Future proofing business analysis education – an analysis of market trends

Introduction

Educational institutions have not escaped the financial downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. New Zealand educational institutions, specifically tertiary institutions, are under increasing financial pressures. They are being forced to cut staff, departments and constantly think about the future of education. Many jobs available today will not be available in the future, and new jobs are being developed. Business analysis is a relatively new discipline that has evolved with the mainstream use of computers in business. Every company is now an IT company to some degree.?

Business analysis is a research discipline that centres around finding technical solutions to business problems and taking advantage of business opportunities. The people that carry out this research are called business analysts.?They act as a bridge between IT and business. Business analysts use many different methods to find solutions and take advantage of opportunities such as initiating process improvements, organizational change, strategic planning, policy development, and finding software solutions or developing software.?Business analysts do this in consultation with stakeholders, and they act as internal consultants. The pathway to a business analyst role is often an informal transition followed by certification from the IIBA. However, many educational institutions are now recognizing the growing employment market for business analysts, and they have created programs to cater to people wishing to enter the profession formally. One such program is the Master of Professional Business Analysis offered by Victoria University of Wellington.

The challenge for these educational institutions is how to keep up with the pace and prepare students for this ever-changing world. The BA role and the expectations placed on future business analysts are constantly evolving. This market analysis will provide insights into the trends impacting the business analysis profession and make suggestions for educational institutions providing education in this area.

Trend one: Selecting software over building software – the rise of software as a service (SaaS)

Software as a service (SaaS) is a delivery model in which the software is centrally hosted and licensed on a subscription basis. Everyone should be familiar with Microsoft office. People used to buy a hard copy of the Microsoft office programs, which would be stored and run on their computer. When a new version came out, people could buy a new copy or stick with the old copy until their computer operating system became incompatible. Microsoft now sells office as a subscription, you buy access to it monthly or yearly, and the ‘cloud’ runs the system. The software also constantly updates. Microsoft has switched to the SaaS model (What Is SaaS? Software as a Service, 2020).

Fewer businesses are creating their digital products to meet their needs. Instead, they are opting to select software from an ever-growing list of SaaS products. There is an abundance of SaaS products to do almost every business job effectively. SaaS Products are also becoming increasingly customizable. For project management, examples of SaaS products are – Microsoft Project, Jira, Trello, Monday, and Click (Maia, 2020). New SaaS products are constantly introduced to the market to solve market issues and disrupt market norms.

One explanation for the uptake in the SaaS model is because it fits better with a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)?world. SaaS is typically less expensive to set up. The upfront costs are much lower than developing software. The pricing models are also flexible, often including pricing tiers, pay per user, and monthly or yearly subscription models. This reduces the businesses financial risk and allows them to be more agile. Agility is essential as in the VUCA world.

One recent and prominent example of VUCA is that in 2020 a virus emerged from china and caused a global pandemic. COVID-19 meant that businesses quickly pivoted from having people in offices working onsite to work from home. This represented a paradigm shift in how businesses operate, and many SaaS sprang up to service new business needs. One of the most significant challenges was video conferencing, which became essential to carry out BAU—using SaaS products such as Zoom and Microsoft teams aided many businesses to transition to the new work-from-home framework quickly. They were able to quickly set up these systems and rely on them to communicate with remote workers. This cost much less than developing their own in-house video conferencing software. Companies can cut back on these subscriptions if people start returning to the offices and in-person work becomes the norm again. The instant scalability of SaaS products is a massive bonus for businesses, as the software is updated frequently and tends to keep up to date with the latest expectations for functionality. Many SAAS products contain API’s for other relevant products and can be linked up to each other to create an end to end solution for business process needs.?

The trend towards buying and using SaaS products over developing one’s own software is reflected in New Zealand government procurement policies ( Government Procurement Rules, 2020). The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) envisions SaaS as the future for government work and is developing guidelines around cybersecurity in this new environment. MBIE sees SaaS as a way to enable digital transition, innovation and greater flexibility in government (TechnologyOne, 2021.)

Impact of the trend

Business analysis education focuses a lot on creating new software. In this degree, very little has been taught about procurement or selecting SaaS/out-of-the-box solutions. Yet, there has been a lot of focus on the product development life-cycle and Agile development.

SaaS has changed a lot in the traditional office space. Because all SaaS programs are in the ‘cloud’ offices no longer require access to full computers, instead opting for hardware such as thin clients. SaaS has changed the office dynamic and allowed offices to move more freely, relying less on clunky computers and server rooms. This means that BA’s are often not dealing with the companies own infrastructure and that infrastructure to create new products in-house has been significantly reduced.

