Moving from Management Accounting to Business Analysis roles
Discussion
Hi,
Been wanting to move away from accounting for a while, graduated in 2012 with a 2:1 in Business & Accounting and landed a job pretty swiftly as an Assistant Management Accountant in the NHS. I still apply for grad jobs now & again that take my fancy as these seem to offer much better pay, pay progression as well as skills development. However so far I've been unsuccessful in getting onto a graduate scheme.
I've seen a few business analyst/ MI analyst type jobs appear now and again but never made the plunge. The skills to a certain extent seemed to match what I currently do, but seems more technical with the ability to really specify and be very good at a specific task possibly allowing the option to contract in the future.
Anyway, I've managed to secure an interview as a Graduate MI analyst, however I'm not exactly 100% on what the day to day job of an MI Analyst is, reading the job spec it seemed to line up with a Management Accountant pretty well with regards using reports to convey financial information to non financially minded people (general jist) but with a bigger focus on the business decision side (which I don't really get a chance to be involved with in the NHS).
So basically I'm just looking for people who have experience of business analyst type roles & what the job actually entails, and especially the experience of those who have made a similar switch.
Any help/ advice is appreciated.
Been wanting to move away from accounting for a while, graduated in 2012 with a 2:1 in Business & Accounting and landed a job pretty swiftly as an Assistant Management Accountant in the NHS. I still apply for grad jobs now & again that take my fancy as these seem to offer much better pay, pay progression as well as skills development. However so far I've been unsuccessful in getting onto a graduate scheme.
I've seen a few business analyst/ MI analyst type jobs appear now and again but never made the plunge. The skills to a certain extent seemed to match what I currently do, but seems more technical with the ability to really specify and be very good at a specific task possibly allowing the option to contract in the future.
Anyway, I've managed to secure an interview as a Graduate MI analyst, however I'm not exactly 100% on what the day to day job of an MI Analyst is, reading the job spec it seemed to line up with a Management Accountant pretty well with regards using reports to convey financial information to non financially minded people (general jist) but with a bigger focus on the business decision side (which I don't really get a chance to be involved with in the NHS).
So basically I'm just looking for people who have experience of business analyst type roles & what the job actually entails, and especially the experience of those who have made a similar switch.
Any help/ advice is appreciated.
I am not a business analyst, but I have recruited them for this business, and a few others.
There is a terminology problem, as some times the word analyst is used as a catch all term for a number of data related tasks. Here we have replaced Analyst titles with Decision Support as that more neatly captures the activity we are looking at.
So, a management accountant will look at classic information and analyse the trend/variance against actual or budget. So far so good, some MA's are actually doing month end reporting and have quite dry technical roles. Some are looking at cahs flow forecasts, sales figures and quite spanky modelling..
We put our decision support titles for use in roles where we are driving commercial outcomes, ie this is not reporting/recording, has no impact on the financial statements, it is purely supporting commercial decisions.
This work is usually comparing two or three highly variable problems, with objective and subjective data and solving for best/most efficient decision. EG Procurement Contracts, for a fleet of say 100 cars, do you lease, buy, hire - give employees cash, whats the tax impact, what is the cost to buy, if we lease do we also buy fleet servicing - etc etc - whats the working capital impact etc etc.
They also look at risk profile, for other direct materials (eg costing a stock out to production volumes) etc etc
Some Business Analysis is very dry and technical and is seen as back office, some is a very active collaboration with the business - it is the second option you want to try to land.
There is a terminology problem, as some times the word analyst is used as a catch all term for a number of data related tasks. Here we have replaced Analyst titles with Decision Support as that more neatly captures the activity we are looking at.
So, a management accountant will look at classic information and analyse the trend/variance against actual or budget. So far so good, some MA's are actually doing month end reporting and have quite dry technical roles. Some are looking at cahs flow forecasts, sales figures and quite spanky modelling..
We put our decision support titles for use in roles where we are driving commercial outcomes, ie this is not reporting/recording, has no impact on the financial statements, it is purely supporting commercial decisions.
This work is usually comparing two or three highly variable problems, with objective and subjective data and solving for best/most efficient decision. EG Procurement Contracts, for a fleet of say 100 cars, do you lease, buy, hire - give employees cash, whats the tax impact, what is the cost to buy, if we lease do we also buy fleet servicing - etc etc - whats the working capital impact etc etc.
