The document provides tips for becoming a world-class business analyst. It discusses simplifying complex issues using techniques like issue trees and bottom-up/top-down approaches. The document also covers mastering analytical techniques like the 80/20 rule and removing bottlenecks using concepts from lean manufacturing. Additional topics include business models, critical chain project management, and recommended reading materials.

1. 1
How to become world class
analyst
Practical guide

2. 2
Who is a business
analyst?

3. 3
Business analyst is a “gold-digger” looking fro how and where the profit of
the organization can be improved. He also makes sure that the new business
that you are building make economical sense
Photo by The Magic Tuba Pixie CC: flickr

4. 4
Business analyst is the entry level in many companies or
departments
Business
Analyst
Associate
Senior
Associate (PM)
Director Partner
Consulting companies
Business
Analyst
Associate
Investment
Manager
Investment
Director
Partner
PE / VC
Business
Analyst
VP of Strategy /
CEO
Strategic Departments
Business
Analyst
Controller
Controlling
Director
Controlling Departments

5. 5
To become a business analyst it is good to have strong
foundation in terms of skills, education and computer literacy
Skills and characteristics Education Computer literacy
▪ Analytical Skills
▪ Languages
▪ Computer literacy at least at
average level
▪ Independent thinking
▪ Discipline
▪ Application of 80/20 rule
▪ Business / Economics
▪ Econometrics / Quantitative
Methods / Statistics
▪ Mathematics
▪ Physics
▪ Computer Science
▪ Medicine
▪ Excel
▪ Power Point
▪ VBA
▪ Access
▪ SPSS
▪ SQL

6. 6
Analyze performance
Analyze new investment
opportunity
There is number of problems you may tackle as a business
analyst
Find savings
Check performance
against planned targets
Analyze new business
ideas presented by others
Find new business ideas
Estimate market size
Analyze consumer
research results
Participate in the creation
of the strategy /plan
Create KPI, dashboards
and scorecards
Crete reporting system
Support management in
decisions

7. 7
If you want to become word class analyst you have to master
number of things that we will talk in this presentations
Simplify complex
issues to simple
models
Master techniques
used to improve
results of the
company
Master Excel
Become brutally
efficient
Talk with slides

8. 8
What we will show in this presentation is a part of extensive
on-line course where I also show how to solve particular cases
in Excel. You can also download there the Excels and use them
later
Click to check my course
How to become world class Business
Analyst? Cases in Excel
$90
$15

9. 9
Simplify complex issues
to simple models

10. 10
Quite often your are overwhelmed by the number of things that
influence the phenomena you want to analyze. Imagine that you
have to estimate typical family spending's. You can take into
account countless number of factors…..

11. 11
…or you can limit yourself to the most important one i.e. number of kids,
size of house, main repetitive spending like food. On the next slides I will
show you some techniques that will help you do the selection

12. 12
Issue tree

13. 13
Issue tree is a concept that will help you guess in a structured
manner the problems, reasons causing those problems and on
the basis of this decide what should be analyzed
Area of analysis
Area 1
Problem 1
Problem 2
Possible Reason 1
Possible Reason 2
Possible Reason 3
Possible Reason 4
Possible reasonsSuspected problems
Analysis to be
performed
Analysis 1
Analysis 2
Analysis 3
Analysis 4

14. 14
Have a look at an issue tree example for a chicken meat
producer. We guess that he has 3 problems in Logistics
Area of analysis
Transport
High costs of transport per ton of
goods
Big level of waste and breakage in
transport
Possible reasonsSuspected problems
Analysis to be
performed
Low usage of resources

15. 15
Then for those problems we try to guess the reasons
causing them
Area of analysis
Transport
High costs of transport per ton of
goods
Big level of waste and breakage in
transport
Possible reasonsSuspected problems
Analysis to be
performed
Badly designed routes
Too big fuel usage
No shipments on the way back
Low usage of resources
Badly designed method of packaging
which makes the product prone to
damage
Speed not adjusted to the product
Badly organized work and schedule of
deliveries
Limitation on delivery time of finished
goods

16. 16
Finally we come up with analyzes we have to carry to prove
or disprove these hypotheses (that certain reason is causing
certain problem
Area of analysis
Transport
High costs of transport per ton of
goods
Big level of waste and breakage in
transport
Possible reasonsSuspected problems
Analysis to be
performed
Analysis of correlation between type
of packaging and percentage of
damaged
Analysis of time spent on the way and
kilometers covered in that time
Analysis of designed routes, their
length and the influence of possible
changes
Analysis of fuel usage and kilometers
covered by vehicles
Analysis of load carried on the way
back
Badly designed routes
Too big fuel usage
No shipments on the way back
Low usage of resources
Badly designed method of packaging
which makes the product prone to
damage
Speed not adjusted to the product
Badly organized work and schedule of
deliveries
Limitation on delivery time of finished
goods
Analysis of level of overtime, daily
organization of drivers work
Analysis of Clients’ preferences on
delivery time

