In this blog, we are going to see the difference between a Business Analyst and a Data Analyst. 4 main things differtiate a Business Analyst from a Data Analyst in a team. They are Responsibility, Qualification, Skills and Salary. Let’s start off with responsibility.

Responsibilities:

First let’s look at the Business Analyst’s responsibilities. A business analyst works a lot with the clients to understand what they need and what the problem they are having. They are going to work with the managers and try to figure out how an idea is going to work within their team. They next thing they do is, using current data to outline a problem. They are going to go in and actually look at the data and then understand what the client is wanting so that they can describe to the  team what they are trying to solve and what they are looking for. The next thing they are going to do is outline and communicate what the client actually wants the team to do. After that a business analyst can only do all the analysis around that and then hands it off to either the programming team or Data analyst to look into this further and actually solve the problem. The Data Analyst is going to actually work with the programming teams that collect and analyse the data and so the difference between these two is a business analyst typically going to work mostly with the clients and the managers while the Data Analyst is going to work with the programming side. The next thing a Data Analyst is going to do is using pre-existing data to solve a problem and so the business analyst is going to bring the problem and define the problem and bring that to the programming team and the Data Analysts work with developers to actually solve the problem and figure out a solution. Then they have to create reports and dashboards and visually present the analytical findings to the team and that’s basically the part of any Data Analyst job.

Qualifications:

The qualifications for a Data Analyst and a Business Analyst are pretty similar. For a Business Analyst, a person must have a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Administration/ Finance/ Economics or something that is business related. Sometimes one may need a Master’s degree. For the most part, the business analysts mostly have MBA’s. Data Analysts typically don’t have MBA’s. For a Data Analyst, one must have a Bachelor’s degree and that’s typically in something like Computer Science/ Statistics/ Mathematics/ Economics or Finance. They is a lot of overlap between the Business Analyst and the Data Analyst.

Skills:

Business Analyst:

• SQL
• MS Access
• Excel
• Communication skills
• Presentation skills
• People skills

Data Analyst:

• SQL
• R/ Python
• TABLEAu/ Power BI
• Data Modeling
• SAS/ SPSS
• Excel
• AWS/ Azure

Salary:

Business Analyst:

• Entry level: 35k – 50k
• Mid level: 50k – 75k
• Senior level- 75k – 95k

Data Analyst:

• Entry level: 45k – 60k
• Mid level: 65k – 85k
• Senior level- 85k – 110k

Data Analyst gets a little bit more salary on an average than a Business Analyst. This is because in small companies and at times in big companies, Data Analysts are asked to communicate with clients and in those cases there isn’t even necessary for a Business Analysts.