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Adrian Leek
http://timoelliott.com/blog/2011/03/business-analytics-vs-business-intelligence.html

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Indiea Austin

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Our data management solutions facilitate business and IT collaboration to achieve real data asset management, while reducing risk. We combine data access, data integration and federation, data quality, data governance and master data management in one unified, workflow-driven environment.

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Our data management solutions facilitate business and IT collaboration to achieve real data asset management, while reducing risk. We combine data access, data integration and federation, data quality, data governance and master data management in one unified, workflow-driven environment.

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Spending on big data and business analytics to hit $150bn this year

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Spending on big data and business analytics to hit $150bn this year

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Kaitlin McMillan

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Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are expected to reach $150.8 billion (€141 billion) in 2017, a rise of 12. 6 per cent on last year, according to a new forecast.

Research firm IDC predicts commercial purchases of related hardware, software and services are expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.9 per cent through to 2020 when revenues will be more than $210 billion.

Investments will be led by IT and business services, which together will account for more than half of all big data and business analytics revenue in the coming years.

Software investments

Services-related spending will experience the strongest growth with a five-year CAGR of 14.4 per cent, while software investments will grow to more than $70 billion in 2020, led by purchases of end-user query, reporting and analysis and data warehouse management tools.

From a company size perspective, businesses with more than 1,000 employees will be responsible for almost two-thirds of all big data and business analytics spending over the next four years.

On a geographic basis, the US is forecast to be the largest market for big data and business analytics solutions, with spending forecast to reach $78.8 billion in 2017. The second-largest region will be Western Europe with spending of $34.1 billion this year, followed by Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) at $13.6 billion.

'Hit mainstream'

"After years of traversing the adoption S-curve, big data and business analytics solutions have finally hit mainstream," said Dan Vesset, IDC group vice president, analytics and information management.

"Big data and business analytics as an enabler of decision support and decision automation is now firmly on the radar of top executives. This category of solutions is also one of the key pillars of enabling digital transformation efforts across industries and business processes globally," he added.

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Spending on big data and business analytics to hit $150bn this year

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Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are expected to reach $150.8 billion (€141 billion) in 2017, a rise of 12. 6 per cent on last year, according to a new forecast.

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Tracey Russell

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/11/16/where-big-data-jobs-will-be-in-2016

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The Value Of A High Performing Business Analyst

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The Value Of A High Performing Business Analyst

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Elicia Jones

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"The hottest job in IT right now might be the least "T" of them all: business analyst". Computerworld Tech hotshots: The rise of the IT business analyst By Michael Fitzgerald July 11, 2012

I have been a Business Analyst for almost sixteen years of my twenty six years of professional life however I have only known what to call myself for the last nine years; a Business Analyst! During my career I have been referred to as a management consultant or IT consultant but both these roles use skills, knowledge and competencies of the Enterprise/Strategic Business Analyst which is a new role that has emerged out of the International Institute Business Analysis IIBA® Competency Model in 2011.

At the company I work for we have been helping more and more companies to think about "why" we doing an initiative or project instead of just doing something that provides little or no value to an organization.

Recently my company was engaged to analyze a cash handling business process after an audit report raised concerns over staff counting cash. In our first executive stakeholder meeting we asked the question "Why are you still using such a large volume of cash transactions, when your customers are used to credit cards and the organization was already using an internal customer card which held monetary credits and if marketed correctly would encourage return patronage?". Pretty quickly we understood that the better solution was to reduce the use of cash rather than reengineering the cash process.

Another client wanted to implement a bar scanner into a warehouse to check stock in and out. After completing an analysis of the stock it was discovered that over 40% of stock had no barcode and would therefore need to be bar-coded. Of the 60% that had a barcode 20% was sold as individual items i.e. box 24 items, which needed to be unpacked before a barcode could be added. We asked the client how many warehouse staff were currently employed and if they could handle the additional workload needed to barcode. The answer was no and it was estimated that an additional 2 staff would needed to be employed. We determined that the Return on Investment (ROI) would be negative and that as a strategy adding a barcode scanner into a warehouse would not be an advantage with the amount of unpacking and bar-coding required. Although this consultancy sale did not proceed our business analysis resulted in the client making the decision not to implement a barcode scanner (the right business outcome) and we were happy we didn't work on something with little purpose or value to the client.

