Achieving the Business Support Standard – Business Analysis

Business Analysis

To meet the Business Analysis requirement of the business adviser award you need to be able to demonstrate:

SFEDI requirements

• Business performance data analysis and performance measures (for example, benchmarking).
• Qualitative and quantitative analytical and diagnostic techniques (for example, SWOT, PEST, five forces or variance analysis).
• Market appraisal, pricing and evaluating the different types of products offered (product mix).
• Evaluation of production processes and techniques.
• Financial appraisal techniques.
• Risk assessment techniques.
• Analysis of business culture.
• Identification of stakeholders and their influence.
• Profiling of individuals’ strengths, weaknesses and motivation
• Common problems and opportunities small businesses (including structured business formats such as franchising, direct selling, licensing and distribution agreements) may face.

How RapidBI can help

The Business Improvement Review (BIR) was developed to ensure that business advisers from different specialisms were able to deliver a consistent business analysis and diagnostic process to the consultancies clients.

To achieve this, the BIR is only used by business advisers and consultants that can show a rounded level of competence. Recently we have found that less trained individuals can use the process to develop their competence when they are mentored. This has proved to be a useful vehicle for the development of business advisers.

While the BIR process does not meet all of the business adviser standards it provides a valuable platform for developing newly appointed business advisers.

The Business Improvement Review process was originally designed to provide a training needs analysis (TNA) of the people running organisations as well as providing an agenda for change. A by-product of this is that in turn it provided a CPD framework and TNA for the adviser too.

For more information contact one of our advisers via the contact page.