ICT business analyst

ICT business analysts are in charge of analysing and designing an organisation’s processes and systems, assessing the business model and its integration with technology. They also identify change needs, assess the impact of the change, capture and document requirements and then ensure that these requirements are delivered whilst supporting the business through the implementation process.

Excludes people performing development activities.

The following job titles also refer to ICT business analyst:

ICT business analysts
business process specialist
IT business analyst

Bachelor’s degree is generally required to work as ICT business analyst. However, this requirement may differ in some countries.

ISCO skill level is defined as a function of the complexity and range of tasks and duties to be performed in an occupation. It is measured on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 the lowest level and 4 the highest, by considering:

• the nature of the work performed in an occupation in relation to the characteristic tasks and duties
• the level of formal education required for competent performance of the tasks and duties involved and
• the amount of informal on-the-job training and/or previous experience in a related occupation required for competent performance of these tasks and duties.

ICT business analyst is a Skill level 4 occupation.

These occupations, although different, require a lot of knowledge and skills similar to ICT business analyst.

ICT business analysis manager
ICT business development manager
telecommunications analyst
ICT consultant
eBusiness manager

These occupations require some skills and knowledge of ICT business analyst. They also require other skills and knowledge, but at a higher ISCO skill level, meaning these occupations are accessible from a position of ICT business analyst with a significant experience and/or extensive training.

This knowledge should be acquired through learning to fulfill the role of ICT business analyst.

Business requirements techniques: The procedures required to identify and analyse business and organisational needs.
Product usage risks analysis: The methods to analyse product associated risks, in possible customer environment, their magnitude, consequences and likely outcomes in order to mitigate them by warning messages, safety instructions and maintenance support.
Business process modelling: The tools, methods and notations such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), used to describe and analyse the characteristics of a business process and model its further development.
Legal requirements of ict products: The international regulations related to the development and use of ICT products.

These skills are necessary for the role of ICT business analyst.

Propose ict solutions to business problems: Suggest how to solve business issues, using ICT means, so that business processes are improved.
Identify customer requirements: Apply techniques and tools, such as surveys, questionnaires, ICT applications, for eliciting, defining, analysing, documenting and maintaining user requirements from system, service or product.
Translate requirement concepts into visual design: Develop visual design from given specifications and requirements, based on the analysis of the scope and target audience. Create a visual representation of ideas such as logos, website graphics, digital games and layouts.
Apply change management: Manage development within an organisation by anticipating changes and making managerial decisions to ensure that the members involved are as less disturbed as possible.
Provide cost benefit analysis reports: Prepare, compile and communicate reports with broken down cost analysis on the proposal and budget plans of the company. Analyse the financial or social costs and benefits of a project or investment in advance over a given period of time.
Analyse business processes: Study the contribution of the work processes to the business goals and monitor their efficiency and productivity.
Create business process models: Develop formal and informal descriptions of the business processes and the organisational structure by using business process models, notations and tools.
Analyse the context of an organisation: Study the external and internal environment of an organisation by identifying its strengths and weaknesses in order to provide a base for company strategies and further planning.
Interact with users to gather requirements: Communicate with users to identify their requirements and collect them. Define all relevant user requirements and document them in an understandable and logical way for further analysis and specification.
Analyse business requirements: Study clients’ needs and expectations for a product or service in order to identify and resolve inconsistencies and possible disagreements of involved stakeholders.
Identify legal requirements: Conduct research for applicable legal and normative procedures and standards, analyse and derive legal requirements that apply to the organisation, its policies and products.
Define technical requirements: Specify technical properties of goods, materials, methods, processes, services, systems, software and functionalities by identifying and responding to the particular needs that are to be satisfied according to customer requirements.
Implement strategic planning: Take action on the goals and procedures defined at a strategic level in order to mobilise resources and pursue the established strategies.

This knowledge is sometimes, but not always, required for the role of ICT business analyst. However, mastering this knowledge allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

Systems development life-cycle: The sequence of steps, such as planning, creating, testing and deploying and the models for the development and life-cycle management of a system.
Internal risk management policy: The internal risk management policies that identify, assess and prioritise risks in an IT environment. The methods used to minimise, monitor and control the possibility and the impact of disastrous events that affect the reaching of business goals.
Business intelligence: The tools used to transform large amounts of raw data into relevant and helpful business information.
Information architecture: The methods through which information is generated, structured, stored, maintained, linked, exchanged and used.
Innovation processes: The techniques, models, methods and strategies which contribute to the promotion of steps towards innovation.
Visual presentation techniques: The visual representation and interaction techniques, such as histograms, scatter plots, surface plots, tree maps and parallel coordinate plots, that can be used to present abstract numerical and non-numerical data, in order to reinforce the human understanding of this information.
Decision support systems: The ICT systems that can be used to support business or organisational decision making.
Information extraction: The techniques and methods used for eliciting and extracting information from unstructured or semi-structured digital documents and sources.
Organisational resilience: The strategies, methods and techniques that increase the organisation’s capacity to protect and sustain the services and operations that fulfil the organisational mission and create lasting values by effectively addressing the combined issues of security, preparedness, risk and disaster recovery.
Information categorisation: The process of classifying the information into categories and showing relationships between the data for some clearly defined purposes.
Cloud technologies: The technologies which enable access to hardware, software, data and services through remote servers and software networks irrespective of their location and architecture.
Business strategy concepts: The terminology related to the design and implementation of major trends and aims which are taken by an organisation’s executives, while keeping in mind its resources, competition and environments.
Unstructured data: The information that is not arranged in a pre-defined manner or does not have a pre-defined data model and is difficult to understand and find patterns in without using techniques such as data mining.
Business ict systems: The software packages, hardware devices and new technologies used in supporting business processes such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), mobile devices and network solutions.
Ict market: The processes, stakeholders and the dynamics of the chain of goods and services in the ICT market sector.

These skills and competences are sometimes, but not always, required for the role of ICT business analyst. However, mastering these skills and competences allows you to have more opportunities for career development.

Design process: Identify the workflow and resource requirements for a particular process, using a variety of tools such as process simulation software, flowcharting and scale models.
Execute analytical mathematical calculations: Apply mathematical methods and make use of calculation technologies in order to perform analyses and devise solutions to specific problems.
Provide user documentation: Develop and organise the distribution of structured documents to assist people using a particular product or system, such as written or visual information about an application system and how to use it.
Manage ict project: Plan, organize, control and document procedures and resources, such as human capital, equipment and mastery, in order to achieve specific goals and objectives related to ICT systems, services or products, within specific constraints, such as scope, time, quality and budget.

2511 – Systems analysts

 

 

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References

1. ICT business analyst – ESCO