Let’s get down to the ‘business’ of explaining the role of business analysis in the corporate world since business analysts are hot commodities in today’s corporate culture.

First and foremost business analysis involves is identifying the business opportunities and requirements of any company and then making collective efforts of collecting, clearing and authenticating the requirements. If you think this is all, you have got another thing coming and that is communicating all these requirements to the stakeholders. Whew! The second step would be to collect all the requirements and clearly define their scopes. And, no, this is not over yet! The BA also has to ensure that all the requirements are well-written, clearly spelled out and specific and nothing is left out, which means that they have to be absolutely complete. And lastly, business analysis means coming up with the ‘best’ solution to a specific problem/requirement and not just ‘any’ solution. They are the liaison between the business team and the IT team.
Thus, to explain in layman terms, business analysis would mean a set of steps and techniques which are used to communicate with the stakeholders so that a clear understanding of the workings of an organization can be reached and the best solutions suggested and implemented.