TechsSocial | Data and business analysts both play crucial roles in making the right decisions for organizations. Data analysts also tend to work a lot more closely with organizations compared to business analysts who are more interested in addressing major business needs. They also recommend solutions. Both give you roles that are sought after and well connected to. In today’s article, we are going to give you a better understanding of what kind of role looks unique and which alternative should you pursue as a career.
Table of Contents
What do data analysts do?
Data analysts are responsible for gathering, cleaning, and visualizing existential data in order to create the right business decisions. Being an effective data analyst requires data to answer all questions and decisions in order to find the best course of action. Some of the common tasks that data analysts are expected to do include cleaning data, preparing data, sourcing and identifying data, defining business needs with entrepreneurs, visualizing data, presenting data, etc.
What do business analysts do?
Business analysts play a major role in identifying opportunities, problems, and solutions for any organization. They evaluate the functions and structures of any IT organization. They review processes, interview team members to understand what areas need to be improved, provide recommendations on management to the other key stakeholders, create financial models in order to support the right business decisions, and train staff to build new systems.
Business Analyst vs Data Analyst: skillset comparison
Both business and data analytics require different skill sets. Both occupations work exclusively with data and manage them in various ways. Either way, it is expected for both to be good problem solvers, excellent orators, collaborators, organizers, etc.
How do you know which career is the best alternative for you?
Know your background
Both data and business analysts come from different professional and educational backgrounds. Business analysts are expected to be good in matters related to business. They will use these operations to become more efficient in the field. They will also need the right knowledge to expand their business and take it to the next level. Angove also says business analysts need requirements from businesses and also work between technical teams and businesses to develop the right software package. Data analysts also sell huge amounts of data in order to identify charts, make them, and use visual representations of each to make the right decisions. They also use their majors to have advanced degrees and extensive backgrounds in science, maths, modeling, databases, etc.
Consider Your Interests
Are you obsessed with statistics and numbers? If yes, then you are most probably a business person who is interested in solving problems. Business analysts are the type of people who love to work in a corporate environment. This included overseeing, organizing, researching, etc to maintain a smooth workflow. Such people are naturally good communicators. They have excellent communication as well as oral skills that help them explain all technical messages to the stakeholders in simple words.
Data analysts on the other hand are people who understand programming and statistics. They are the gatekeepers of the business and manage to extract the right points from the right sources. It’s important for all data analysts to have a deep understanding of the industry in they are working in.
Understand Your Career Path
You also need to understand your career path before you choose any of the trajectories. Both business analysts and data analysts share some kind of similarities. Since data analysts don’t need to require any deep backgrounds like data analysts, their entry-level pay can be slightly less. But once you become a pro in the business, you can easily earn beyond six figures. Data analysts also seem to have high pay. They can earn somewhere between 80k to 130k per year.
As both professions work in databases, there is enough room and advancement with the acquisition of the right programming skills, for example, Python and R. Apart from that, data professionals also tend to work in databases primarily which gives them enough room to improve their skills and make them better. Data analysts can also shift and develop their data science careers and roles into major degrees.
So that was a look at Business Analyst vs Data Analyst. If you are considering a career in any of the two, make sure that you build the right foundation using a proper certificate course that will help you further your skills. You can also try specializations from top universities to enhance your potential.
Hemant is Digital Marketer and he has 6 + years of experience in SEO, Content marketing, Infographic etc.