Best Business Analysis Tools: Measure, Manage, and Master Your Processes

As the adage goes, “if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.” Business analysis tools help you measure and review your operations to identify weaknesses and formulate solutions that drive business success.

Business analysis can be a tremendous driver of positive change, particularly regarding efficiency and profitability. Business analytics tools turn complex data into valuable insights and support data-driven decisions. These software tools help improve business processes, enhance communication, and more.

In this article, we'll explore some of our favorite business analysis tools to see how they can support your objectives and help drive business growth.

Coming Up

What is Business Analysis?

What Are Business Analysis Tools?

Best Business Analysis Tools

What is the Best Analysis Software?

How Does Business Intelligence Help a Business Analyst?

Wrapping Up

What is Business Analysis?

Regardless of how “well” a business process seems to be running, there are always stress points that can fail with little warning, and this typically happens at the worst time.

In many cases, these stress points were hiding in plain sight, but the everyday grind of business prevented them from being seen until it was too late. However, a business analyst can use analytical tools to find and address these weak points before they become problematic.

Business analysis is the science of analyzing businesses to identify problems and craft solutions to those problems.

Every area of the company's operation can be reviewed in business analysis, and the business analyst considers how and where improvements can be made. However, in many cases, businesses do not have the resources or time to employ a business analyst and promptly get the information they need.

This is where business analytics tools like SolveXia can be a game changer. SolveXia is finance automation software that enables any business to access knowledge by effortlessly running analytics and using customized dashboards from real-time data.

Why is a Business Analysis Important?

Imagine having the world's finest race car but failing to ensure all spark plugs are firing or sufficient oil in the engine before the race begins. Much like auto racing, the business world is incredibly competitive, and operating at peak efficiency can be the difference between surpassing quarterly projections and falling short.

Proactively conducting business analysis allows companies to identify problem areas and improve them before they negatively impact performance and profitability. This process is crucial for business operations such as:

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Business analysis helps optimize ERP systems, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently across departments. This leads to streamlined operations, reduced costs, and improved decision-making based on real-time data.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Businesses can tailor their approach to meet customer needs more effectively by analyzing customer data and interactions. This results in improved customer retention, increased sales, and targeted marketing efforts.

• Customer Satisfaction: By carefully analyzing feedback and customer behavior, a business analyst can identify pain points in the customer journey and make necessary improvements. This proactive approach leads to higher satisfaction rates and stronger brand loyalty.

• Supply Chain Management: Business analysts can identify inefficiencies in the supply chain, from procurement to delivery. By optimizing these processes, companies can reduce costs, minimize delays, and improve product quality and availability.

Using a tool like SolveXia, your team will save time through process automation. In turn, your employees can work smarter and deliver more customer value. With SolveXia, processes have 90% fewer errors and decrease risk, providing greater peace of mind and internal control.

What Are Business Analysis Tools?

Business analysis tools focus on gathering and analyzing business requirements,  processes, and operations. Business Analysts use these tools to understand business needs and solve problems.

These tools must work with qualitative data, as they are geared to help with strategic planning, requirements management, and process improvement. For example, a business analyst may use SWOT analysis to review business operations and help the company make informed decisions.

How is this Different from Business Analytics Tools?

In contrast, business analytics tools are software applications and techniques business analysts use to do their work. These essential tools:

• Can ingest and analyze raw data through data integration and
• Have capabilities around process management and designing custom workflows and
• Provide statistical tools and capabilities for predictive modeling and data visualization.

These programs allow anyone (not just business analysts) to capture and review important business data and produce actionable insights. In a typical business analysis, companies will employ several types of business analytics, such as data mining, statistical analysis, and even predictive intelligence.

Having powerful data analytics software allows businesses to employ all these tools simultaneously in a user-friendly platform. This is important because it allows decision-makers to get the data they need without the data collection becoming the most arduous part of the business analysis process.

Best Business Analysis Tools

There are several different types of analytical tools for business analysts; which business analytics tool is right for your company depends on your business goals. Keep reading to find our top 10 tools:

1. SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis examines a business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The strengths and weaknesses portion refers to individual factors inside the business, such as personnel, expenses, and facilities.

The opportunities and threats portion looks at areas where the company can gain strength, or how adverse market conditions may harm it.

2. PEST Analysis

PEST analysis examines a business in terms of political, economic, sociological, and technological factors and how they could potentially affect it. The political analysis looks at current and predicted political climates and plots a course.

Economics considers the short—and long-term economic picture, while sociological analysis looks at how the community at large impacts company decisions. Technological analysis examines how developing technology will affect a business.

3. MOST Analysis

MOST is an acronym for Mission, Objective, Strategies, and Tactics. Businesses use it to determine their core mission, strategic objective, and best tactics for achieving that objective.

4. Heptalysis

This seven-step tool is used to analyze the following factors: market opportunity, product or solution, execution plan, financial engine, human capital, potential return, and margin of safety.

No business can proceed without a complete understanding of all these elements, which are key to scenario planning.

5. De Bono's Six Big Thinking Hats

Every business eventually needs to try some fresh ideas. This tool incorporates six different analytical moods to generate new tactics or products. Those moods are logic, creativity, positivity, negativity, emotions, and ability to control.

Whatever the new idea, it should be creative while still making sense, scalable, and capable of generating positive emotions among the customer base.

6. Catwoe

CATWOE involves setting a limited amount of time for business owners to brainstorm new ideas while accounting for the following six factors: customers, actors, transformation process, world view, owners, and environmental constraints.