17. 17
Bottom-up approach

18. 18
One of the way to simplify complex is to apply bottom-up
approach where you go from single (typical) consumer to
market research
▪ First you should
imagine the
typical users
▪ Then you should try to
guess his consumption
level
▪ By estimating the number of
typical users you and their
consumption level you get
the rough size of the market

19. 19
…sometimes it makes sense to divide markets in segments
and estimate them separately (i.e. average and typical users,
women and man, people in different age groups or
segmentation by lifestyle)
Segment A
Segment B

20. 20
…lets do a simple example. Imagine that you want to make an
application for franchised restaurants
▪ You pick the sample
group / area you want
to estimate i.e. city
(here Warsaw)

21. 21
…lets do a simple example. Imagine that you want to make an
application for franchised restaurants
▪ You pick the sample
group / area you want
to estimate i.e. city
(here Warsaw)
▪ You count the number
of all restaurants in the
area

22. 22
…lets do a simple example. Imagine that you want to make an
application for franchised restaurants
▪ You pick the sample
group / area you want
to estimate i.e. city
(here Warsaw)
▪ You count the number
of all restaurants in the
area
▪ For the chosen area
you count the
franchising restaurants

23. 23
…lets do a simple example. Imagine that you want to make an
application for franchised restaurants
▪ You pick the sample
group / area you want
to estimate i.e. city
(here Warsaw)
▪ You count the number
of all restaurants in the
area
▪ For the chosen area
you count the
franchising restaurants
▪ You check the population of
the whole country – here
Poland

24. 24
…lets do a simple example. Imagine that you want to make an
application for franchised restaurants
▪ You pick the sample
group / area you want
to estimate i.e. city
(here Warsaw)
▪ You count the number
of all restaurants in the
area
▪ For the chosen area
you count the
franchising restaurants
▪ You check the population of
the whole country – here
Poland
▪ Assuming similar density as in
Warsaw you scale up the number of
franchised restaurants
proportionally to the population

25. 25
Top-down approach

26. 26
When to use top-down approach?
▪You know the size of the whole market
▪You are interested in a specific segment of the
market
▪Segment is big enough
▪You are thinking about niche strategy or low cost
strategy (market re-segmenting)

27. 27
For a change lets see how it would work with top-down
approach
▪ You use the total market size
to get to the size of the
segment in which you are
interested
▪ You have to use some
sort of sample
measure
▪ By applying the result from
the sample you can get to
the size of the segment in
which you are interested

28. 28
… let’s use the top-down approach to estimate the market for
science fiction books sold in Poland….
▪ You use the total number of books sold in your
country
▪ Then you go to the bookstore that belongs to the biggest
chain of bookstore and check what percentage of the
shelves are take by science fiction books
▪ If you use this proportion to the whole market you should
get the rough estimation of the science fiction book
segment

29. 29
Use simple math

30. 30
Whenever somebody mentions
math you see the dreaded formulas

31. 31
There are some rules that are worth following
Find drivers
Round to integers
Calculate in your mind
Do sampling afterwards
Write down the rough
values
▪ Main things that certain thing depends on
▪ Instead of multiplying 2,3 by 3,61 multiple 2 by 4
Make educated guess

32. 32
Imagine that you want to use simple math to estimate how
long you will wait in the queue. You should use the following
simple formula
Number of people in
the queue
x
Number of cash
tilts
Time per 1 customer

33. 33
If you try to calculate the using the exact digits you may get
lost…..
Number of
people in the
queue
Time per 1
customer
Number of
cash tilts
32 2.33
Time you will
wait
In min
23.4
Number of people in
the queue
x
Number of cash
tilts
Time per 1 customer

34. 34
Yet, if you round it up to integers you get fast a good-enough
answer
Number of
people in the
queue
Time per 1
customer
Number of
cash tilts
32 2.33
30 23 20.0
Time you will
wait
In min
23.4
Number of people in
the queue
x
Number of cash
tilts
Time per 1 customer

