At Sodales, our Business Analysts (BAs) play a crucial role in bridging the gap between business needs and technology solutions. They serve as a liaison between various stakeholders to help define, analyze, and document requirements and objectives. By facilitating effective communication and streamlining processes, our BAs assist customers in making informed decisions, thereby contributing to project success and overall company growth.
Continuing our Life at Sodales series, let’s hear from three of our talented BAs – Reema, Ritika, and Aman – as they take us through their journey of a project’s lifecycle. From assessing a customer’s organization to updating documentation, ensuring stakeholder alignment, and making critical adjustments, they are the driving force behind the success of our projects.
“As a BA, the success of each project begins with setting clear and measurable objectives.”
What is the role of a Business Analyst?
Business Analysts play a crucial role in comprehending customer needs, business processes, goals, and challenges. They gain the trust of customers by meticulously gathering and documenting detailed requirements. By delving deep into the customers’ business processes, BAs ensure a comprehensive understanding of the requirements.
Once the sales team gains a deep understanding of the customer’s needs, the business analyst (BA) steps in to kickstart the requirement gathering session. It is important to be as comprehensive as possible during this phase, to provide the technical team as much information as possible when they begin configuring the product for the customer, to avoid any delay or mistakes when completing the project.
Following this phase, BAs will be involved in the testing phase to communicate the project’s progression with the customer and prepare any enhancements if needed. Ritika, Reema, and Aman explain that BAs assist in defining test cases and validating that the implemented solution meets the specified requirements as sought out in the requirements document. They also help manage changes that arise during the project’s lifecycle. BAs also participate in the post-implementation process to assess the success of projects and to identify areas for further improvement. This gives BAs the opportunity to optimize processes to achieve better outcomes moving forward.
How do you effectively manage your time with multiple projects running at once?
Ritika, Reema, and Aman explain that effectively managing their time when they have a lot of tasks is essential for productivity and for avoiding missed requests. To effectively prioritize tasks, they first identify the most important and urgent ones. They then utilize frameworks to categorize their tasks for better organization. Furthermore, they set clear, specific, and achievable goals for each task in order to meet deadlines, whether imposed by themselves or externally. Self-imposed deadlines not only create a sense of urgency but also foster accountability, greatly aiding in efficient time management.
“Think of us as a medium between the customer and collaborating departments within Sodales.”
Working collaboratively.
Effective communication is a key skill for our BAs. The role of a BA is to work collaboratively and bridge the communication gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders, ensuring that everyone understands project goals, requirements, and to track progress. Ritika, Reema, and Aman express how important it is for BAs to build and maintain strong relationships with various stakeholders, including different members of Sodales’ team, an organization’s project manager, developers, and more. “BAs act as a bridge between these groups to ensure that everyone is aligned and informed”, shares Reema.
What are your approaches when there is a miscommunication between your team and a customer?
“Stick with the Sodales methodology;” says Ritika, Reema, and Aman, stressing how important this is as a BA and how communicating this will avoid any challenges throughout the project’s lifecycle. BAs must ensure that they remain communicative throughout each phase of the project and reassure the customer that everything that is indicated on the requirements document is what is being completed. If there are any issues where customers may not have wanted a certain requirement to be fulfilled, when pertinent, Sodales is always more than happy to include enhancements and change requests to fulfill the customer’s request.
What skills does someone need to be a BA for Sodales?
Let’s keep it simple! On top of communication, Ritika, Reema, and Aman list off key skills someone needs to be a BA at Sodales, and they are: active listener, positive, transparent, empathetic, organized, consistent, can-do attitude, and a problem solver. Focusing on building long-term relationships with Sodales’ customers, rather than treating customers as one-off transactions has become a significant asset for the Sodales team of business analysts. With these skills, anyone who wants to work with the Sodales team can create a culture of excellence that keeps our customer community satisfied.
“Feeling successful after each project is an ongoing process – it doesn’t end when our part ends; with collaboration from our team, we embrace a mindset of continuous improvement, to bring our customers success within their organization and ultimately success to Sodales.”
Interested in working as a Business Analyst?
At Sodales, our passion is to help highly regulated industries improve their health, safety, and employee relations measures; this begins with developing a product that aligns with the goals of our company, and of our customers.
Do you share our vision for breaking down barriers, and proactively approaching health, safety, and employee relations? If so, we invite you to explore our careers page to learn more about our company culture and any open opportunities to join our team. As a rapidly growing company, we at Sodales are constantly seeking talented individuals to become part of our team.
