Key Transferable

Skills for Business

Analysts(Professional Business

Analyst Training organisation)

There’s always debate about which skills in business analysis are the

most important and most transferable. The answers always seem to

come back to these:

• Communication Skill

• Interpersonal Skills

• Technical Skills

• Research and Analytical Skills

• Organizational Skills

Here’s more detail on the transferable skills, which should help if

you’re considering moving into business analysis as a career:

Communication Skills

Oral communication skills are used to verbally express ideas,

information or other matters.

Written communication skills are necessary for business analysts to

document elicitation results, requirements and other information for

which medium-to-long term records are required.

Listen and verbally respond to customer’s needs in order to solve

problems and provide information and direction, ensuring the

customer’s experience is a positive one.

Record customer needs, issues and resolutions to maintain accurate

records and data for further analysis by management and business

development.

Interpersonal Skills

Business analysts must be able to work closely with other team

members to effectively support their work so that solutions can be

effectively implemented.

You must also have strong facilitation and negotiation

skills: Business analysts facilitate interactions between stakeholders

in order to help them resolve disagreements regarding the priority

and nature of requirements.

Work with team members to resolve customer issues and/or escalate

them to appropriate departments within the organization. As a

representative of the organization, utilize your knowledge of its

policies to negotiate and facilitate resolution of issues and needs.

Technical Skills

Business analysts use office productivity applications to document

and track requirements. At a minimum, business analysts also have

to have a fundamental understanding of the business technology

infrastructure and databases.

Technical skills are required for use of some of these applications

such as customer management software, word processing, etc.

Research and Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are defined in various categories such as creative

thinking, learning, systems thinking and problem solving.

Business analysts must be effective at defining and solving problems

in order to ensure that the real, underlying challenge is understood

and that solutions actually address it.

Analysis is aided by techniques such as process modeling,

organizational modeling, data modeling and business rules analysis.

Research skills are aided by techniques such as document analysis,

observation and interviews.

Ask probing questions to understand the customer’s need or issue.

Review current policy and procedures to ensure resolution of the

issue or need is in line with the organization’s contractual obligations

to the customer. Use creative thinking to address a customer’s need.

Organizational Skills

Personal organization skills assist the business analyst in effectively

managing tasks and information. So, organize information to ensure a

timely response to customer questions.