Why Business Analysis?
First of five articles drawn from “Turbocharge your Skills and Career with Business Analysis,” presented at Dreamforce 2022.
Business Analysis Taking Off
Interest in business analysis has risen in the Salesforce ecosystem, especially since the Certified Salesforce Business Analyst credential became available in July 2022. Over 4,300 people took the certification exam in its first two months, reflecting the surging interest in business analysis.
What has made business analysis so popular in the Salesforce development community? Salesforce customers need more sophisticated customizations as Salesforce provided the platform and tools to build these customizations. What started as configuring CRM applications has evolved into building complete software solutions with design, development, deployment - and business analysis.
Getting Solutions Right the First Time
Successful business analysis enables a development team to get solutions right the first time. So what makes a solution “right?” Fulfilling an organization’s needs to improve its processes and better serve its stakeholders - like its customers and employees.
Business analysis, at its core, determines what an organization needs from a custom solution - its requirements. Getting a solution right the first time depends on first getting its requirements right - the primary goal of business analysis.
Digital Transformation Demands
Many companies face skyrocketing demand for rich online services. Digital transformation offers strategies to meet that demand. Salesforce defines digital transformation as a reimagining of business “to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.” ¹
At the same time, Salesforce continues improving its platform and solutions to advance digital transformation, generating demand for sophisticated custom solutions.
As custom solutions scale up, project stakes increase, requiring business analysts to determine what the organization needs to execute its digital transformation.
Essential Business Analysis
Suppose several businesses in the same industry have Salesforce Customer 360, covering sales, marketing, and customer service through various channels. How would they differentiate their customer experiences? They would each build custom solutions to make their customer experience stand out from the rest.
The stakes grow higher as companies race to make their customer experiences more convenient and meaningful than their competitors. So they work to get their custom solutions right the first time to minimize time to market and avoid the high cost of reworks from getting the requirements wrong.
Successful business analysis gets requirements right the first time by understanding what the customer needs and curating those needs into accurate requirements for the development team. The company that meets well-understood requirements with innovation has the best shot at winning the digital transformation race.
Digital transformation demands high-stakes solutions built on business analysis to get them right the first time.
¹ Salesforce Blog: What Is Digital Transformation?