35. 35
Master techniques used
to improve results of
the company

36. 36
80/20
Theory of Constraints (Remove
Bottlenecks)
There are number of techniques that you should master to be
world class business analyst
Critical Chain
Method
Lean
manufacturing
Lean startup
6-sigma
Industrial
Organization
PERT, CPMBusiness models
and lean
analytics
Market research
tricks

37. 37
Applying 80/20 rule
in practice

38. 38
80/20 – Pareto Principal

39. 39
What does 80/20 mean in practice
▪ Concentrate only on the big items
▪ Concentrate on the big customers
▪ Analyze the most typical cases
▪ Concentrate on the most frequently occurring
problems
▪ Analyze problems with big impact
▪ Your analyses should have only 20% of the
variable that generate 80% of the impact
▪ Start with subjects where you see the biggest
difference between actual results and
benchmarks

40. 40
Here are 3 examples of using 80/20 rules
▪ Learning Visual
Basic for Excel
▪ Checking
competitors
▪ Salsa course
Area
▪ Learn only the 5 most used items that will take only 20% of full course and will
be used by in you in 80% cases
▪ You check only 20% of competitors that sales add-up to 80% of the market
▪ Go through 20% of the course to learn the moves and the figures used by 80% of
people
Description

41. 41
For more details and examples go to my on-line course. You
will also find there example of analyses in Excels that you can
use on other projects
Click to check my course
How to become world class Business
Analyst? Cases in Excel
$90
$15

42. 42
Removing bottlenecks

43. 43
Bottlenecks are dangerous as their hurt the efficiency of
the whole system. To improve the wholes system you have
to improve first bottlenecks

44. 44
Bottleneck is always at the place where you have the lowest
capacity. Have a look at 3 examples below
Example 1
7 5 7
Example 2
5 10 20
Example 3
5 5 3
x Stage capacity
x Bottleneck

45. 45
The are 4 rules that you should follow when it comes to
bottlenecks
▪ Identify what is the bottleneck
▪ Increase its throughput by lowering the time needed for
everything that goes through the bottleneck
▪ Add new resources to bottleneck
▪ Adjust everything to the bottleneck – so it works at the
same pace

46. 46
Imagine that you are working in a company working in a
content marketing. Your bottleneck is writing posts
Research topics for a
post
Write a post Create illustration
Edit and modify
post, add illustration
and schedule
20 5 7 10
# of post that can
be done in a week
by 1 person
xx

47. 47
If you Speed up the writing process (faster typing, better tools,
shortcuts for the most popular words) you boost capacity to 7
and Creation of illustration becomes your bottleneck
Research topics for a
post
Write a post Create illustration
Edit and modify
post, add illustration
and schedule
20 5 7 10
# of post that can
be done in a week
by 1 person
▪ Speed up the writing process (faster typing,
better tools, shortcuts for the most popular
words)
xx
20 8 7 10

48. 48
Finally if you make the researcher do also par time writing and
making illustration you boos capacity even further to 9 post
per week. Writing post again becomes bottleneck. But with the
same people you produce almost 2x
Research topics for a
post
Write a post Create illustration
Edit and modify
post, add illustration
and schedule
20 5 7 10
# of post that can
be done in a week
by 1 person
▪ Speed up the writing process (faster typing,
better tools, shortcuts for the most popular
words)
xx
20 8 7 10
10 9 10 10
▪ Make the researcher do also par time
writing and making illustration

49. 49
I recommend reading the following books – click on the chosen
cover to see details on each and every book
Click for moreClick for moreClick for more

50. 50
Lean Manufacturing

51. 51
* Sort,Set,Shine,Standardise,Sustain
** Total Productive Maintenance
*** Overall Equipment Efficiency
Kanban Kaizen Poka Yoke
Produkcja
gniazdowa
Zero defectsOEE***TPM**SMEDJust in time
Process
mapping
Continuous flow
management
Standaryzacja
pracy
Heijitsu box
5S*
Lean Manufacturing is a philosophy of working with little waste and
highest quality. It consists of many techniques that should be
gradually mastered

52. 52
For more information check my presentation
Production for Management
Consultants
Practical guide
presentation

53. 53
I recommend reading the following books – click on the chosen
cover to see details on each and every book
Click for moreClick for moreClick for more Click for more

54. 54
Business models

55. 55
There are 6 basic business models for on-line activities and
another 6 for off-line. You have to at leas try to understand
some of them
SaaS
E-commerce
Media site
2-sided market
User Generated
Content
Mobile
Applications
B2B Service
Retail
B2C Service
B2C Products
B2B Products
Freelancing
On-line
Off-line

56. 56
Developed companies can operate at the
same time many business models,
sometimes even within one business unit