They also look at risk profile, for other direct materials (eg costing a stock out to production volumes) etc etc
Some Business Analysis is very dry and technical and is seen as back office, some is a very active collaboration with the business - it is the second option you want to try to land.
Thanks for the input Gargamel. Appreciated.
Yes it is this second option of being in collaboration with the business which I am looking for. I want to be involved in driving the business forward helping to make decisions, which is to a certain extent a Management Accountant's job but Analyst roles seem more orientated to this as opposed to month end reporting tasks such as accruals etc... hence why wanting to make the switch.
Thanks for confirming that they are at least in some way related or at least some skills will be transferable.
The job is a Graduate job so I am hoping they can see I'm not the finished product and will need adequate training in the respective systems & processes but 2 years of Management Accounts experience should do me well.
Yes it is this second option of being in collaboration with the business which I am looking for. I want to be involved in driving the business forward helping to make decisions, which is to a certain extent a Management Accountant's job but Analyst roles seem more orientated to this as opposed to month end reporting tasks such as accruals etc... hence why wanting to make the switch.
Thanks for confirming that they are at least in some way related or at least some skills will be transferable.
The job is a Graduate job so I am hoping they can see I'm not the finished product and will need adequate training in the respective systems & processes but 2 years of Management Accounts experience should do me well.
I'm a BA in a bank, and my job isn't financial or accounting related in the slightest.
I work on a variety of projects, mainly system migrations or designs. I came from an ops background in corporate loans, then SME/BA on a migration, and now BA outright. My role covers requirements elicitation and validation, and traceability through to delivery. I also find myself getting involved in MI design, so having a very good knowledge of Excel will come in handy for you.
Bear in mind that you don't need any sector-specific knowledge - the BA skill set should be transferable across sectors but it does help to know your sector.
ETA: In more detail, you need to talk to a lot of people to understand how a business works, and how it wants to work. You need to do a lot of interviewing, workshops and so on to extract what people actually need versus what they think they need. It's a very varied job for me at the moment, and if you're quite geeky and focused you'll enjoy it.
I work on a variety of projects, mainly system migrations or designs. I came from an ops background in corporate loans, then SME/BA on a migration, and now BA outright. My role covers requirements elicitation and validation, and traceability through to delivery. I also find myself getting involved in MI design, so having a very good knowledge of Excel will come in handy for you.
Bear in mind that you don't need any sector-specific knowledge - the BA skill set should be transferable across sectors but it does help to know your sector.
ETA: In more detail, you need to talk to a lot of people to understand how a business works, and how it wants to work. You need to do a lot of interviewing, workshops and so on to extract what people actually need versus what they think they need. It's a very varied job for me at the moment, and if you're quite geeky and focused you'll enjoy it.
Edited by AlasdairMc on Tuesday 1st April 23:46
I'm a BA for a logistics company. In my company there are two kinds of BA. We have technical BA's (me) who find out what the vision is from the business and other requirements they want. We then come up with solutions, do impact analyse and finally estimate the time it will take to develop.
A 'business' BA are there to help with processes and understand operationally how this will work so will look at training, workshops, processes. So very different.
I think what your look at is more of a commercial role or maybe this MI graduate scheme.
A 'business' BA are there to help with processes and understand operationally how this will work so will look at training, workshops, processes. So very different.
I think what your look at is more of a commercial role or maybe this MI graduate scheme.
What about work in an FP&A role or a larger organisation or Finance team? I have worked alongside these people and of course they are all qualified or QBE accountants but their role is less driven by the monthly processes and more about supporting commercial business decision making.
Thanks edc will look into it.
As can be seen i think organisations use business analyst titles for a huge variety of roles, roles that i wouldn't say are business analysis i.e richatnort i would say is a systems analyst but they call it a business analyst... Makes it harder to identify what jobs I'm actually suited too when the job title is so widely applied!
Thanks for help so far anyways.
As can be seen i think organisations use business analyst titles for a huge variety of roles, roles that i wouldn't say are business analysis i.e richatnort i would say is a systems analyst but they call it a business analyst... Makes it harder to identify what jobs I'm actually suited too when the job title is so widely applied!
Thanks for help so far anyways.
Edited by lewisf182 on Wednesday 2nd April 10:54
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