If you are a graduate or post graduate with your interest in the functional areas like Accounts, finance and auditing, then you can spear ahead in your career as a Business Analyst. Business analyst are also termed as Financial analyst or Financial planning executive in various organization.
Job profile
As a business analyst, you need to work closely with Heads of Business Units or Head of Departments to analyze their budgetary and performance numbers. Generally such positions report into CFO or Head of Finance. Your key responsibilities as a Business analyst will be to prepare financial models for a business or Department both for long term as well as short term. It involves making for strategic plan that normally looks for 3-5 years ahead and operative plans that focuses on outlook for immediate quarter. Such business plan is required to be a detailed one hence in depth understanding of accounting principles, sense of business and love for numbers is a must of this profession.
Using such models, an organization reviews their past performance and forecast the future numbers. After studying these numbers, it might call for change in the game plan or restructuring of business or complete revamp. Being the starting point for various such initiatives, it becomes a job with high degree of pressure with management looking for immediate answers for their queries.
A common and regular work for a Business Analyst is to prepare Annual and quarterly budget, also called as Rolling operating plans and thereafter tracking the actual performance of the business units. Any variance from these budgetary numbers could be a risk to entire model or at least impact the projected Profit & Loss and Balance sheet numbers, which may further creates a bad impression among lenders or share holders. As such, it becomes a critical job for any organization. The routine reporting from business Analyst are popularly termed as MIS or Management Information system and are the most read documents of any organization. Mostly Business analyst play the key role in ERP implementation and other such related initiatives. This is one of the reason that software companies involved in making such software are also hiring Financial experts as Business Analyst. The basic aim for such post is to understand the client requirements and make them understand by software developers.
Qualification
As a qualification, a person aspiring to become a Business Analyst should be a Chartered Accountant, ICWA or MBA-finance from a institute of repute. Knowledge of statistical tools and proficiency in MS excel is a must for this career option. Also, skill on building presentation is important in order to present findings in a more acceptable format. To become a Senior business Analyst, you need to work in the similar domain for atleast 5-10 years.
Remuneration
Remuneration for Business Analyst is not a constraints. Especially listed companies, that publishes their results on quarterly basis pays decently say in the range of 15-25lacs. The Business Analyst not only prepares report for the consumptions of Board of Directors but also creates as information pool for investors. The business analyst are mostly people sitting next to Top Management in any Press conferences etc.
So as a Business Analyst, your love for number can actually make you a successful professional.
