The distinction between Data Analyst &

Business Analyst
Data Analyst means the person who is involved in
structuring and telling a story using data insights that will
help business and organizational leaders take better
decisions.

To be effective in their roles, data analysts must possess

the technical skills necessary for data mining, hygiene, and
analysis, along with strong interpersonal skills to
communicate their findings to decision-makers
Key Skills: - Data visualization and presentation skills,
Microsoft Excel, Structured Query Language (SQL), and R or
Python or similar programming knowledge.

Business Analyst
Business analysts are responsible for using data to inform
strategic business decisions.

Key Skills: - Critical thinking, Problem-solving,

Communication and Process improvement. These
professionals must have a firm understanding of their
organization’s objectives and procedures to analyze
performance, identify inefficiencies and propose and
implement solutions. Business analysts must have at least a
working knowledge of the technology involved in analysis,
though the need for hard technical skills is generally lower
than for data analysts.

Key
Differenc Data Analyst Business Analyst
es

Focus A data analyst would A Business Analyst engages in

use data to find making reports, KPIs (Key
patterns and Performance Index) matrix (to
correlations and even display and visualize a number
build models to see of business metrics in a single
how data responds to table), and identifying
his models. patterns that will benefit the
organization.

Process A data analysis process A business analyst is

done by a data analyst responsible for carrying out a
involves doing a detailed analysis of the data
thorough analysis and insights collected and doing a
experimenting with comparative study of the
data mining processes same.
so as to give a good
visualization of what
the data is saying.

Data A Data analyst finds if A Business analyst follows a

Sources his data source is slow process that involves pre-
inconsistent or requires planning and pre-checking all
some changes and then the sources of data and
updates the data deciding what information
source as and when needs to be kept and what can
needed. be removed.

Transform A Data analyst is able A Business analyst generally

 Key
Differenc Data Analyst Business Analyst
es

to transform and does all the transformations

update the data & the and changes beforehand with
database as and when appropriate planning.
the need arises.

Data A data analyst presents A business analyst presents a

Quality a lot of theoretical data single version/ conclusion of
with various other the final analyzed data set.
probabilities.

Field of Data Analyst is Business Analyst is concerned

Analytics concerned with with Retrospective
Predictive and (Diagnostic) and Descriptive
Prescriptive meaning analytics meaning it answers
analytics that answer the question -
the questions –
 What has happened?
 What is likely to (Diagnostic)
happen in the  What is happening right
future? now? (Descriptive)
(Predictive)
 What do we need
to do?
(Prescriptive).
Business Analyst Case Studies
Case Study 1:
Company: Airbnb
Airbnb Inc. is an American company that is an online
marketplace for lodging, primarily home stays, vacation
rentals, and tourism activities. The platform is accessible via
a website and a mobile application, the company is based in
San Francisco, California.
Their problem statement was low sales and bookings
through their platforms.
Their solution was Professional Photography.
Joa Zadeh, Product Lead at Airbnb was responsible for
boosting the bookings and sales of Airbnb. He achieved this
by focusing on 1 key aspect “Professional Photography”.
Their hypothesis: “Hosts with professional photography will
get more business, and thus hosts with professional
photography will sign up for photography as a service”.

But like any other sensible business would do they decided

to test the idea and built “Concierge Minimum Viable
Product (MVP) i.e. (a minimum viable product where you
manually guide your user through the solution to a problem)
to test whether this model will work or not.
Once the results came in, their gut instinct about the idea
became apparent as they showed that Professionally
photographed listings got 2 to 3 times more bookings; even
breaking the market average. In mid-to-late 2011, Airbnb
experienced exponential growth with just 20 experienced
photographers.
To take steps a step further Airbnb took certain measures:

 Watermarking photos for authenticity.

 Provide “Professional photography” as a service.
 Increasing requirements of “Photo Quality”.
 Airbnb had cracked the code with professional
photography and by February 2012; Airbnb was doing
 5,000 shoots per month thus continuing to accelerate
the growth of the professional photography program.

Thus, Airbnb not only improved on the key aspects that they
had but also tested the same whether their idea and
perception of the market will work favorably or not.
Case Study 2:
Company: Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble Company is an American multinational
consumer goods company headquartered in Cincinnati,
Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James
Gamble.
Procter & Gamble makes a lot of cleaning products and is
constantly trying to improve and revitalize its cash-cow
products (a metaphor used for a business or a product,
which exhibits a strong potential in terms of returns), but
despite the efforts of highly-paid experts, they were stalled
in their efforts to invent a better cleaning fluid solution.

