A Business Analyst (BA) usually captures the technical specifications of a system in a Functional Specification Document (FSD) or equivalent. This document contains use cases, data mappings, high-level design and any technical notes required to help the development process. Since developers use the FSD as input to the system design, Business Intelligence (BI) BAs can reduce unnecessary rework by including a gap analysis map in the FSD.

Reusable Application Objects

Companies that embrace BI as part of their business process may realize that the first few applications become building blocks for future implementations. All possible business questions across the company will inevitably be a subset or variation of the subject areas in the business model. For example, questions in a retail company may include subject areas like products, sales, invoicing, inventory, cost of goods sold, and so on.

If a BI application requires product and sales data, then objects such as Product Name, Product Description, Sales Region, and Sales Person may be created. Future product or sales applications will have the ability...