Archive for the ‘Articles’ category

Increasing the Significance of Business Analysts in an Organisation

January 28th, 2011


With time, the competition has been increasing drastically in which professionals are performing better to survive in this corporate world. In this article, the main emphasis is on a business analyst, who is important for a company to perform better than the rest and become an asset for an organisation.

It is very easy to be an average analyst who generally has to attend all the meetings, complete all the necessary documents and listen to the feedback from their manager and so on. However, if you want to be really appreciated by an organisation and want to be truly successful, then performing the above mentioned jobs are not enough.

In order to perform better, you need to be determined to constantly improve your skills and knowledge so that you can take wise decisions for an organisation. Usually, technical skills are given importance which acts as a foundation of your career. Furthermore, to become a great analyst, you need to be good in technical skills and soft skills as well.

It is necessary as it acts as an important distinguishing feature between a good analyst and an effective analyst. You may have the best solutions but if you fail to communicate properly, the solution won’t be appreciated by anyone. Similarly, if you have the greatest idea but you fail to convince your manager to adopt it, the proposed idea will become useless.

Therefore, you must give equal importance to your soft skills along with your technical skills before you submit your resume for an analyst position in an organisation. There are many recruitment agencies in the UK that are offering suitable job opportunities to potential candidates for these positions.

So, use the Internet to find a reliable recruitment agency so that you can secure your career with a good job opportunity in the analyst sector.

By: Mark T Sherman

About the Author:
ChapmanBlack is Europe’s leading recruitment agency offering jobs for Business Analyst and Strategy Analyst.



Financial Analyst Job

January 28th, 2011


A financial analyst job involves reviewing and analyzing the broad number of financial instruments available within a particular investment market. Based on their analyses, the financial analysis will then provide an interpretation as well as recommendations to the companies or individuals that they are working for. Financial analysis provide information that guides decisions in personal finance, corporate investments, company mergers, acquisitions and initial public offers (IPO). A financial services job can be found in a number of different companies.

Financial analyst careers based in a stock brokerage, investment firm or financial services company will be tasked with undertaking extensive research on the various options of investment that are available, analyzing the pros and cons of each depending on the companies short, medium and long term objectives, preparing the pertinent reports, making presentations on the data and recommendations to the key decision making organs within the organization. The sources of research for financial analysis are diverse and can include data on credible websites, company reports, business news, industry journals, company announcements and industry regulator reports.

A financial analyst job based in what can be termed as an ordinary non-finance business will be involved in preparing company budgets, end of year company accounts and performing financial audits to some degree. The financial analysis will be one of the key point persons in the design and negotiation of financial instruments that the business is contemplating. Such instruments or products would include foreign currency future contracts, price hedges and syndicated loans. If the business intends to raise funds through the public, financial analysis will be heavily involved in the process of structuring the IPO, rights issue, debenture, corporate bond, commercial paper etc. The financial analyst job will also prepare or oversee the preparation of dividend payouts as well as the financial reports for distribution to the shareholders.

So what do you need in order to succeed in financial analyst careers? First, you must be good in mathematics and statistics. This is because the financial analyst’s job demands a great deal of calculation and statistical data analysis. The need for mathematical aptitude cannot be overemphasized given that the reports that financial analysts develop will usually be used to make major and sometimes high value investment decisions on behalf of the institution he or she works for. But financial analysts will often be asked to make presentations to management so good presentation and reporting skills are of paramount importance. It is one thing to have accurate data-but it is completely another to communicate the data in a way that makes sense for an audience.

A financial analysis job will favor persons with an undergraduate degree in a business related field such as finance, commerce, business analysis, economics, business administration, business management, accounting etcetera. A minor, a separate degree or a postgraduate qualification in mathematics or statistics will be an added advantage. Senior financial analysts’ jobs will often have much more stringent requirements such as the need to have a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) or a Masters in Finance. In addition, many firms now require that one have professional qualifications such as Certified Public Accounting (CPA), Certified International Investment Analyst (CIIA) or Chartered Financial Analysis (CFA).

According to a PayScale.com salary survey, entry level salaries for financial analysts as of March 2010 ranged between $40,000 and $53,000. Financial analysis with five to ten years of experience earned between $50,000 and $67,000.

By: Faria Eagle

About the Author:
For more information on Financial Analyst Job



Business Intelligence Strategy

January 28th, 2011


Why a Business Intelligence strategy

Developing your Business Intelligence Strategy involves first considering your organizations vision and mission. Melding the corporate strategy with your business intelligence strategy will make a winning combination.

Business Intelligence Elevator Speech

To get key players on-board with your BI initiative you need an ‘elevator speech’. This allows you to quickly give stakeholders your idea. Your elevator speech should be: “Business Intelligence allows data to be transformed into knowledge that fuels business growth. Business Intelligence allows better, more informed and faster decisions.”

Key players

There are a number of key players to include in your Business Intelligence strategy and initiatives.

- Leadership Key

- Decision Makers

- Business Analysts

- Information Technology

- Other stakeholders

Essential Elements of Business Intelligence

- Good information

- Secure information

- Accessible information

- Analytically structured information

Goal of Business Intelligence: enable better, more informed and faster decisions

How do we enable better, more informed and faster decisions

Different business intelligence tools address these factors in different ways. Reporting delivers regular, timely information, with the ability to author reports or queries to get specific details. OLAP analysis, with its multiple dimensions, allows you to compare and contrast information against time and other factors to uncover trends. Scorecarding presents your key performance metrics and whether you’ve cross pre-determined thresholds. Executive (Data) dashboards put information in context, and in an easy-to-understand format.

Precursors to implementing BI

The underlying pool(s) of data need to be trusted. For companies to realize successful business intelligence user’s must trust the data. Many companies have pockets of data that are considered trustworthy. This trust can be spread to other data by instilling data quality methodologies and also by implementing granular data security. This can be accomplished by mapping key information/data. Then creating data integrity rules/processes on this key data. Through this mapping of key data you will identify security rules which can be programmed at the source of the data, rather than the individual applications and reporting systems that ride on top of the data. Define it one time, one place.

If you are interested in learning more about business intelligence check out oraclegiants.com. I continuously blog about topics such as business intelligence strategy, tools and best practices.

By: Brian J Carr

About the Author:
Brian Carr has over 10 years of IT experience and has led the implementation of business intelligence systems such as Oracle Discoverer. His experience implementing BI systems allows him to relate, and offer advice, on how to get things done. He has published articles on web analytics (http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/cambier_disc.html) and creating your search engine (http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/21909) as well as developed and sold his own internet start-up company. He is currently working to establish a website dedicated to the topic of Business Intelligence and database administration.