7. Five Whys

This is an excellent analytical tool for businesses trying to solve a recently manifested problem. Begin by acknowledging the existence of a problem and then asking “why”?

By repeating the process four more times, for a total of five whys, businesses should have a complete idea of the main problem and its root causes.

8. MoSCoW

This is an analytical tool and technique for companies that must address multiple problems simultaneously. Much like triage in a military hospital, the MoSCoW method prioritizes tasks in order of importance using the following four metrics: must have, should have, could have, and won't have.

9. SCRS

This four-step analytical tool focuses on taking account of a company's current situation and plotting a course forward. SCRS is an acronym with the following steps: strategy, current state, requirements, and solution.

10. VPEC-T

This analytics tool is an acronym for values, events, content, and trust. Businesses use it when they have multiple executives or departments making a collective decision about how to move forward.

Any method you choose to use can be optimized with the aid of automation software. Automation software, like SolveXia, has analytical capabilities that ingest data from all your connected sources and provide you with real-time insights to make informed business decisions.

What is the Best Business Analytics Software?

Conducting business analysis is an incredibly important task. It's so important that there are professional business analysts who devote entire careers to this space.

Whether companies employ a business analyst or use business analytical tools to conduct their analysis, analytical tools for business make it easier to gather, organize, and display the information companies need to make the most thorough analysis possible. Some of the best business analysis software include:

1. SolveXia

Finance teams are turning to SolveXia to help their staff be more productive and successful. The low-code platform automates spreadsheet-driven data preparation and manual processes without the need for dedicated IT teams.

SolveXia offers one of the most comprehensive and powerful finance automation software packages available for data analysis. It can be used by staff without IT support, and there is no need for coding expertise to collect, analyze, and display a wide range of datasets.

It is compatible with almost all legacy software companies have previously used to track data, accounting, and sales information. SolveXia also combines, manipulates, calculates, and transforms your data into rich insights.

SolveXia is an out-of-the-box solution with a user-friendly interface that can be up and running in less than 30 minutes!

Along with data analysis capabilities, SolveXia's suite of solutions includes expense analytics, account reconciliation, process automation, regulatory reporting, and more.

2. Board

Board is powerful analytics software that offers many features, such as business analytics, performance management, and analytically based insights, to business owners. These features help the owners and executives make better decisions.

However, it is not the easiest software to use out of the box and requires significant time to master its capabilities.

3. Excel

Excel is one of the first widely used software programs by business analysts. It allows skilled users to program formulas, take in data, and create incredibly impressive graphics and charts to accompany the analysis.

However, like Board, Excel requires a highly skilled user to exploit its capabilities fully, so many companies end up overly dependent on one or two “experts” to manage it.

Additionally, Excel data is not automatically shared or updated in real-time among users, meaning some critical data may not always be accurate.

4. Looker

Looker offers its users a web-based data analysis software tool that any company employee can use and update in real-time from anywhere they can access.

Its main strengths lie in its innovative data modeling features, which allow even novice users to access deep, insightful data and present them with high-quality visuals.

However, it's also a very expensive software tool, which may not be ideal for small—to medium-sized businesses on a budget.

5. SAS

SAS is a well-known and universally respected data analytics software tool. It's easy to learn, powerful, and capable of handling large data volumes.

It features a high level of data security and proven algorithms that can quickly and efficiently get decision-makers the information they need. However, it's expensive and requires licenses to use all its capabilities. It is also not the best software for creating quality graphics.

How Does Business Intelligence Help a Business Analyst?

Business intelligence (BI) plays a crucial role for business analysts. BI encompasses various tools, applications, and methodologies that enable organizations to collect, analyze, and present business information. This synergy between business intelligence and business analysis empowers business analysts to make more informed decisions in areas including:

1. Analyzing Data: BI tools excel at processing vast amounts of data from various sources, including sales figures, customer interactions, and market trends. By analyzing this data, businesses can identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that might go unnoticed.

2. Collaboration Tools: Modern BI platforms often include features that facilitate teamwork and knowledge sharing. These collaboration tools allow analysts, managers, and stakeholders to work together seamlessly, ensuring that insights are shared and acted upon across the organization.

3. Visualizing Data: One of the most powerful aspects of BI is its ability to transform complex data sets into easy-to-understand visual representations. Businesses can quickly grasp key metrics and trends through dashboards, charts, and interactive graphs, making it easier to communicate findings and drive action.

4. Generating Key Insights: By combining data from multiple sources and applying advanced analytics, BI tools can uncover valuable insights that drive strategic decision-making. These insights might reveal new market opportunities, highlight operational inefficiencies, or predict future trends.

5. Big Data Analytics: As the volume, velocity, and variety of data grow, big data analytics has become an essential component of business intelligence. BI tools that can handle big data allow companies to process and analyze massive datasets in real time, providing a more comprehensive view of their business landscape.

Wrapping Up: Business Analysts Need the Best Tools

Businesses are much like animals in nature in that they are either always evolving or slowly approaching extinction. Like organisms, businesses must continuously evolve to thrive in their competitive environments.

Business analysts play a crucial role in this evolution. They analyze data from internal factors (such as operational processes and team dynamics) and external factors (including market trends and competitor actions). Their insights drive strategic decision-making and guide project management efforts to keep the organization moving forward.

Conducting a thorough business analysis with the best analytical tools is one of the best steps businesses can take to ensure they are evolving forward instead of slowly losing ground to their competitors.

Using the best software can make the business analysis process easier, more efficient, and more productive.

Looking to give an analytics tool like SolveXia a try to gain more accurate and real-time insights? We're here to show you how. Request a demo today to see what you stand to gain.