Key actionable insights?

·??????Educational Institutions need to offer more guidance around how to gather requirements and select from SaaS options.

·??????Business Analysts should be more prepared for a future in which building software or systems to suit is a rarity.

·??????Business Analysts should become great at contract negotiation and the implementation phase of projects. More emphasis needs to be put on teaching these skills.

Trend two: Business intelligence – the growing importance of data and data analytics

Business intelligence (BI) focuses on using descriptive analytics to summarize historical and present data to show what is happening and how it is happening.?BI helps organizations understand their as-is state. Business analysts look for insights in that as-is state and envisage a future state using data analytics to guide their decision-making process to achieve that future state (Tableau, 2020).

Organizations are collecting more data than ever. Data is a commodity to be collected, brought, and sold. Data is power in the business world. Many services which are ‘free’ to consumers are trading in consumer data. The data is their product, which is why the service appears free.?All our interactions with businesses are likely to be tracked and catalogued somewhere. Sometimes we don’t even know these interactions are happening. For instance, electronic soda fountains found predominantly at fast-food chains track what flavours of soda/soft drink consumers mix. This data can then be used to release new flavour combos in other consumer environments (Hemsley, 2012).

It is not only external interactions with customers and clients that generate data. There has also been an uptick in digital monitoring and process mining of internal business systems. In some businesses, seemingly everything is tracked right down to the minute, including staff activities such as toilet breaks. While this specific practice might raise some ethical flags, this type of monitoring provides clear insights into how business processes are functioning, any alternative pathways and unintentional consequences from changes. It allows businesses to understand what’s going on in real-time, with actual data. Some process mining software even allows business analysts to model changes to their systems to see what implications changes have on their systems, lessening the implementation risk (de Medeiros et al., 2007).

Since the 1980’s the world per-capita capacity to store data has doubled roughly every 40 months. The IDC has predicted that the global volume of data will grow exponentially, from 4.4 zettabytes to 44 zettabytes in seven years 2013 – 2020. IDC predicts that by 2025 there will be 175 zettabytes of data (Patrizio, 2018). A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.

This trend towards collecting data and using said data to inform business and technical decisions are incredibly applicable to business analysts’ work. Business analysts need to have a great understanding of business intelligence and data analytics. In larger companies’ businesses, analysts may rely on data analysts to produce insights and guide the development of solutions based on data. However, New Zealand comprises predominantly small to medium-sized businesses, which means that business analysts in the New Zealand market are more likely to have to play the data analysts’ role, as smaller organizations are less likely to have data analysts.

Impact of the trend

Data can be a powerful tool for decision making. Organizations that leverage their data to provide insights into opportunities and challenges have a competitive edge and strategic advantage. Turning big data into competitive intelligence can be used for internal improvement work, launching new products, and enhanced services leading to organizational success (Ranjan & Foropon, 2021).?

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), big data is changing how business analysts operate in the workforce. There are new requirements such as meeting reporting needs, verifying data, communicating findings, and filtering out irrelevant data to prevent information overload. IIBA has released a new range of certifications for data analytics (Business Analysis Blog | Why Big Data Is a Big Deal for Business Analysts | IIBA, 2019.)

Key actionable insights?

·??????Teach intermediate-advanced data analytics skills.

·??????Provide case studies that use actual data for business analyst students to develop their analytical skills.

·??????Add business intelligence to the curriculum with a focus on reporting and data mining.

Trend three:?Prioritizing cybersecurity – a universal requirement

About the trend

Most of us cannot do our jobs without utilizing some form of technology. Digital systems and networks have made many jobs more efficient and, in some cases, helped eliminate or minimize the risk associated with human errors. As discussed in the last section, organizations collect vast amounts of data. All this data must be stored somewhere and accessed somehow. Unfortunately, as the information available online proliferates, so does the opportunity for unscrupulous individuals and organizations to profit from cybercrime, including hacking, ransomware and selling info on the dark web. The number of organizations hit with ransomware skyrocketed last year with a 715% increase in global reported incidents (“Bitdefender: Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report 2020,” 2020).

Most recently, a pipeline carrying petroleum products was hacked, and its functionality successfully ransomed. This cyberattack has real-world consequences, which included shortages caused by panic buying. The panic buying was so intense that many people attempted to transport gasoline in unsafe containers leading to vehicle fires. The company paid over four million dollars to regain control of its systems. The attack had huge reputational, financial, and legislative impacts on the company (Mary-Ann Russon, 2021).