Solution:
 Procter & Gamble took guidance from an outside agency named
“Continuum”.
 Continuum’s team first analyzed people's cleaning behavior,
especially how they mopped, thus focusing on recording, testing, and
rapid iteration during the investigating phase.
 They found out that for minor spillages, drops, etc. people were going
for brooms and wet cloth and thus were not even using mops.
  This was an eye-opener for the design team as they looked at the
problem now from a different perspective.
 The mop and not the liquids were the key.
 They noticed the makeup of floor dirt - which is part dust and hence
is better picked up without water and innovated on the cleaning tool
itself, giving P&G a $500 Million-dollar innovation - the Swiffer, a
more user-friendly style of mop - in the otherwise stagnant cleaning
industry.

Thus, after simply observing and implementing a consumer-

centric approach, the company created an entirely different
product category. Secondly, they treated this as a problem
faced by a startup as it is a good way to take off enterprise
blinders. Thirdly and most importantly, the case showed
how the temptations to use surveys and quantitative
research, and the insights from one-to-one observation can
unlock an entire market segment.
Analytics Lesson Learned: Sometimes starting at the
beginning, with a reconsideration of the fundamental
problems you’re trying to solve, is the best way to make a
cash cow product - lucrative, but not growing - back to a
high-growth industry. After all, if you don’t see your
customers through naive eyes, someone else will.
Case Study 3:
Company: Clearfit
Clearfit is a SaaS provider of recruitment software aimed at
helping small businesses find job candidates and predict
their success. It was founded in 2007 by founders Ben
Baldwin & Jamie Schneiderman. Their initial plan offered a
$99/month (per job posting) package.

Problem Statement: Clearfit’s customers were confused

as the price and the monthly subscription offered by Clearfit
were very cheap as compared to typical fees of job postings
i.e. $300 + per job posting. This created scepticism in the
minds of the customers as they were used to paying higher
fees.
Solution:
Clearfit’s Ben and Jamie decided to close down their
monthly subscription model and switch to a model that the
customers understood. That is a per-job fee. Clearfit
launched its new plan with a price point of $350 for a single
job (30 days) and saw an immediate increase in sales by
three times. This increase in volume and the higher price
point improved revenue by 10x.
This is because customers expect a certain price tag on
Branded goods and thus feel sceptical when prices are too
low. E.g. ₹100 clothes at ZARA will create scepticism in the
minds of the buyer.
Thus after making the changes customers found it easier to
understand the model and could easily compare the value
against other solutions.
Analytics Lesson Learned: Price testing must be done
following customers’ views and testing different price points
qualitatively (by getting feedback from customers) and
quantitatively (using statistical data and demographics).

Case Study 4:
Company: Yes Bank
Yes Bank is an Indian bank headquartered in Mumbai, India,
and was founded by Rana Kapoor and Ashok Kapoor in
2004. It offers a wide range of differentiated products for
corporate and retail customers through retail banking and
asset management services.
Problem Statement: Rana Kapoor gave loans to
companies that were unable to pay back / companies on the
verge of bankruptcy. This created the problem of Non-
Performing Assets or bad loans, which are loans issued by
banks that cannot be repaid by the borrower. After the
IL&FS meltdown in 2018, the Government became alert and
introduced rules for banks to disclose their Non-performing
Assets. Of the 30,000 loans that were given out by Yes
Bank, 20,000 turned out to be NPAs.
Possible Solution: Yes Bank should have been more
stringent in analyzing and issuing loans to avoid bad loans.
The companies which were issued loans should have been
checked for their background to avoid giving out loans to
companies on the verge of bankruptcy.
MECE - Mutually Exclusive and Completely
Exhaustive
It is a problem-solving technique that divides the problem
into various parts and forms a kind of an Issue Tree (a tree
diagram containing sets and sub-sets of the factors which
are mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive
concerning the problem to find a viable solution.

To understand this concept better we’ll look at a case study

being solved using the MECE technique/ approach:-
Let’s take an example of a company XYZ which
manufactures cars. Now the company wishes to increase its
profits, this problem can be analyzed as follows:-
We will now construct an Issue tree to better visualize and
understand this problem. The Issue tree will be created as
follows:-
There are two ways to increase profits - Grow Revenue or
Reduce costs, further to grow the revenue we have two
options - Grow No. of customers and increase customer
lifetime value.
In order to grow the number of customers, we can Improve
products, Improve marketing, Improve sales & service and
Increase distribution. To increase customer lifetime value,
the company needs to improve customer loyalty, Upsell &
Cross-Sell, and/or Increase prices.
Cost can be reduced in two ways - By reducing fixed costs
or reducing variable costs. Fixed costs can be reduced by
reducing overheads, reducing rents, or reducing equipment
costs. On the other hand, Variable costs can be reduced by
reducing raw material costs, reducing logistics costs, or
reducing service costs.

For e.g., if suppose company XYZ wishes to Increase profits

by reducing costs, it can be done by reducing variable costs,
which can be done by reducing any of the parameters as
stated in the diagram i.e. by reducing raw material cost or
logistics cost, or service costs.