In yet another example of the value of a business analyst one of our clients sought a solution to manage the approval processes and associated documentation for a number of major energy capital projects (projects up to $100 million in value). My company performed the business process automation analysis, mapped the future state processes, and elicited the business and functional requirements through a series of stakeholder workshops utilising aspects of our method, and customised templates, which aligned with the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABoK®). Based on these documented processes and requirements an automated workflow solution was developed. This process automation solution delivered: increased consistency of approval processes; an automated audit trail for the approvals; a reduced incidence of approval related documentation being misplaced or lost; a reliable mechanism for staff to determine the status of payment requests and payments; reduced time and resource wastage on printing and manual approvals; and reduced physical file storage. A key outcome of the project was the minimisation of approval delays, which reduced the external contract resources required for approval processes. The savings due to the reduction of external contractors during the first 6 months after the automated workflow solution was implemented paid for the cost of developing the solution.

Until recently the role Business Analyst (BA) was loosely defined and the activity, tasks & techniques used varied from organisation to organization. However, with the release of the BABOK in 2006 by the IIBA® the BA role has been defined within the knowledge areas providing an international standard for this beneficial role.

Definition of Business Analysis

IIBA® - "Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals".

Definition of a Business Analyst

IIBA® - "Business analysts must analyze and synthesize information provided by a large number of people who interact with the business, such as customers, staff, IT professionals, and executives. The business analyst is responsible for eliciting the actual needs of stakeholders, not simply their expressed desires. In many cases, the business analyst will also work to facilitate communication between organizational units. In particular, business analysts often play a central role in aligning the needs of business units with the capabilities delivered by information technology, and may serve as a "translator" between those groups".

In summary a business analyst is a role, that involves working with key stakeholders to elicit requirements to enable the delivery of solutions to achieve the organizations goals and objectives i.e. deliver services and/or products. The solutions provided maybe Information Technology (IT) related, non-IT related or could be process improvement.

Business Analysts may range in levels from people starting out in the role to highly skilled people with 15+ years experience. In the past it was often thought that the role of the BA was just a stepping stone towards a Project Manager or Architect however we have seen in the last few years the development of a career path from entry level BA through to an experienced BA and even to CIO or CEO.

John Simpson in his article "Why on Earth Would You Promote a Business Analyst" talks about a Chief Business Analyst "By championing the development of thousands of well-written requirements and collaboratively managing them throughout your innovation process, your staff of business analysts significantly impact the performance of your company every day. And, that makes them a strategic asset."

Either way the role of a "high performing" business analyst will be more and more valued in the future as organisations continually look to be more innovative to survive and prosper.
Don't forget to leave your comments below.

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Business Analyst | The Value of a High Performing Business Analyst

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"The hottest job in IT right now might be the least "T" of them all: business analyst". Computerworld Tech hotshots: The rise of the IT business analyst By Michael Fitzgerald July 11, 2012 I have been a Business Analyst for almost sixteen years of my twenty six years of professional life however I have only known what to call myself for the last nine years; a Business Analyst!

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge?

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge?

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Maicie Clinansmith

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge? | Articles | IBM

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge? Gary Cokins' takes a look at how business analytics is narrowing the margins of error

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Business intelligence, analytics market to decelerate to 19% by 2020: Gartner

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Business intelligence, analytics market to decelerate to 19% by 2020: Gartner

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Mumbai: Modern business intelligence and analytics market is expected to decelerate from 63.6% growth in 2015 to a projected 19% by 2020 as a result of data and analytics becoming mainstream with growth in terms of seat expansion but dampening pricing pressures, a Gartner study said Friday.

The study added that revenue in the business intelligence and analytics software market will reach $18.3 billion in 2017, an increase of 7.3 percent from 2016, and to $22.8 billion by the end of 2020.

"Modern business intelligence and analytics continues to expand more rapidly than the overall market, which is offsetting declines in traditional business intelligence spending," the study said.

