We explain business analyst vs data analyst and help you pick a suitable career.
In a business environment, data analyst and business analyst jobs are evolving to become a major part of their routine work routine. They both help the organization to take data-driven decision making that is highly effective and serves its customers. While data analysts work closer to data, the business analyst profession is more involved in meeting business needs with the help of company data. In this article, we take you through Business Analyst vs Data Analyst and help you choose a career that suits your interest.
For many centuries, humans have used data to make decisions. Even before computers existed, humans used to calculate and operate on the data manually. Therefore, data has long played an important role in our daily lives. However, things changed when the technology came into existence.From calculators to quantum computers, everything is evolving around data and numbers. In addition, it has been done over the years to preserve data to pass on valuable information and knowledge to future generations. Fortunately, big data has evolved and brought an impetus to data-related professionals.Today, we analyze data with data analytic tools and gain new strategies, business insights, and data-driven decisions.
We are also facing a strong rise of mathematicians, computer scientists and statisticians in various industries working to make sense of big data using data analytics techniques. The advent of big data has increased the demand for data scientists across the globe.
Following the familiarity of data science, several other roles emerged, including business analyst and data analyst. This created a void between business analysts versus data analysts when it comes to the amount of data and the need to accelerate business. Hence, we tell you the basics of both career opportunities and help you choose one.
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Definition
Business Analyst: The main role of a business analyst in an organization is to measure all the parts of the business and ensure that everything is going well. One is assigned to sustain and accelerate the growth of the company.
As mentioned above, business analysts work close to business teams and help them make effective business decisions based on big data. They help with the overall sales process and even provide marketing campaign ideas that are better suited to the customer category. In addition to connecting directly to the data, business analysts also examine both internal and external parts of the business and therefore detect discrepancies in a process that will ultimately help the company be more efficient and successful.
Data Analyst: Simply put, data analysts focus more on the company's data rather than its impact. Even though he is assigned to work on both contexts, his job role demands him to be massively good at big data.Their efforts will be less on presenting insights to stakeholders and more on data warehousing, data tables and the SQL code developed to create those business metrics.
Roles and responsibilities
If you are fond of working with big data, then both the business analyst vs data analyst role will help you capitalize on your love for data. However, when choosing a professional career, you need to be careful and especially careful. You will need to go through the roles and responsibilities of a data analyst and business analyst and see where you can use your full intelligence.
Business Analyst: Since the role of business analyst revolves around business decision making, professionals are expected to be critical thinkers, problem solvers and excellent communicators.One must outperform others by being good at data-driven decision-making as well as excel at knowing the organization's objectives and processes. This will enable them to work closely with business teams to evaluate performance, identify deficiencies, and suggest and implement solutions.
To incorporate with business teams, business analysts should possess certain skills,
- Have detailed knowledge of the business structure and its functionalities.
- Be at the forefront of new project developments by planning, managing, budgeting, and forecasting the content.
- One should have oral and written communication skills along with job skills.
- They should possess in-depth knowledge of databases, networks, and other technologies.
Some of the routine tasks of business analysts are listed as follows,
- Analyzing and sorting business requirements.
- Project management and development.
- Performing quality testing.
- Keeping up with the pace of changing technology in an organization.
Data Analyst: Since data analysts are directly involved with big data, they are concerned about the data impact they can have in comparison to competitors' data. They are placed at the crossroads to develop innovative business solutions and perform statistical analysis on data to provide insights.Because of its proximity to numbers, a data analyst position requires professionals to be good at mathematical skills and process high amounts of data to gain insight. So, some of those essential skills are as follows,
- Thorough understanding of emerging technologies, data frameworks, and machine learning.
- Intense knowledge about data mining and the tools used to perform the same.
- Being able to identify patterns, trends, and other critical data to expand the business.
Some of the routine roles that data analysts carry out are,
- Mining and cleansing data
- Scrubbing data
- Producing and maintaining reports for different departments
- Preparing reports for both internal teams and clients
- Designing data systems and databases
So, how do choose a career between a business analyst and a data analyst?
While an interest in data is an essential quality to qualify as a business analyst or data analyst, candidates must also validate their education qualifications and desired career path. When people from a business background or more or less qualify to take up a business analyst career, it is different for data analysts.Data analysts have to work with big data, which consists of large datasets. Therefore, without a strong background in data, it will be too busy for candidates to identify trends, create charts and create visual presentations for the business.
Apart from having a similar interest in data, business analysts love working in the corporate world. Even though their main function is to provide data-driven decisions, business analysts are often seen as troubleshooters who protect the company at critical times.On the other hand, data analysts are people obsessed with statistics and programming. As a gatekeeper for business data, they are attested to extract data points from complex and disparate sources.
