q-11 STAGES OF THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS PROCESS MODEL

Q-1WHAT IS BUSINESS ANALYSIS?

Business analysis is a research discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions
to business problems. Solutions often include a software-systems development component, but
may also consist of process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy
development.

Q-2THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS:

A business analyst, or sometimes referred to as a business systems analyst, must be involved at

the very beginning of a project. The business analyst works with the stakeholders to analyze and
document business processes for the system to be developed, determine functional requirements
and high-level features, elaborate on the details of the software project and requirements to set
the direction of the project, and support its implementation. One of the key roles of a business
analyst is to facilitate communication between stakeholders and developers. The business analyst
works with project stakeholders in order to translate their requirements into something that can
be understood by developers, while also communicating the needs of developers into something
stakeholders can understand. A business analyst works as an interpreter for the business’ needs.
Having one on your team will ensure that the needs of your stakeholders are met and are
consistent with the overall vision of the project. Without the help of an analyst, a lot of time

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could be used inefficiently. Your developers can’t spend too much time in meetings—they need
to focus on developing the software. After the business analyst investigates the needs and
requirements of all stakeholders, he/she can communicate them clearly to the development team.

In addition to translating the business needs, business analysts also translate technical issues to
stakeholders. It’s important for your analysts to have the ability to break down technical
complexities so that your stakeholders can easily understand any issues that may pop up. This
way, stakeholders understand what developers are doing to fix the issues and how long it will
take.

Another benefit to having a business analyst on your team is the connections they may have
within the business community. Let’s say your team is having a hard time finding a web designer
or branding expert. Your analyst has probably worked on projects similar to yours and could
provide you with some contacts you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

Q-3 THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A BUSINESS ANALYST

The Role of the business analyst is given bellow:

1. Extract requirements – Requirements play a key part in engineering IT systems.

Incomplete or improper requirements usually lead to project failure. A business analyst
determines a project’s requirements by extracting them from business or government
policies, as well as from current and future users, through interaction and research.
2. Anticipate requirements – Skilled business analysts know how quickly things change in
the dynamic world of IT. Baseline plans are subject to modification, and anticipating
requirements that will be needed in the future or that have not yet been considered is
essential to successful outcomes.
3. Constrain requirements – While complete requirements are essential to project success,
the focus must remain on core business needs, and not users’ personal preferences,
functions related to trends or outdated processes, or other non-essential modifications.
4. Organize requirements – Requirements often originate from disparate, sometimes
opposing sources. The business analyst must organize requirements into related
categories to effectively manage and communicate them. Requirements are sorted into
types according to their source and applicability. Proper organization prevents project
requirements from becoming overlooked, and leads to optimum use of time and budgets.
5. Translate requirements – The business analyst must be adept at translating business
requirements to technical requirements. This includes using powerful analysis and
modeling tools to match strategic business objectives with practical technical solutions.
6. Safeguard requirements – At regular intervals in the project life cycle, the business
analyst safeguards or protects the business and user’s needs by verifying functionality,
accuracy and completeness of the requirements against the original initiating documents.

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 Safeguarding minimizes risk by ensuring requirements are being met before investing
further in system development.
7. Simplify requirements – The business analyst emphasizes simplicity and ease of use at
all times, but especially in implementation. Meeting business objectives is the goal of
every IT project; business analysts identify and avoid extraneous activities that do not
solve the problem or help reach the objective.
8. Verify requirements – The business analyst is most knowledgeable about use cases;
therefore they continually verify the requirements and reject implementations that do not
advance business objectives. Verifying requirements is accomplished through analysis,
test, demonstration and inspection.
9. Managing requirements – Typically, a formal requirements presentation, review and
approval session occurs, where project schedules, costs and duration estimates are
updated and the business objectives are revisited. Upon approval, the business analyst
transitions into requirements management activities for the rest of the IT solution life
cycle.
10. System and operations maintenance – Once all requirements have been met and the IT
solution delivered, the business analyst’s role shifts to maintenance, or preventing and
correcting defects; enhancements, or making changes to increase the value provided by
the system; and operations and maintenance, or providing system validation procedures,
maintenance reports, deactivation plans, and other documents, plans and reports. The
business analyst will also play a major role in analyzing the system to determine when
deactivation or replacement is required.

Q-4 STRATEGY ANALYSIS

A strategy is a plan of actions taken by managers to achieve the company’s overall goal and
other subsidiary goals. It determines the success of a company. In strategy, a company is
essentially asking itself, “Where do you want to play and how are you going to win?” The
following guide gives a high-level overview of business strategy, its implementation, and the
processes to lead to business success.