Modern business intelligence and analytics as a platform has emerged in the last few years to meet new organizational requirements for accessibility, agility and deeper analytical insight, shifting the market from IT-led, system-of-record reporting to business-led, agile analytics including self-service.

"Enterprise-friendly buying models have become more critical to successful deployments," Rita Sallam, research vice president, Gartner said.

The Gartner study also found that organizations will increasingly leverage streaming data generated by devices, sensors and people to make faster decisions. It said that availability of an active marketplace where buyers and sellers converge is likely to generate increased interest in the business intelligence and analytics space and fuel its future growth.

The report highlighted that the emergence of smart data discovery capabilities, machine learning and automation of the entire analytics workflow will drive a new flurry of buying because of its potential value to reduce time to insights from advanced analytics and deliver them to a broader set of people across the enterprise.

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Business intelligence, analytics market to decelerate to 19% by 2020: Gartner - ET Telecom

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Mumbai: Modern business intelligence and analytics market is expected to decelerate from 63.6% growth in 2015 to a projected 19% by 2020 as a result of data and analytics becoming mainstream with growth in terms of seat expansion but dampening pricing pressures, a Gartner study said Friday.

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Brett Arsenault

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A new study from Informatica and Deloitte has found that cloud is "well on the way" to being the dominant vehicle for business analytics.

The report, which was conducted at the end of last year alongside Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and consulted more than 400 global business and technology leaders, found that cloud was either a key or important part of the analytics strategy for 91% of respondents.

In addition, self-service was considered a key component with cloud-ready organisations more likely to go down that route for data management and governance; 94% of those polled said governed self-service was important for their organisations' analytics implementations.

The benefits of using cloud-based analytics are stark, according to the report; 84% of respondents said business user agility went up through governed self-service for data integration, while similar numbers agreed for data mapping (83%), data modelling (82%) and data governance (77%).

Cost reduction was naturally the primary financial aspect driving cloud analytics, but the study also showed it was the key technical driver. Interestingly, while security and compliance remained the key barrier to adoption - cited by 40% of those polled - security fears lessened according to companies who were further down the road of cloud implementation.

"The key takeaways from our research is that cloud adoption is expanding quickly as companies find success with their first cloud analytics implementations and move to create more mature environments and drive broader adoption," said Lyndsay Wise, EMA research director in a statement.

"As these environments become more mature and robust, analytics users are demanding access to their data in ways that make it fast and easy to interact with," Wise added. "In this regard, governed self-service access is the great enabler of the upswell of analytic insight that companies need to stay competitive."

You can find out more about the report here (registration required).

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Cloud becoming 'dominant vehicle' for business analytics, says new report

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A new study from Informatica and Deloitte has found that cloud is "well on the way" to being the dominant vehicle for business analytics. The report, which was conducted at the end of last year alongside Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and consulted more than 400 global business and technology leaders, found that cloud was either a key or important part of the analytics strategy for 91% of respondents.

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Business Intelligence And Analytics In The Cloud, 2017

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Business Intelligence And Analytics In The Cloud, 2017

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Andrew Oswalt

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These and many other insights are from the BARC Research and Eckerson Group Study, BI and Data Management in the Cloud: Issues and Trends published January 2017 (39 pp., PDF, no opt-in). Business Application Research Center (BARC) is a research and consulting firm that concentrates on enterprise software including business intelligence (BI), analytics and data management. Eckerson Group is a research and consulting firm focused on serving the needs of business intelligence (BI) and analytic leaders in Fortune 2000 organizations worldwide. The study is based on interviews completed in September and October 2016. 370 respondents participated in the survey globally. Given the size of the sample, the results aren't representative of the global BI and analytics user base. The study's results provide an interesting glimpse into analytics and BI adoption today, however. For a description of the methodology, please see page 31 of the study.

Key insights from the study include the following:

Public cloud is the most preferred deployment platform for cloud BI and analytics, and the larger the organization toe more likely they are using private clouds. 46% of organizations selected public cloud platforms as their preferred infrastructure for supporting their BI, analytics, and data management initiatives in 2016. 30% are relying on a hybrid cloud platform and 24%, private clouds. With public cloud platforms becoming more commonplace in BI and analytics deployments, the need for greater PaaS- and IaaS-level orchestration becomes a priority. The larger the organization, the more likely they are using private clouds (33%). Companies with between 250 to 2,500 employees are the least likely to be using private clouds (16%).

