A business analyst retrieves information from employees and executives to create a database that contains statistics on activities, expenses, production output, etc. – which is then analyzed using reporting software.
Technology is an increasing area of business, playing a vital role in many sectors. There are many different job roles within this sector. Software Business Analyst is one of the most popular jobs to become involved with ─ so then, what are some of these softwares being used by a software business analyst?
Alteryx
Platform: Alteryx Platform
Related products: Alteryx Designer, Alteryx Server, Alteryx Connect, Alteryx Promote
Description: Alteryx is a self-service data analytics software company that specializes in data preparation and data blending. Alteryx Analytics allows users to organize, clean, and analyze data in a repeatable workflow. Business analysts find this tool particularly useful for connecting to and cleansing data from data warehouses, cloud applications, spreadsheets and other sources. The platform features tools to run a variety of analytic jobs (predictive, statistical, spatial) inside a single interface.
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AnswerRocket
Platform: AnswerRocket
Description: AnswerRocket offers a search-powered data analytics platform designed for business users. The product enables you to ask business questions in natural language, and no technical skills are needed to run reports or generate analysis. AnswerRocket features a combination of AI and machine learning, as well as advanced analytic functionality. The platform can also automate manual tasks and answer ad hoc questions quickly. AnswerRocket is mobile-friendly and includes native voice recognition.
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Arcadia Data
Platform: Arcadia Enterprise
Related products: Arcadia Instant
Description: AnswerRocket offers a search-powered data analytics platform designed for business users. The product enables you to ask business questions in natural language, and no technical skills are needed to run reports or generate analysis. AnswerRocket features a combination of AI and machine learning, as well as advanced analytic functionality. The platform can also automate manual tasks and answer ad hoc questions quickly. AnswerRocket is mobile-friendly and includes native voice recognition.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.
Birst
Platform: Networked BI
Description: Birst offers a cloud-based analytics solution that connects an organization using a network of interwoven virtualized BI instances. The provider’s flagship product is its Networked BI platform. The tool features an adaptive user experience, multi-tenant cloud architecture, user data tier, and a completely virtualized data ecosystem. These capabilities enable use of BI across multiple regions, product lines, departments, and customers. Customers most commonly use the product for BI provisioning, and because it is cloud-based, decentralized analytics as well.
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BOARD
Platform: BOARD
Related products: BOARD Cloud
Description: BOARD combines business intelligence, performance management, and predictive analytics into one platform. As a result, any change to data, data models, security profiles or business rules is immediately propagated to every application. The solution provides all the tools required to create and update databases, data presentations, analyses, and process models. The company also offers BOARD Cloud, a SaaS version of the platform, backed by Microsoft Azure.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.
Chartio
Platform: Chartio
Description: Chartio is a cloud-based data discovery platform that lets you create charts and interactive dashboards. The product features a proprietary, visual version of SQL that enables any user to explore, transform and visualize data via a flexible drag-and-drop interface. There is no need to build data models in advance. Chartio includes a set of pre-built connections to data sources like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and Snowflake, while also enabling direct access to CSVs and Google Sheets.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.
Domo
Platform: Domo
Related products: Domo Everywhere, Domo integration Cloud
Description: Domo is a cloud-based executive management platform that enables organizations to see key data in real-time from across the enterprise in one place and on any device. The company offers prepackaged dashboard content and functionality for filtering and sorting data visually in Domo Analyzer. Domo Everywhere enables users to embed interactive Domo cards in portals, on web properties and inside applications.
MS PowerPoint
This particular software helps them prepare and deliver formal presentations. Every business analyst must be doing presentations. He also needs to communicate ideas, justify or provide project updates to stakeholders. With PowerPoint presentations, communication becomes more effortless.
MS Excel
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet-like tool. Excel has several built-in mathematical and financial functions that can perform data analysis. The work like reporting, creating dashboards, and creating tables can easily be performed using this tool.
MS Word
This particular software helps the business analysts to create documents by making the templates. Microsoft Word has so many templates and features that you can use for different purposes. It also offers various visual elements such as user-preferred fonts, themes, objects, shapes, smart arts, charts, and Visio diagrams.
MS Visio
Microsoft Visio is a leading tool for business modeling. It is the tool that business analysts use to capture and present stakeholder’s ideas effectively. It can also create case diagrams, project schedules, and project flowcharts to generate architecture diagrams and data models.
Rational RequisitePro
The Rational Requisite Pro is a must-have tool for every business analyst. It is one of the best tools for requirements management and working on requirement gathering and elicitation. It has a robust architecture that can easily manage documents that are dynamically linked to a project database.
