Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
BUSINESS CHAMPION JOB DESCRIPTION
(continued)
Desired characteristics of the business champion:
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Well respected in the business community
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Strong project management exposure
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Motivated and resourceful
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Excellent communication and presentation skills
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Knowledge of the business functions and processes
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Ability to learn complex technical concepts quickly and apply them to busi-
ness situations
Business Analysts
Business analysts are typically those who perform most reporting and analysis
for the group. These people understand the intricacies and challenges of the
current data. Many times, the business analyst function has been boiled down
to data gathering and report generating. The length of time required to collect,
validate, and format the data leaves little time to perform other analysis. Too
often, highly skilled professionals are not able to leverage their true talents to
perform more extensive analysis that would enable them to better understand
what is causing changes to the business and make business decisions to take
corrective action.
Without a well-designed data warehouse, it can take a long time to pull
together basic reports to track business performance measures showing longi-
tudinal trends in sales or profit margins. Developing these reports at a regional
level may consume all of the time available to meet the deadline. This would
not allow time to pull data to look at sales by individual markets or stores.
To take this further, it would be interesting to be able to see other geographic
breakdowns or perhaps by-product characteristics. More in-depth analysis
would be required to study the impact that changes to the company's pricing
or promotion strategies have had on sales. The data warehouse project needs
the type of person who is interested in looking at these deeper levels of analysis
and is not satisfied with producing basic reports.
The data warehouse project team needs at least one business analyst to work
as a full participant on the project. This person must be knowledgeable about
thebusinessandthedatausedtosupportthebusiness.Heorshewillbean
advocate for the group. While the project needs one person to be assigned,
several may be allocated, especially if each represents a different group.