Dashboard-based reporting (76%), ad-hoc analysis and exploration (57%) and dashboard authoring (55%) are the top three Cloud BI use cases. Respondents are most interested in adding advanced and predictive analytics (53%), operational planning and forecasting (44%), strategic planning and simulation (44%) in the next year. The following graphic compares primary use cases and planned investments in the next twelve

Power users dominate the use of cloud BI and analytics solutions, driving more complex use cases that include ad-hoc analysis (57%) and advanced report and dashboard creation (55%). Casual users are 20% of all cloud BI and analytics, with their most common use being for reporting and dashboards (76%). Customers and suppliers are an emerging group of cloud BI and analytics users as more respondent companies create self-service web-based apps to streamline external reporting.

Data integration between cloud applications/databases (51%) and providing data warehouses and data marts (50%) are the two most common data management strategies in use to support BI and analytics solutions today. Respondent organizations are using the cloud to integration cloud applications with each other and with on-premises applications (46%). The study also found that as more organizations move to the cloud, there's a corresponding need to support hybrid cloud architectures. Cloud-based data warehouses are primarily being built to support net new applications versus existing

Data integration between on-premises and cloud applications dominates use cases across all company sizes, with 48% of enterprises leading in adoption. Enterprises are also prioritizing providing data warehouses and data marts (48%), the pre-processing of data (38%) and data integration between cloud applications and databases (38%). The smaller a company is the more critical data integration becomes. 63% of small companies with less than 250 employees are prioritizing data integration between cloud applications and databases (63%).

Tools for data exploration (visual discovery) adopted grew the fastest in the last three years, increasing from 20% adoption in 2013 to 49% in 2016. BI tools increased slightly from 55% to 62% and BI servers dropped from 56% to 51%. Approximately one in five respondent organizations (22%) added analytical applications in 2016.

The main reasons for adopting cloud BI and analytics differ by size of the company, with cost (57%) being the most important for mid-sized businesses between 250 to 2.5K employees. Consistent with previous studies, small companies' main reason for adopting cloud BI and analytics include flexibility (46%), reduced maintenance of hardware and software (43%), and cost (38%). Enterprises with more than 2.5K employees are adopting cloud BI and analytics for greater scalability (48%), cost (40%) and reduced maintenance of hardware and software (38%). The following graphic compares the most important reason for adopting cloud BI, analytics and data management by the size of the company.

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Business Intelligence And Analytics In The Cloud, 2017

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78% are planning to increase the use of cloud for BI, analytics in the next twelve months. Cloud BI adoption increased from 29% to 43% from 2013 to 2016.These insights are from the BARC Research and Eckerson Group Study, BI and Data Management in the Cloud: Issues and Trends published January 2017.

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Big Data and Business Analytics Revenues Forecast to Reach $150.8 Billion This Year, Led by Banking and Manufacturing Investments, According to IDC

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Big Data and Business Analytics Revenues Forecast to Reach $150.8 Billion This Year, Led by Banking and Manufacturing Investments, According to IDC

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Hanna Lehman
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170314005262/en/

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The Business Analysis Process: 8 Steps to Being an Effective Business Analyst

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The Business Analysis Process: 8 Steps to Being an Effective Business Analyst

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Daniel Kivell

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Being assigned to a new project is an exciting time as a business analyst, but it can also be nerve-wracking. You might be wondering what exactly is expected of you, what deliverables you should be creating, and how to guarantee success on your project.

In this article, you'll learn about the 8-step business analysis process that you can apply whether you are in an agile environment or a traditional one, whether you are purchasing off-the-shelf software or building custom code, whether you are responsible for a multi-million dollar project or a one-week project.

Depending on the size and complexity of your project, you can go through these steps quickly or slowly, but to get to a successful outcome you must go through them.

(We cover each of the 8 steps in even more detail in our BA Essentials Master Class - in fact, each step gets an entire lesson in this virtual, self-study course.)

First, take a look at this process flow below which shows how the 8 steps fit together and how you might iterate through them on a typical business analyst project.

