Who is a Business Analyst?

The traditional definitions:

• Helps define functional requirements - what should this transactional system perform?
• Works with business processes, performs process modeling and models use cases
• Understands the business and helps bridge the gap between business users and those who develop transactional systems

In contrast, who is a BI Business Analyst?

In my opinion, a BI Business Analyst needs to be viewed differently.

• Helps define information requirements. Helps envision KPIs, metrics, dashboards and other methods that help measure, visualize and manage business outcomes
• Helps define analytical data models - those data models that help in visualizing information and decision making
• Builds consensus between the ideal information requirements and available information - on aspects of availability, latency, quality and degree of integration.
• Is well informed about viewing and visualizing information in a way to create value and insights to business users
• Understands business measures, and bridges the gap between business users and those who develop BI applilcations