What Role Can Business Analysts Play When A Company Is Up For Sale?

Typically, business analysts help to bridge the gap between IT and the business itself. You are responsible for looking at the data produced by various programs and making sense of it. Your findings are presented to the business along with recommendations on how things can move ahead and improve. 

There’s no denying that every growing business needs a business analyst on its team. However, what about when someone is looking to sell their business? You might not realize this, but a business analyst is extremely useful in this situation as well. 

How? Let’s take a look:

Assisting prospective buyers 

As a business analyst, you can use your knowledge to assist prospective buyers that are looking to purchase a company for sale. They might hire you to provide insights on the company - how well is it doing? How can it be improved? Think of this as similar to the role of a surveyor when buying a house. They survey the property, list all the faults, and provide details on any changes that might need to be made and how much they will cost. In turn, this information can inform the buyer as to whether or not the property is worth buying. 

Back to the sale of a business, business analysis can let someone know if this is a wise investment or not. You might show that this is a very profitable company or at least one that has the potential to be profitable if certain changes are made. Then, it’s up to the buyer to see if they are going to invest or not. Whether they do or not isn’t a big deal to you at all as you’ve already done your job. Remember, you are not a salesperson, you’re simply there to help as part of the sale. 

Assisting sellers

Likewise, business analysts can play a similar role on the other side. When someone is selling a business, they want to generate as much interest as they possibly can. The more interest they drum up, the more money they can get for their company. This lets them part ways and retire off into the sunset! 

Business analysts can look at data and analyze the company, presenting a report of their findings to the seller. From here, the seller can see if the business is in a fit enough state to be sold. It might transpire that things need to be changed before the business should be sold. In doing so, more interest can be generated and more money can be gained. 

To summarize, business analysts can play a pretty big role when a business is being sold. It’s likely that you can be employed by both buyers and sellers in a situation like this. You’re still performing your core role of analyzing data and presenting your findings, but the way it’s used is different from normal. On the one hand, a buyer uses your data to see if a business is worth purchasing. On the other hand, a seller can use it to see what needs to be done to prepare their business for sale. Either way, it’s another opportunity for a payday.