How to Perform Business Analysis

I have been on YouTube for years and have made hundreds of videos. This will be the first video that I have covered the same topic twice. We are going to be talking about Business Analysis, and I made a video about this two years ago. But I wanted to talk about it again, because this is one of the most important skills you can develop to improve your career. WATCH NOW

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VIDEO SUMMARY

What is business analysis?

Let us start with the main idea. What is business analysis? If you work in business, you can break down the tasks you perform into three main areas:

• Process. Process is the basic business activity, like making a purchase or closing a sale.
• Reports. Reports summarize the data from your business processes into reports.
• Analysis. Analysis evaluates the data in the reports to provide insight. You are taking your data and turning it into useful, actionable information.

Each of these areas builds on the next area. You need processes to create reports. You need reports to perform analysis. You can also think of this in terms of increased complexity. As you move up this spectrum towards business analysis, you are performing higher level activities.

Why should you care?

Why should you care about this? Analysis creates the most value for your business. Think about it. If you have a business where everyone is only focusing on process, you have no idea what is going on. You have no reports and no analysis. It is almost impossible to make good decisions. You need to take your processes and turn them into reports, and then take the reports and figure out what the reports mean.

If you can learn how to provide business analysis consistently, you will be a rock star in whatever business you are in. Business analysis gives your leaders time. Time is the most valuable thing in business. If you are running a company, you have so many things going on and there is never enough time. If staff just hands leadership reports, then they must spend time figuring out what the reports mean, and they are not even the person familiar with the data. It becomes time consuming and frustrating. What you really want as a business leader is the bottom line. What does the report mean?

Business analysis examples

Let us use some examples. Let us say the revenues for your business suddenly drop. Why? What happened? What is the cause? How can it be corrected? What if your expenses suddenly go up? What purchase caused the sudden increase in costs? Is it a one-time expense, or is it likely to continue? In business it is not good enough just to create a report. You also need to figure out what that report means and then be able to communicate it to your team and your leadership.

Practical ways to perform business analysis

What are the practical steps you can do to perform business analysis? I will make this very easy for you. Whenever you email a report to anyone in your business, always include in your email three bullet points explaining what that report means. What are the three biggest takeaways the reader should know about the report? You do not need a list of ten things, just the top three.

I cannot tell you how many times I see people send out reports with no explanation at all. These days, a lot of reports are automated on a dashboard and no one is even looking at them. Someone needs to look at the report and provide analysis on what it means, so that your leadership can make the right decisions.

As you grow in your career, you want to become that person who sends out those three bullet points, because you are providing so much value for your business. Don’t just do the process. Don’t just create a report. Figure out what it all means and then communicate that to your business.

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Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.