Salesforce Business Analyst Roles and Responsibilities

In the fast-paced world of project management and system implementation, the role of a Business Analyst (BA) is crucial for ensuring projects meet their objectives efficiently and effectively. This blog delves into the multifaceted responsibilities, skills, and common misconceptions surrounding the BA role.

Let’s get started! 

Key Activities of a Business Analyst

1. Communication: A business analyst must have good listening skills. They foster an atmosphere of open dialogue and effectively relay information to the proper persons.
2. Elicitation: The BA asks a lot of questions to clarify the objectives of the project and understand the aims of the stakeholders. They conduct stakeholder interviews, look up relevant data or procedures, and watch teams at work.
3. Documentation: To meet standards, learning must be documented. It must be simple and clear for stakeholder and other participants to understand the information.
4. Analysis: The BA evaluates the requirements and determines how to achieve the business objectives. They delve deeper and use data insights to pinpoint what the company must do to reach the desired result.
5. Facilitation: The BA then identifies ideas for resolving business difficulties. They decide on the best course of action and carry it out.
6. Implementation: Once the BA has developed a business solution, they must ensure that it operates properly and according to plan. At this point, the BA essentially serves as a project manager. They have a responsibility to see that the project is successful, that stakeholders are satisfied, and that the final goal is attained. The BA makes modifications if anything deviates from the plan while keeping the final result in mind.
7. Testing: Don’t forget to test once you changes are implemented! At this point, the BA creates training materials to support the completed solution and gathers feedback.

Common Misconceptions of a BA Role

• A Business analyst needs to be super technical. This is not accurate. The BA does need a basic functional understanding of the platform’s capabilities and limitations and does not require technical expertise to work on software projects.
• A Business Analyst doesn’t do configuration on the platform. If the BA has the skills and time to do the configuration, they should.
• A Business Analyst is only needed after project kick-off. The BA needs to get a good understanding of the project and scope so they need to be brought into the project from the beginning. 
• A Business Analyst only focuses on requirements. A large part of their role is this, but they do much more than requirement gathering and documentation.

Use Case

The System Administrator of Cosmo Property was asked to elicit the requirements related to the implementation of Salesforce Experience Cloud, but in a few sessions, it was observed by the project team that the discussion is centered around the technicalities of the system and the Administrator is not able to understand the business side of the things.

How should the Cosmo Property ensure a successful implementation of Experience Cloud?

Solution: Onboard a Business Analyst

Reason: A Business Analyst should be onboarded to work closely with the business and the technical team as the requirements are elicited and documented from a business standpoint. This ensures a successful proiect implementation as the BA has the skill set to understand the functional requirements that can be missed if a technical person focuses solely on the solution and technicalities.

Essential Business Analysis Skills

• Information Discovery: Business analysts need to acquire information from all levels in order to make informed judgments and recommendations. They must do this stage successfully because it is one of the most crucial steps.
• Analysis: Business analysts put a lot of work into analyzing the data they’ve obtained. To map demands and create plans and schedules, they consider the specifics and the overall data. To decide how the team will work together most effectively to produce a successful result, they also consider the abilities and expertise of the individuals involved. 
• Communication, Collaboration and Documentation: All parties involved must get clear and effective communication from business analysts, which increases productivity. For stakeholders and other engaged parties to fully comprehend the project, the objectives, and the suggested solution, information needs to be documented and shared.

How to find the right information?

Project History

Get a lot of background information on the project from stakeholders or other sources, whether you’re developing a new product or service or improving an existing one.

