Business analyst analytics interview questions

As asked

A business wants to adopt a new CRM. How would you run a gap analysis to decide what needs to change?

Sample answer outline

Define the desired future state in measurable terms, document the current state honestly, then list the gaps across people, process, data, and technology. For each gap, assess size, effort, and priority, and recommend whether to configure, customise, change the process, or accept the gap. A strong answer ends with a prioritised roadmap rather than an undifferentiated list, and flags gaps that are cheaper to solve by changing the process than the system.

Expect these follow-ups

• How do you decide when to change a process instead of customising the software?
• How do you quantify the size of a gap so leadership can prioritise it?
• What is the risk of customising a packaged CRM heavily?

As asked

Leadership is weighing whether to automate a manual reconciliation process. How do you build a cost-benefit case to support the decision?

Sample answer outline

Quantify the costs, both one-off build and ongoing run, and the benefits, both hard savings such as reduced hours and soft benefits such as fewer errors and faster close. Convert to a common basis, calculate payback period, net present value, and return on investment, and state the assumptions clearly. A strong answer includes a sensitivity check on the riskiest assumptions and is honest that some benefits resist a clean monetary figure.

Expect these follow-ups

• How do you value a benefit like reduced risk that has no obvious cash figure?
• What discount rate would you use and why does it matter?
• How do you present this when the numbers are genuinely uncertain?

As asked

A revenue dashboard shows a sudden twenty percent drop overnight. The business is alarmed. How do you investigate whether it is real?

Sample answer outline

First rule out a data or pipeline problem: a failed load, a changed source schema, a timezone or currency shift, or a definition change. If the data is sound, segment the drop by region, product, channel, and customer type to localise it, and compare against seasonality and prior periods. A strong answer separates is the metric broken from is the business broken, and communicates findings with appropriate caution before raising an alarm.

Expect these follow-ups

• How do you tell a genuine business drop from a broken data feed quickly?
• What would you check first if only one region is affected?
• How do you communicate an unconfirmed drop without causing panic?