Strategic analysis refers to the process of conducting research on a company and its operating
environment to formulate a strategy. The definition of strategic analysis may differ from an
academic or business perspective, but the process involves several common factors:

1. Identifying and evaluating data relevant to the company’s strategy

2. Defining the internal and external environments to be analyzed
3. Using several analytic methods such as Porter’s five forces analysis, SWOT analysis, and
value chain analysis.

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Q-5 PESTLE ANALYSIS
A PESTEL analysis is a framework or tool used by marketers to analyze and monitor the
macro-environmental (external marketing environment) factors that have an impact on an
organization. The result of which is used to identify threats and weaknesses which is used in a
SWOT analysis.

PESTEL stands for:

 P – Political
 E – Economic
 S – Social
 T – Technological
 E – Environmental
 L – Legal

Political Factors

These are all about how and to what degree a government intervenes in the economy. This can
include – government policy, political stability or instability in overseas markets, foreign trade
policy, tax policy, labour law, environmental law, trade restrictions and so [Link] is clear from the
list above that political factors often have an impact on organisations and how they do business.
Organisations need to be able to respond to the current and anticipated future legislation, and
adjust their marketing policy accordingly.

Economic Factors

Economic factors have a significant impact on how an organisation does business and also how
profitable they are. Factors include – economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates, inflation,
disposable income of consumers and businesses and so [Link] factors can be further broken

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down into macro-economical and micro-economical factors. Macro-economical factors deal
with the management of demand in any given economy. Governments use interest rate control,
taxation policy and government expenditure as their main mechanisms they use for [Link]-
economic factors are all about the way people spend their incomes. This has a large impact on
B2C organisations in particular.

Social Factors

Also known as socio-cultural factors, are the areas that involve the shared belief and attitudes of
the population. These factors include – population growth, age distribution, health on sciousness,
career attitudes and so on. These factors are of particular interest as they have a direct effect on
how marketers understand customers and what drives them.

Technological Factors

We all know how fast the technological landscape changes and how this impacts the way we
market our products. Technological factors affect marketing and the management thereof in three
distinct ways:

 New ways of producing goods and services

 New ways of distributing goods and services
 New ways of communicating with target markets

Environmental Factors

These factors have only really come to the forefront in the last fifteen years or so. They have
become important due to the increasing scarcity of raw materials, polution targets, doing
business as an ethical and sustainable company, carbon footprint targets set by governments (this
is a good example were one factor could be classes as political and environmental at the same
time). These are just some of the issues marketers are facing within this factor. More and more
consumers are demanding that the products they buy are sourced ethically, and if possible from a
sustainable source.

Legal Factors

Legal factors include - health and safety, equal opportunities, advertising standards, consumer
rights and laws, product labeling and product safety. It is clear that companies need to know
what is and what is not legal in order to trade successfully. If an organization trades globally this
becomes a very tricky area to get right as each country has its own set of rules and regulations.
After you have completed a PESTEL analysis you should be able to use this to help you identify
the strengths and weaknesses for a SWOT analysis.

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Q-6 PORTER’S FIVE FORCES MODEL
The model of the Five Competitive Forces was developed by Michael E. Porter in his book
„Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors“ in 1980. Since
that time it has become an important tool for analyzing an organizations industry structure in
strategic processes. Porters model is based on the insight that a corporate strategy should meet
the opportunities and threats in the organizations external environment. Especially, competitive
strategy should base on and understanding of industry structures and the way they change.

Porter has identified five competitive forces that shape every industry and every market. These
forces determine the intensity of competition and hence the profitability and attractiveness of an
industry. The objective of corporate strategy should be to modify these competitive forces in a
way that improves the position of the organization. Porters model supports analysis of the
driving forces in an industry. Based on the information derived from the Five Forces Analysis,
management can decide how to influence or to exploit particular characteristics of their industry.

The Five Competitive Forces are typically described as follows:

1. Threat of new entrants. This force determines how easy (or not) it is to enter a particular
industry. If an industry is profitable and there are few barriers to enter, rivalry soon intensifies.
When more organizations compete for the same market share, profits start to fall. It is essential
for existing organizations to create high barriers to enter to deter new entrants. Threat of new
entrants is high when:

 Low amount of capital is required to enter a market;

 Existing companies can do little to retaliate;
 Existing firms do not possess patents, trademarks or do not have established brand
reputation;
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  There is no government regulation;
 Customer switching costs are low (it doesn’t cost a lot of money for a firm to switch to
other industries);
 There is low customer loyalty;
 Products are nearly identical;
 Economies of scale can be easily achieved.

