Business Analyst may get different designations based on the type of responsibilities and organizational hierarchy. In this article, we will discuss about the different types of roles associated to Business Analyst, key activities performed and differences.

Business Analyst may get different designations based on the type of responsibilities and organizational hierarchy. In this article, we will discuss about the different types of roles associated to Business Analyst, key activities performed and differences.

Business Analyst: BA role acts to bridge the gap between the customer and technical team. This role requires an individual to understand the customer’s requirements, analyze the requirements, help the technical team to understand and clarify the questions from technical team. The person will probably be a commerce, business graduate with certain amount of training on BA techniques. He will come up with various documentations like Business Requirement, Functional Specification, Requirement Traceability, Use Case, Process Flow etc. The person need not code but he should understand the features, functionality, process, feasibility, limitation and the benefits of the solution that his team is working on.

System Analyst: System Analyst role is little more technical than Business Analyst role. The person should have sound knowledge on Data, Key Objects and Entities. He will closely work with technical team to create Data Dictionary, Data Mapping, Data Flow Diagram, Entity Relationship Diagram, and Database Architecture. This role may vary depending on the technology stack. Similar to data, the person may need knowledge on Data Warehousing or Data Mining.

Business Analytics: Business Analytic role is more into statistical analysis with various data input. Based on the source systems they will find out how to create a meaning with the data I have. The main objective here is to predict future, understand the trend, figure out risk and take appropriate action in the present.

Functional Consultant: Functional Consultants are aligned to a specific technology; e.g. SAP, SFDC, Oracle eBiz etc. The person has the functional knowledge on the technology. He will not code or develop any program but he should be able to run the solution from end user prospective, some configurations or customizations also can be done by him to run a demo or show the functionality in from of customer or any stakeholders.   

Business Consultant: Business Consultant or Business Process Consultant are the expects who have huge amount of domain and functional knowledge on a specific area of business. They also know the industry benchmark and are aware about the best practices. They consult the customer in various ways like Vendor Assessment, Implementation Roadmap, Organizational Change Management, GOTO Market Strategy, Merger and Acquisition etc.

Pre-sales Consultant: Pre-sales Consultants work with a technology organization to help the sales team in preparing technical proposal or solutions. Additionally they can conduct product demonstration, technical presentation with customer to address customer questions. They are the key members in the solution team.