Now let's look at each of the 8 steps in more detail.

Step 1 - Get Oriented

Often as business analysts we are expected to dive in to a project and start contributing as quickly as possible to make a positive impact. Sometimes the project is already underway. Other times there are vague notions about what the project is or why it exists. We face a lot of ambiguity as business analysts and it's our job to clarify the scope, requirements, and business objectives as quickly as possible.

But that doesn't mean that it makes sense to get ourselves knee-deep into the detailed requirements right away. Doing so very likely means a quick start in the wrong direction.

Taking some time, whether that's a few hours, few days, or at the very most a few weeks, to get oriented will ensure you are not only moving quickly, but also able to be an effective and confident contributor on the project.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Clarifying your role as the business analyst so that you are sure to create deliverables that meet stakeholder needs.

Determining the primary stakeholders to engage in defining the project's business objectives and scope, as well as any subject matter experts to be consulted early in the project.

Understanding the project history so that you don't inadvertently repeat work that's already been done or rehash previously made decisions.

Understanding the existing systems and business processes so you have a reasonably clear picture of the current state that needs to change.

This is where you learn how to learn what you don't know you don't know, so to speak. This step gets you the information you need to be successful and effective in the context of this particular project.

Step 2 - Discover the Primary Business Objectives

It's very common for business analysts and project managers to jump right in to defining the scope of the project. However, this can lead to unnecessary headaches. Uncovering and getting agreement on the business needs early in a project and before scope is defined is the quickest path forward to a successful project.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Discovering expectations from your primary stakeholders - essentially discovering the "why" behind the project. (Our BA Essentials Master Class covers 7 different business analysis techniques that can be used as part of this discovery.)

Reconciling conflicting expectations so that the business community begins the project with a shared understanding of the business objectives and are not unique to one person's perspective.

Ensuring the business objectives are clear and actionable to provide the project team with momentum and context while defining scope and, later on, the detailed requirements.

Discovering the primary business objectives sets the stage for defining scope, ensuring that you don't end up with a solution that solves the wrong problem or, even worse, with a solution that no one can even determine is successful or not.

Step 3 - Define Scope

A clear and complete statement of scope provides your project team the go-forward concept to realize the business needs. Scope makes the business needs tangible in such a way that multiple project team participants can envision their contribution to the project and the implementation.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Defining a solution approach to determine the nature and extent of technology and business process changes to be made as part of implementing the solution to the primary business objectives.

Drafting a scope statement and reviewing it with your key business and technology stakeholders until they are prepared to sign-off or buy-in to the document.

Confirming the business case to ensure that it still makes sense for your organization to invest in the project.

Scope is not an implementation plan, but it is a touchstone guiding all of the subsequent steps of the business analysis process and tasks by other project participants.

Step 4 - Formulate Your Business Analysis Plan

Your business analysis plan will bring clarity to the business analysis process that will be used to successfully define the detailed requirements for this project. Your business analysis plan is going to answer many questions for you and your project team.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Choosing the most appropriate types of business analysis deliverables, given the project scope, project methodology, and other key aspects of the project context.

Defining the specific list of business analysis deliverables that will completely cover the scope of the project and identifying the stakeholders who will be part of the creation and validation of each deliverable.

Identifying the timelines for completing the business analysis deliverables.

In the absence of defining a credible and realistic plan, a set of expectations may be defined for you, and often those expectations are unrealistic as they do not fully appreciate everything that goes into defining detailed requirements.

Step 5 - Define the Detailed Requirements

Detailed requirements provide your implementation team with the information they need to implement the solution. They make scope implementable.

Without clear, concise, and actionable detailed requirements, implementation teams often flounder and fail to connect the dots in such a way that delivers on the original business case for the project.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Eliciting the information necessary to understand what the business community wants from a specific feature or process change.

Analyzing the information you've discovered and using it to create a first draft of one or more business analysis deliverables containing the detailed requirements for the project.

Reviewing and validating each deliverable with appropriate business and technology stakeholders and asking questions to fill in any gaps.

Effective business analysts consciously sequence your deliverables to be as effective as possible in driving the momentum of the project forward. Paying attention to the project's critical path, reducing ambiguity and complexity, and generating quick wins are all factors to consider when sequencing your deliverables.