2. Bargaining power of suppliers. Strong bargaining power allows suppliers to sell higher
priced or low quality raw materials to their buyers. This directly affects the buying firms’ profits
because it has to pay more for materials. Suppliers have strong bargaining power when:

 There are few suppliers but many buyers;

 Suppliers are large and threaten to forward integrate;
 Few substitute raw materials exist;
 Suppliers hold scarce resources;
 Cost of switching raw materials is especially high.

3. Bargaining power of buyers. Buyers have the power to demand lower price or higher
product quality from industry producers when their bargaining power is strong. Lower price
means lower revenues for the producer, while higher quality products usually raise production
costs. Both scenarios result in lower profits for producers. Buyers exert strong bargaining power
when:

 Buying in large quantities or control many access points to the final customer;
 Only few buyers exist;
 Switching costs to other supplier are low;
 They threaten to backward integrate;

4. Threat of substitutes. This force is especially threatening when buyers can easily find
substitute products with attractive prices or better quality and when buyers can switch from one
product or service to another with little cost. For example, to switch from coffee to tea doesn’t
cost anything, unlike switching from car to bicycle.

5. Rivalry among existing competitors. This force is the major determinant on how competitive
and profitable an industry is. In competitive industry, firms have to compete aggressively for a
market share, which results in low profits. Rivalry among competitors is intense when:

 There are many competitors;

 Exit barriers are high;
 Industry of growth is slow or negative;
 Products are not differentiated and can be easily substituted;

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  Competitors are of equal size;

Q-7 MOST ANALYSIS

M.O.S.T. analysis is a highly-structured method for providing targets to team members at every
level of an organization. Working from the top down, it ensures that you retain focus on the
goals which matter most to your organization.

The acronym stands for:

 Mission: This is the organization’s purpose for operating. It will usually outline some
form of key measurement.

 Objectives: These are specific goals that the organization needs to meet in order to fulfill
the mission.

 Strategy: This is the overall plan for how the organization will achieve the objectives.

 Tactics: This offers a greater level of detail and is concerned with the actions required to
execute the strategy.

The vast majority of organizations have a mission and objectives in place, yet over a period of
time these can slip into the background and the business can get caught up in the day-to-day
activities. As a result it is possible that the tactics and strategy will no longer align with the
overall vision and mission of the business. This in turn means that the activities may not provide
the results you want from a longer term perspective.

A MOST analysis is useful for taking stock and prevents an organization falling victim to this
dis-jointed approach. A MOST analysis enables you to re-connect your day-to-day activities to

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your overall business mission. It can also be used in the planning process to ensure that proposed
changes are designed to work towards fulfilling the businesses objectives.

Q-8 RESOURCE AUDIT:

A resource audit documents the campus infrastructure for responding to and preventing sexual
violence.2 A signifi-cant strength of a resource audit is that it requires minimal resources to
conduct and, once completed, produces a versatile tool for administrators, faculty, and students.
The resource audit can be used in several ways:

As a compendium of campus resources: The resource audit generates a compendium of campus

policies, protocols, and programs addressing sexual assault. School officials may enhance the
audit with user-focused content to create a resource guide for stu-dents, faculty, and staff.

As the basis for campus climate survey questions: Researchers can use the information found
in the re-source audit to construct questions for the second phase of the campus climate
assessment, the student survey. The survey can ask students the extent to which they are aware of
the various services on cam-pus, whether they have or would use the services, and what barriers
to their use may exist.

BEGINNING A RESOURCE AUDIT

Although collecting campus-wide information may seem like an overwhelming task, it is

possible to systematically gather data and produce comprehensive findings. To ac-curately
capture the full range of resources on campus, the resource audit employs a three-phase method
of data collection:

Phase 1: Preparation: Before engaging in the re-source audit, it is necessary to make decisions
about the specific goals of the audit and, relatedly, who should conduct it.

Phase 2: Online Search: The second phase is con-ducted online, using keyword searches and
examining departmental websites.

Phase 3: Interviews: Researchers conduct informational interviews with key stakeholders to

ensure that the audit is capturing the full range of resources avail-able on campus, including
those that might not be formally defined or described online.

