What is the difference between a profile of a Business analyst and Sales.?

Question

Both business analyst and sales guy need to gather business requirement. so how a business analyst role is different from a sales guy?

Answer 1

A major difference is in the depth of information they collect (which may reflect differences in sources), a second difference is the purpose for gathering the information, and a third difference is the use to which the information is put.

A salesman prefers to work with senior personnel who are decision makers for the enterprise. At this level, the reasons for which a software product is purchased are usually summarized into statements of business goals: reduce costs, simplify operations, improve response time, support customers, involve vendors, etc. The sales person's job is to gather enough information to ensure that his product is a good fit for the client, and that implementation of the software will yield expected benefits. Great levels of detail about the clients business processes may not be warranted for the sales investigation; such details may even be counterproductive, or a waste of time, if the business processes are being re-engineered as  part of the implementation of new software.

A business analyst, on the other hand, requires significant detail about the business processes of the client, in order to correctly install and configure the software, and the business logic and data the analyst gathers may determine, to a great extent, the success of operation of the software. For a business analyst, it is not enough to know that the inventory valuation is method is average cost; the analyst must know on what average cost basis inventory aging adjustments and obsolescence are to be applied. Accordingly, the analyst collects and verifies information in a rigorous process which generally involves interviews, questionnaires, surveys, business documentation reviews, sample documents, and procedural manuals and memos. The analyst generally works with lower level functional personnel in the business, who perform jobs the software will facilitate, gathering individual and organizational knowledge that they typically hold in informal knowledge stores, some of which may be at odds with the formal procedures the executives of the business believe are actually used methods. He tests the accuracy of his data gathering and the functionality of the software thus configured, with substantial pilot period operation, or parallel testing of old and new systems.