Analysis

The Business Analyst conducts numerous types of studies to gain as much knowledge and understanding as possible about a project. Three types of analysis:

• Enterprise Analysis: You must become familiar with and comprehend an organization’s structure, including who reports to whom and the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders.
• Strategy Analysis: It’s important to address the root cause of the issue. You start by determining the company’s need, which is of strategic or tactical relevance. The business need serves as the project’s guide. The next step is establishing the future and transitional states to address the business needs. This is a gap analysis, which identifies the differences between the desired and actual states. The BA should also evaluate the risks associated with the changes and the impact those risks may have on the project’s timeline.
• Stakeholder Analysis: Stakeholders are the key people that make decisions and play a significant role in establishing the priorities and requirements for your project. It is crucial to identify the stakeholders at the outset. Start with this measurement to determine who your stakeholders are: everyone who is interested in or might be impacted by the topic at hand.

Elicitation

Per the BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) Guide, elicitation “is the drawing forth or receiving of information from stakeholders or other sources. It is the main path to discovering requirements and design information, and might involve talking with stakeholders directly, researching topics, experimenting, or simply being handed information.

Some examples of Elicitation Techniques:

• Brainstorming
• Document analysis
• Focus groups
• Interface analysis
• Interviews
• Observation
• Process modeling
• Prototyping
• Requirements workshops
• Surveys/questionnaires

Communication Skills

Below are some methods to get your stakeholders engaged:

• Show the stakeholders how you can help.
• Explain next steps and the need for their commitment.
• Develop relationships by growing trust.
• Try to be understanding and remember that we are all human.

Presenting Results

When you are creating presentations, keep the following formats in mind:

• Formal documentation: This format, which might comprise text, matrices, or diagrams, is typically based on an organizational template.
• Informal documentation: This format might comprise text, matrices, or diagrams, but not based on an organizational template.
• Presentations: This format works well for presenting a high-level overview of objectives, options, or data.

Types of Documents Prepared by a BA

• Glossary of Terms: list of terms and their definitions
• RACI Chart: a matrix that explains who is responsible for what. It stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.
• Interview and Elicitation Records: file that captures crucial information from stakeholders.
• Stakeholder Analysis: In this analysis, it will document who to speak with to comprehend the business issue, who might aid in defining the requirements, and the people who can provide you with a variety of viewpoints.
• User Stories: This outlines the features a business system must have in order to be developed. The format is “As a…. I want to… So that I can…”
• Use Cases: From the viewpoint of a user, a use case identifies, describes, and organizes the system’s needs.
• Business Analysis Plan: This outlines each business analysis task that will be performed during the project.
• Current State Analysis: Document that explains the current business processes.
• Scope Statement Specification: It provides a precise explanation of what must be accomplished to complete the project.
• Functional Requirements Specification (FRS): These are the business needs from the viewpoint of the end-user.
• System Requirements Specification (SRS): This document explains how the system should work and it lists the hardware, software, functional, and behavioral requirements of the system. 
• Gap Analysis Document: This document specifies the gaps between the existing and the intended processes.
• Change Request Logs: This document serves as a log of all change requests submitted.
• Wireframes and Other Visual Documentation: The user interface is shown in this document, frequently as a low-fidelity wireframes.
• Test Plans, Test Cases, or User Acceptance Test Plans: The team will use the test plans and specific test cases specified in these documents to approve the functional requirements.
• Change Management: The process for implementing changes within the company is laid out in this paper.

Summing Up

In wrapping up our exploration of the Business Analyst’s critical role within project management and system implementation, we’ve traversed through the multifaceted responsibilities, essential skills, and common misconceptions that define this dynamic profession.  

The journey of a Business Analyst is one of continuous learning and adaptation, where the right blend of skills, knowledge, and practical experience can significantly impact the success of projects and the advancement of business goals.  

 For those ready to take the next step in their Business Analyst career, consider joining our community on Slack. It’s a vibrant platform where like-minded professionals and aspirants converge to share insights, challenges, and successes.  

Moreover, if you’re specifically interested in harnessing the power of Salesforce to drive business solutions, Salesforce Business Analyst Bootcamp by saasguru is your gateway to mastering this domain. With hands-on training and real projects, you’ll not only sharpen your analytical skills but also understand how to apply them effectively within the Salesforce ecosystem.