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Q-9 BOSTON BOX:
The Boston Box is a well-known tool for corporate portfolio management. It is striking for its
simplicity. All information needed is easily obtainable and the conclusions are straightforward.
However, it is exactly this simplicity that makes the Boston Box – or Growth-Share-Matrix – a
false [Link] tool clusters products or business units by two characteristics:

 Their relative market share (horizontal axis) and

 The growth of their markets (vertical axis)

The four clusters indicate how valuable a product is now (market share) and in future (market
growth). This, in turn, indicates a products ability to generate cash or their need for cash. In
Henderson’s terms, cash generation is the ultimate measure of success for any product or
business unit.

Norm strategies can be derived for all four clusters.

 The best known strategy derived from the Boston box probably is that the cash generated
from Cash Cows should be invested into the Question Marks in order to increase their
relative market share.
 Dogs should be abandoned, of course.

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However, we have to remember the historical context of this management model. It dates back to
the early 70s – at time when external conditions were fairly stable and growth was the objective.
In order to achieve valid results under the current economic conditions, we have to think a step
further.

Q-10 THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS PROCESS MODEL

Business process modeling (BPM) in systems engineering is the activity of representing

processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analyzed or improved.

It is performed by -

 Business Analyst
 Subject Matter expert (SME)
 a team comprising both

First we need to understand what a process is. A process is flow of events that occur in any
business to gain monetary benefits without considering risk and losses. These risk and losses are
not owned by the stakeholders. To model these processes for the benefit of business needs is a
prime responsibility of a BA. Thus we can summarize by the figure that follows.

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You can see that in a business process which is triggered by some business event has inputs like
resource and information which gives rise to certain requirements. An actor could be anyone that
initiates the business event which realizes the need of something. It could also be an issue that
gives rise to the need to either improvise the current process or improve it. A business process
should then satisfies the goals and some output which offers value to the stakeholders.
In other words, a Business Process Modeling is a set of activities that describe the order of
activities from start to finish with some input and some output correspondingly.

Components of Business processing model includes -

 a goal - every business process has a number of goals to achieve, these goals need to be
able to meet business needs
 input - input could be use case stories, product backlogs, requirements which are elicited,
analyzed and validated
 Message (information) - messages are used to complete the activity. In the business
process, the message is not consumed, but as part of conversion process. There are
various sources from where the messages are generated for instance, external resources,
customers, internal organizational units and even other processes.
 Resources - it can includes the staff, the machines and other architecture. Unlike the
message, the resource is consumed and could be exhausted.
 Output - each business process generates some outputs that meets the business needs.
The output could be either physical object (for instance, a report or an invoice) or it can
be the end of the entire business process.

In modelling language, the stakeholders are referred to as the actors. They can be a person,
department, system, or an external entity to the organization. Few are the benefits of Business
Process Modelling -

1. Ensures you understand how an organization runs & performs activities, and relates to the
outside world
2. Identifies areas that are not well understood
3. Helps identify complex business processes
4. Helps with the training documentation

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Q-11 STAGES OF THE BUSINESS ANALYSIS PROCESS MODEL

1. Macroeconomic studies

Initially, the first step of the business analysis process involves the senior business analyst to
focus on studying the feasibility and cost effectiveness and on the analysis and improvement of
existing business processes.

2. Identification of business requirements

Once a project is approved, the business analyst produces the vision of the project, identifies the
high-level business needs and translates them into user cases. These needs are then prioritized in
order to develop a “project scope” that meets budget and time constraints.

a. Identification of stakeholders

The business analyst identifies all the stakeholders involved in the project under consideration
(e.g. customers, users, shareholders) and gathers their requirements.

b. Collecting business requirements

The requirements are gathered and detailed via interviews, group sessions, studies, feedback on
the current system, etc.

c. Planning and analysis of business requirements

The planning of business requirements and the implementation of a traceability strategy

between these business requirements, and the use of tools are important factors to consider in a
requirements management process. The following items must be considered as part of the
analysis:

 Feasibility study for each requirement

 Analysis of risks and constraints

 Prioritization to rank requirements

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4. Additional specifications

This stage involves detailing each business requirement, specifying the following:

 Sources of the requirement

 Complexity of implementation
 Expected performance
 Level of priority attributed
 Degree of urgency
 Level of stability
 Etc.

5. Documentation

The documentation must be sufficiently clear to be used by any player involved in the project.
The business analyst should avoid using terms that are too technical and make frequent use of
visual representations.

6. Validation and management

The business analyst continues to validate and check the tracking of business requirements
throughout the development of the solution. Having worked on the functionalities to be
implemented, he/she is often the best person to develop test scenarios.

7. Change management

The business analysis process doesn’t stop with collecting, identifying, planning and analysis.
The business analyst also takes care of tracking changes in business requirements when they
occur during the project lifecycle, as well as later, once the system is operational.

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