The spike in ransomware is most likely related to the pandemic. People working from home require remote access, potentially opening a system to more vulnerabilities. Working from home also created additional risks as people got used to clicking on links for meetings and were unable to seek colleagues advice on potentially dodgy links. According to CERT NZ, 65-70% of cyber-attacks in New Zealand are related to human behaviours such as clicking on links and paying false invoices rather than software vulnerability (RNZ News, 2021).

This trend highlights the importance of cybersecurity and how it should be a universal requirement for all software developments.?Business analysts should also consider what types of policies, procedures and systems could be implemented to minimize behavioural risk.

Impact of the trend

Two critical jobs done by business analysts are to anticipate and highlight risk and form the user stories and requirements. In this respect, Business Analysts are in the best position to ensure that cybersecurity measures are considered when building and implementing new software and systems. The business analyst is also the best person to facilitate robust conversations with both the technical and business sides of the business about cybersecurity risks and solutions. They may need to seek specialist advice and ensure that this information is communicated to project teams and stakeholders. Business analysts can’t rely on others to do this thinking. To be successful, they must pick up the mantel of cybersecurity. Producing a product, service or system which works initially but is vulnerable to attacks should be recognized as a failure of that project.

Key actionable insights?

-??????Incorporate cybersecurity into the curriculum

-??????Encourage cybersecurity requirements to be considered in assignments

-??????Offer a specialization in cybersecurity

?

Trend four: Emerging technologies - AI, blockchain, IoT

About the trend

Business analysts are expected to be up to date with emerging technologies. They need to be innovative and tackle wicked problems, which means thinking about new solutions, often using emerging technologies. Business analysts also must pay attention to emerging technologies to limit risk and stay agile. All of the big four companies expect graduate analysts to have a working knowledge of emerging technologies.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) are three emerging technologies that are particularly relevant to business analysts. These technologies combined with big data, as discussed previously, are changing the business landscape. IoT refers to how everyday items are becoming interconnected through being internet enabled. All smart devices in homes and businesses such as speakers, fridges, coffee makers and wearables collect data. This mass of data is commonly referred to as ‘big data.’ AI algorithms and machines sort through the data to provide insights to businesses, creating a competitive advantage. The blockchain has changed the world, leading to the rise of cryptocurrency and, more recently, non-fungible tokens (NFTS.) Both of these blockchain-based innovations have changed how financial markets work, which has impacted the business environment. These technologies will likely converge and re-shape existing business models in the near future (Sandner et al., 2020).

Impact of the trend

Businesses are urgently looking for digital transformation to improve their products and services as well as reducing costs.?“Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technologies into all aspects of a business to meet the market and changing business requirements “(Dilmegani, 2021b). In a highly competitive environment, it can be a struggle to stay relevant. Digital transformations have become the bread and butter of many large consultancies such as the big four, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group and IBM (Dilmegani, 2021). These consultancies are some of the largest employers of business analysis graduates. The consultancies are paying close attention to emerging technologies and how they can be incorporated into digital transformations. 93% of companies agree that innovative technologies are required to meet their digital transformation goals, suggesting that consultancies and individual business analysts must offer innovative solutions with cutting-edge technology to meet client demands (Dilmegani, 2021b).

Key actionable insights?

·??????Incorporate emerging technologies into the curriculum – update the content frequently.

·??????Encourage students to research innovative technologies and stay up to date with market trends.

·???????Encourage all teaching staff to review their material periodically and discuss current relevant technologies with students.

Conclusion

The business analysis profession is evolving to fit the needs of a VUCA world. The trend to work from home due to the pandemic represents a paradigm shift in how businesses operate. No one can know how long the disruption caused by Covid -19 to the business world will persist. The roles of business analysts in this environment are two-fold. They must implement appropriate short-term solutions that allow the business to continue operating despite environmental or political pressure and provide long-term solutions to aid businesses as they navigate a changing world.

In New Zealand, where most businesses are small to medium businesses, analysts are expected to go above and beyond their roles. They must stay up to date and flexible in several realms that impact their jobs. Business analysis education needs to reflect these requirements better and adapt to global trends in both business and technology. Several areas are underserved by the current curriculum. These include the skills needed for choosing SaaS software, using data analytics to guide decision making, understanding and minimizing cybersecurity threats and learning about emerging technologies. Educational institutions should consider updating their curriculum to reflect these trends and better prepare students for the workforce and future learning.

References

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