Step 6 - Support the Technical Implementation

On a typical project employing a business analyst, a significant part of the solution involves a technical implementation team building, customizing, and/or deploying software. During the technical implementation, there are many worthwhile support tasks for you to engage in that will help drive the success of the project and ensure the business objectives are met.

Your key responsibilities in this step include:

Reviewing the solution design to ensure it fulfills all of the requirements and looking for opportunities to meet additional business needs without increasing the technical scope of the project.

Updating and/or repackaging requirements documentation to make it useful for the technology design and implementation process.

Engaging with quality assurance professionals to ensure they understand the business context for the technical requirements. This responsibility may include reviewing test plans and/or test cases to ensure they represent a clear understanding of the functional requirements.

Making yourself available to answer questions and help resolve any issues that surface during the technical design, technical implementation, or testing phases of the project.

Managing requirements changes to ensure that everyone is working from up-to-date documentation and that appropriate stakeholders are involved in all decisions about change.

When appropriate, leading user acceptance testing efforts completed by the business community to ensure that the software implementation meets the needs of business end users.

All of these efforts help the implementation team fulfill the intended benefits of the project and ensure the investment made realizes a positive return.

Step 7 - Help the Business Implement the Solution

Your technology team can deliver a beautiful shiny new solution that theoretically meets the business objectives, but if your business users don't use it as intended and go back to business-as-usual, your project won't have delivered on the original objectives. Business analysts are increasingly getting involved in this final phase of the project to support the business.

Your key responsibilities in this step may include:

Analyzing and developing interim and future state business process documentation that articulates exactly what changes need to be made to the business process.

Training end users to ensure they understand all process and procedural changes or collaborating with training staff so they can create appropriate training materials and deliver the training.

Collaborating with business users to update other organizational assets impacted by the business process and technology changes.

This step is all about ensuring all members of the business community are prepared to embrace the changes that have been specified as part of the project.

Step 8 - Assess Value Created by the Solution

A lot happens throughout the course of a project. Business outcomes are discussed. Details are worked through. Problems, big and small, are solved. Relationships are built. Change is managed. Technology is implemented. Business users are trained to change the way they work.

In this flurry of activity and a focus on delivery, it's easy to lose track of the big picture. Why are we making all these changes and what value do they deliver for the organization? And even more importantly, are we still on track? Meaning, is the solution we're delivering actually delivering the value we originally anticipated?

Nothing creates more positive momentum within an organization than a track record of successful projects. But if we don't stop and assess the value created by the solution, how do we know if we are actually operating from a track record of success?

Your key responsibilities in this step may include:

Evaluating the actual progress made against the business objectives for the project to show the extent to which the original objectives have been fulfilled.

Communicating the results to the project sponsor, and if appropriate, to the project team and all members of the organization.

Suggesting follow-up projects and initiatives to fully realize the intended business objectives of the project or to solve new problems that are discovered while evaluating the impact of this project.

After completing this step, it's likely you'll uncover more opportunities to improve the business which will lead you to additional projects. And so the cycle begins again!

>>Learn More About the 8 Steps to Being an Effective Business Analyst

We'll discuss all 8 steps in a lot more detail as part of our BA Essentials Master Class.

Your investment includes 8 lessons in PDF and audio mp3 formats covering each of the 8 steps of the business analysis process, weekly guidepost emails to help you stay focused and motivated, and a planning template covering all of the key activities that you can use to create a business analysis plan.

There's even a self-study option for earning 8 PDs/CDUs.

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The Business Analysis Process: 8 Steps to Being an Effective Business Analyst

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Being assigned to a new project is an exciting time as a business analyst, but it can also be nerve-wracking. You might be wondering what exactly is expected of you, what deliverables you should be creating, and how to guarantee success on your project.

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How Does Business Analytics Give a Competetive Edge?

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How Does Business Analytics Give a Competetive Edge?

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Anthony Wasyl

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge? | Articles | IBM

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How Does Business Analytics Provide a Competitive Edge? Gary Cokins' takes a look at how business analytics is narrowing the margins of error