Understanding Modern Day Business
It all starts with the same old problem that we know as economic problem. With every passing day of our lives we learn about new things and with that knowledge our requirements grow. Now these requirements are either need or want depend on several other factors.
In short, the basic idea remains the same, with every passing minute our needs/wants are growing. They may be a shift from one to the other or one becomes more important than the other but fact remains there. But the problem is not by having unlimited wants or needs, problem is to fulfill such unlimited needs we do not have unlimited resources. Thus we have to prioritize among different options and also sacrifice one need over the other.
Same is the case with business. As humans have evolved over a period of time and learnt new techniques to prosper the basic aim remains the same i.e. to grow or getting better. This growth can take many shapes and types in terms of profitability, operations, objectives and so on.
We cannot make resources unlimited, however we can plan to use our limited resources effectively to meet our requirements one at a time optimally.
Where the above statement helps us understand that resources cannot be infinitely available but technically it also mean that instead of pursuing unlimited things, select the necessary few and resolve them
Same concept is good for business too, where business and its stakeholders considered together can have almost unlimited goals and objectives, however, entity’s capabilities are limited to certain extent as its policies, structure, resources limits it to pursue objectives of specific scope and kind.
What is business analysis?
Business analysis is an activity or set of activities that help stake holders to recommend solutions on how entity can achieve its objectives and goals by:
- understanding the capabilities of the business and how entity can be made more capable; and
- knowing the goals and objectives it has to achieve and what new goals are to be pursued
If we look at the above description of business analysis, we realize that it involves not just finding solutions for the requirements but also identifying the requirements at first place and then aligning them with organization’s goals.
However, this is not a simple task. Just imagine that every stakeholder have distinct set of requirements and objectives that may or may not go inline with business’ objectives. And this is just one of the problems that needs to be overcome and is part of business analysts job.
A person with a responsibility to conduct business analysis needs not to have a rank of “business analyst”. Any person at any level of responsibility who analyses needs either of a product, department, branch or an organization as a whole and recommend solutions so that objectives are achieved is an analyst and may come in form of product analyst, system analyst, market analyst etc.