57. 57
Developed companies can operate multiple models under
one or many companies. Have a look at Amazon
SaaS
E-commerce Media site2-sided market
UGC
B2B Service
B2C Service

58. 58
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
Business models
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

59. 59
For more check also my on-line course
Click to check my course
On-line Business Models in Excel –
Practical Guide
$45
$15

60. 60
I recommend reading the following books – click on the chosen
cover to see details on each and every book
Click for moreClick for moreClick for more

61. 61
Critical Chain

62. 62
One of the biggest problem for efficiency is the so called
Parkinsons’s Law
▪ work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

63. 63
To avoid it use the so called Critical Chain Method where you put
aggressive deadlines (you do not let people create ‘just in case
buffers’ and instead you create 1 buffer for everything

64. 64
I recommend reading the following books – click on the chosen
cover to see details on each and every book
Click for more

65. 65
Market research
techniques

66. 66
Market research can be divided into 3 main categories
Market
research
Consulting
methods
Off-line
research
On-line
research

67. 67
The simplest methods are used by consultants and only require
a bit of imagination
Market
research
Consulting
methods
Top-down
Bottom-up
Off-line
research
On-line
research

68. 68
Off-line research are a must not only in physical good
businesses
Market research
Consulting
methods
Off-line research
Interviews and discussion
with (potential) customers
Being where your (potential)
customer is
Work for your (potential)
customers
Store checks of competition
Mystery shopping at
competition
On-line research

69. 69
The last group of on-line tools puts at your disposal numerous
solutions giving you in-depth knowledge of your competitors
and markets
Market
Research
Consulting
methods
Off-line
research
On-line
research
On-line interviews
Facebook Audience Insight
Customers profiles on
facebook/instagram/pinterest
Keyword Planner for Google AdWords
SimilarWeb
Branch sites and reports
Slideshare and Youtube
Markets for applications

70. 70
Type of markets
Existing
Better
Product
Resegmented
Niche
Strategy
Low
cost
New Market
New
users
New
product
Some methods are more useful on a specific type of
markets…
▪ Mainly consulting methods
▪ Off-line and on-line research of
customers for proxy or similar
markets
▪ Off-line and on-line research of
customers for similar business
models
▪ Off-line and on-line research of
customers (chosen segments)
and competition
▪ Off-line and on-line research of
customers and companies on
similar / proxy markets
▪ Some usage of consulting
methods
▪ Off-line
research of
customers and
competition
▪ On-line
research of
customers and
competition

71. 71
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
Market research
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

72. 72
If you want to learn how to make in Excel advanced analysis
that you would do as a business analyst go to my on-line
course
Click to check my course
How to conduct market research?
Practical Guide
$45
$15

73. 73
Lean Startup

74. 74
I recommend reading the following books – click on the chosen
cover to see details on each and every book
Click for more Click for moreClick for more Click for more

75. 75
Master Excel

76. 76
Rules for Excel

77. 77
What rules should be used when building analysis in Excel
Usage of colors
Consistency between
sheets
Pyramid principle
1-source rule
Repetition of variables
Shortcuts
No mouse
Description
Data source
Master sheet

78. 78
The most useful functions
Basic functions
Financial /
Mathematical
Others
▪ SUMIF / SUMIFS
▪ COUNTIF / COUNTIFS
▪ HLOOKUP
▪ VLOOKUP
▪ MATCH
▪ SUMPRODUCT
▪ IF
▪ AND / OR
▪ IFERROR
▪ AVERAGEIF
▪ LEFT / RIGHT / MID
▪ FIND
▪ CONCATENATE
▪ YEAR / MONTH / DAY
▪ ROUND / ROUNDUP /
ROUNDDOWN
▪ TODAY
▪ VALUE
▪ WEEKDAY
▪ RAND / RANDBETWEEN
▪ MOD
▪ NPV
▪ IRR
▪ ABS
▪ MAX / MIN
▪ CORREL
▪ Pivot
▪ Slicer
▪ Relative addresses
▪ Formats
▪ Hyperlink
▪ Remove Duplicates
▪ Filters
▪ Sorting
▪ Data Validation
▪ Trace Dependents /
Precedent
▪ Analysis Tool Pack

79. 79
Have a look at an example of analysis where we try to see
which marketing channel is the most sensible

80. 80
You can also find some useful tips on Excel
Essential Excel for Business
Analysts and Consultants
A practical guide
presentation

81. 81
If you want to learn how to make in Excel advanced analysis
that you would do as a business analyst go to my on-line
course
Click to check my course
How to become world class Business
Analyst? Cases in Excel
$90
$15