Rational Requisite can be used for:
- Conducting impact analysis
- Managing an audit trail of changes
- Querying and sorting data using a dynamic database
- Tracing of requirements
Pencil
A pencil is free to use and an open-source tool. It is used for prototyping and creating easy mockups. It acts as a standalone tool that can be downloaded and used with a simple interface.
Pencil can be used for:
- Creating a prototype for the user
- Helping the customers understand the final product’s look and feel
- Implementing all the changes asked by the customers based on their needs to deliver the best outcome
- Modeling the decisions using a standardized approach
Google Docs
I am sure you might have heard of google docs. Google docs offer several features that makes using them very comfortable and easy. Some of its features are:
- It is a handy tool for sharing documents online
- It allows to create, view, and edit files online
- Users can download files in different formats such as .pdf, .txt, .docx, and many others
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a leading cloud-based tool for designing wireframes that provide content and user interaction. This tool is an excellent tool for business analysts working on new product design, brainstorming, mind mapping, and sketching new business ideas that provides immediate feedback from stakeholders. This collaboration tool helps BAs communicate their vision for the product to the relevant stakeholders.
Some of its cool features that help analysts to work faster and smarter include:
- Facility to host the projects online
- A top-notch and easy to use user interface
- Allows to build wireframes
- Pre-installed libraries
- Users interface controls and icons
Trello
Trello is one of the useful project collaboration tools. It uses a Kanban-style approach for managing and prioritizing tasks. With this tool, a business analyst can easily track his tasks, project plans, and the progress of key activities to be completed. Along with that, it helps to analyze the business data.
Some of its cool features include:
- Ability to view team activity
- Exporting data is much easier
- Work history can be checked
- Associating and organizing boards with collections
- Assigning admins for privacy settings management
- Smooth collaboration and communication between teams
Version One Lifecycle
This tool is one of the excellent business analysis tools. It is a cloud-based agile application lifecycle management (ALM) solution that connects the unique feature of combining the capability with enterprise applications and open-source software development tools. It helps in engaging with stakeholders to track and report various software programs and projects.
Some of its features are:
- It is aligned with agile software development
- Immediate updating for the attributes is possible
- Agile Data Mart designing is provided
- Automate decision-making during the software lifecycle
SmartDraw
To make project management work more comfortable, business analysts use SmartDraw. It is a diagram tool that helps you prepare flowcharts, organization charts, brainstorms, project charts, and other business visuals.
Some of its features include:
- Easy integration with Microsoft tools and others
- An option to install a firewall for security purposes
- Offers different features for the automation of tasks
SAS Business Analytics (SAS BA)
The high-grade text analytics capabilities of the SAS-based business analytics software allow users to inspect and transform unorganized text data into relevant information that analysts can explore to discover meaningful insights.
SAS BA is fully-loaded with a range of statistical tools, which simplify the process of analyzing large sets of data in real-time. The top-of-the-line business analytics platform also predicts future trends from the information harvested from big data.
QlikView
QlikView is one of the most preferred tools for business analytics because of its unique features, such as patented technology and in-memory processing, facilitating the delivery of ultra-fast business analytics reports.
Included among the best business analyst tools, QlikView allows users to visualize data relationships using specific colors for related and non-related data with automatically maintained data association, compressed to 10 percent of its native size.
Board
Board features in the list of top-rated business analyst software tools because of its industry-leading business analytics model that permits users to create interactive and intuitive business analytics reports and dashboards.
The highly-scalable business analytics platform integrates the best-in-class analytical tools for business, including a powerful statistics suite.
The Board business analytics tool can manage massive data volumes, and it can also support accurate scenario analysis and forecasting by manipulating the data supplied to scenarios.
Splunk
Splunk is one of the most widely used business analytics tools in small and medium scale industries.
Initially launched for processing machine log file data, Splunk has added a host of sophisticated features over the years, including a user-friendly web interface and various visualization options.
Sisense
Sisense – one of the most popular business analyst software tools – incorporates dynamic and robust text analysis functionalities that enable users to transform unstructured text into valuable business intelligence.
The Sisense business analytics platform, which features the proprietary Sisense Crowd Accelerated BI, uses open-source language for computational statistics. It allows users to perform extensive analysis and visualization of complex data, which promotes data-driven decisions and improved forecasting of future trends.
Conclusion
The role of a business analyst in any company is to take care of business needs in the business process; whether it is in an IT or non-IT organization. The business analyst (BA), also knows as information technology (IT) analysis, is the person who designs system specifications, determines feasibility, develops testing scenarios and evaluates options for changes in the existing software. This role is usually given to experienced professionals to ensure that their input in terms of designing solution for the company or business is based on industry practices, experience and results.