82. 82
Become brutally
efficient

83. 83
Check my extensive presentation on productivity hacks to see
how you can me 10x more productive
Management consultant
productivity hacks
How to be lazy and still get things done
presentation

84. 84
If you need more detailed version on productivity hacks you
can check our course on productivity hacks
Click to check my course
Management Consulting
Productivity Hacks
$45
$15

85. 85
Talk with slides

86. 86
Power Point presentations

87. 87
What rules should be used for Power Point Presentations
Use the template
1 slide = 1 message
Agenda
Executive summary
Excel analysis for every
slide
Sources
Dates
Backup
Next version rule
Show money

88. 88
Now have a look at 3 examples of
showing market development on
slides. The first 2 are ok; the 3rd one
violated the rules we have shown

89. 89
The kids market will be slowly growing as a result of GDP
growth
3 247 3 480 3 473 3 503 3 537 3 583 3 626 3 689 3 750 3 806 3 857 3 911 3 965 4 011 4 055 4 104 4 144
2 804
2 862 2 855 2 880 2 908 2 946 2 981 3 033 3 084 3 130 3 171 3 216 3 260 3 298 3 334 3 374 3 407
1 328
1 392 1 389 1 401 1 415 1 433 1 450 1 476 1 500 1 523 1 543 1 565 1 586 1 605 1 622 1 641 1 658
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
8 058 8 198 8 334 8 459 8 570 8 692 8 811 8 914 9 012 9 119 9 2097 9637 8597 7857 7177 7347 380Total
Source: Euromonitor
Toys
Food
Fashion
Market size
In milions of EUR

90. 90
Market size
In millions of EUR
3 247 3 480 3 473 3 503 3 537 3 583 3 626 3 689 3 750 3 806 3 857 3 911 3 965 4 011 4 055 4 104 4 144
2 804
2 862 2 855 2 880 2 908 2 946 2 981 3 033 3 084 3 130 3 171 3 216 3 260 3 298 3 334 3 374 3 407
1 328
1 392 1 389 1 401 1 415 1 433 1 450 1 476 1 500 1 523 1 543 1 565 1 586 1 605 1 622 1 641 1 658
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
8 058 8 198 8 334 8 459 8 570 8 692 8 811 8 914 9 012 9 119 9 2097 9637 8597 7857 7177 7347 380
Total
Source: Euromonitor
Toys
Food
Fashion
▪ The kids
market will
develop in will
be slowly
growing as a
result of GDP
growth

91. 91
Market size
In millions of EUR
3 247 3 480 3 473 3 503 3 537 3 583 3 626 3 689 3 750 3 806 3 857 3 911 3 965 4 011 4 055 4 104 4 144
2 804
2 862 2 855 2 880 2 908 2 946 2 981 3 033 3 084 3 130 3 171 3 216 3 260 3 298 3 334 3 374 3 407
1 328
1 392 1 389 1 401 1 415 1 433 1 450 1 476 1 500 1 523 1 543 1 565 1 586 1 605 1 622 1 641 1 658
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
8 058 8 198 8 334 8 459 8 570 8 692 8 811 8 914 9 012 9 119 9 2097 9637 8597 7857 7177 7347 380
Total
Source: Euromonitor
Toys
Food
Fashion
▪ The kids
market will
develop in will
be slowly
growing as a
result of GDP
growth
The kids market will develop in will be slowly growing as a result of GDP
growth

92. 92
Check for more details my presentation that will show you
how to create a great consulting presentation
How to create management
consulting presentations?
A practical guide
presentation

93. 93
If you want to learn more on being business analyst go to my
on-line course
Click to check my course
How to become world class Business
Analyst? Cases in Excel
$90
$15

94. 94
Check my presentation that will help you get into consulting
How to get into consulting
Practical guide how to pass the case part
presentation

95. 95
Subscribe to our channels:
www

96. 96
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
Market research
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

97. 97
You can also find useful some tips on Excel
Essential Excel for Business
Analysts and Consultants
A practical guide
presentation

98. 98
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
Business models
Practical guide for startups and entrepreneurs
presentation

99. 99
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
How to become world class
analyst
A practical guide
presentation

100. 100
Check my presentation on on-line models to understand
them properly
How to open a successful
restaurant
A practical guide
presentation

101. 101
Check my extensive presentation on productivity hacks to see
how you can me 10x more productive
Management consultant
productivity hacks
How to be lazy and still get things done
presentation

102. 102
Check my presentation that will help you get into consulting
How to get into consulting
Practical guide how to pass the case part
presentation