Hi everybody. And welcome to the show this week before we get started, I just wanted to take some time to recognize. Those who have messaged me on LinkedIn on forums, social media, by phone by email, and said that they're really enjoying the show that really motivates me to keep producing the show and keep talking and interviewing others. And, you know, sharing a knowledge. I really would love anyone. Who's interested to give me a buzz and we'll throw you on an
episode as well. This is a community thing. We need to learn by challenging each other. So yeah, I'm glad people are getting value out of the show and that will keep me motivated. So, keep messaging me. It puts a smile on my face and this week I have had a bit of a cold, so it was great to receive those messages. So on with the show, now better business analysis, Institute presents the Better Business analysis podcast with Kingdom.
Today we're going to be talking about the top 10 tools, every bitter business analyst needs to know. So I'm going to be counting down those tools from ten to one and I'm going to try and offer a cup of varieties. Not necessarily, you know, pushing one Brando name over the other and look at both the paid and free options for those top 10 tools. And when I talk about tools today, I'm really meaning applications that you can use pieces of software that you can access.
Okay, let's get into it. Making the top ten on our list today is an AI tool, which you may know about already, which is chat, g p-- t? Now, when I say chat GPT, I'm really meeting a whole Suite of applications that are hosted by open a.i. It's not just the one that you've just referred to there, actually, a whole lot of engines or Models for doing different things chat. Gbt happens to take text that's uses, not your input to return
text. However, actually open, AI has a whole other Suite of tools to you. That, you know, could be used for programming languages or they could be used for generating images or for doing lots of other bits and pieces. And a lot of applications are built on top of this kind of open a.i. platform. And if you Google with chat, gbt So you'll actually find there are hundreds, if not thousands of applications that are popping up that are adding a bit of an interface on top of this engine
for specific use cases. So they've kind of been prompt. They've got like from Generations. They've been refined to do different things, for example, referred to programming, I've used one recently to write a WordPress plug-in automatically through one of these websites. There's ones that do diagramming, which I've shared on LinkedIn. And on our blocked. And so there's a house way and that's just the open a, i
family. And it's important to talk about that particular company because they, you know, are the ones who have well-known also, they're not going to go away anytime soon. And the reason why they're not going to is that they've got our, it strategic relationship. I'm not sure if it's a purchase or not, but definitely a strategic relationship with Microsoft. So, Mike So Soft has been busy integrating these Technologies
inside their sweets. When I say they're sweet, I mean windows I mean the Power Platform where you make that I applications and most importantly, what is used to be called Office 365 and is now called Microsoft 365. So what you could do for example is go to Word Within word. There might be some, you know, menu options that you're so used to using but instead they do. Enhanced with a I so they could
add a sentence. They could all the great things that chat to Beauty can do, but we're fine for a certain use case, which makes it much more less of a toy and much more of a productive tool. So that's not going away. And and not only that, it's going to be very easy to access because it's going to be via the tools and the UI and ux you already are familiar with, you will know. Also that being which is Microsoft search engine that works. But their marks Soft Edge.
Which is actually built on the same engine as Chrome. Ironically has chat has like, a I built into it. It's actually a version of its kind of model of chat gbt. Now, I don't personally like, the results that I get from being, I'm I don't even like the landing page and maybe it's just because I've been using Google so often. So I'm used to seeing the results that I get through their algorithm. And and so, so Microsoft has They push the fact that they want people to use being and
this is another enhancement. So you might see people using wedding because it comes with office. And the reason I mentioned that is that that's a whole ecosystem, Microsoft? Not going to go away and so therefore they are, you know, they are at the Forefront of consumer Rising AI to a nice h8 G BT. I'm meaning this whole family and those that are built on top of it. Now, completely separately from
the whole open a.i. Don't we have the Google site and and Google's built their own, you know, open our I kind of Technology called Bard. Be a d and it is integrated now with Google. So Not only was it its own application, they're starting to release it within within the Chrome browser and within the search engine to do specific things. So for example, think about all the different applications you can do use right now with Google and especially. The search space and the really
focused on using AI for search. So you can now get, I don't know, AI images, or get images back around like a trip. You want to take, for example, there's different modules will use cases that have actually got under the search bar, now in the beta version that I'm using. So it's like, you know, find me images around this holiday or work out the most efficient route. So they've got quite a few use
cases. So again, Google you know gue people are not going to stop using Google and I was asked recently by someone who was kind of asking me to throw my B behind one of these to know Google driven or open a, i Microsoft Riven horse races and I don't think there is, I actually think they will live in harmony and compete against one another. So because they're people consumers, won't change the products. They use that quickly and I don't think these companies are
going away. There are Facebook has its own kind of model engines. And if you've played in the image space, like I have this something called stable diffusion and it's where you may have seen a art driven, they're all very similar and you know there's there's not Cafe there's there's quite a few, there's sorry mid-june he's really popular engine and they're kind of like or image generations and that been training and Owning and training, you can actually
get these tools for free. If, you know, your way around GitHub and you know, you can play with that. So I think that will exist to the whole engine. I'm not sure around who's going to win the image creation engine, but I do know from the productivity Suite, Microsoft and Google will still be, there will be integrated into their workplace platform. So that's number, 10, that can quick that will quickly. Jump to number one in the next
couple of years. So, please, if you haven't papers those tools, I go out this this free version, you get free credits on these sites, Google bad as free checked, your beauty is cut kind of free to a certain point unless you want to send massive documents to it and it is but limited but you can pay for it if you like you can actually download local versions of these software if you know your way around GitHub as well. So that's number 10 on our list number 9 on our list.
Just is white boarding tools, like mural or neuro that are very similar to one another. You can get like three freeboards. I think of you sign up. So it is a free product or a freemium model what you can use for online collaboration. It is a number one tool that I've used in the last couple of years, in terms of work, shopping in terms of voting terms of virtual Post-it. And Absolve pasting in a Visio document and then doing a
workshop on the flow diagram. You can invite people, you can train via it, you can have multi editors at the same time. If you haven't used these tool, you need to get on to learning one of these two tools, I would suggest starting with something,
like mural or mirror. Mirror is probably more advanced in terms of its plugins, but I actually do before the ux experience in mural, if you don't want to pay for these tools or you're going to be using it at an Enterprise level and you don't want to pay for these tools and they do, they do add up to being around 30 20 to 30 dollars per user per month. Mark soft has a very budget version called white board which is part of the team's environment.
So if you have teams already, you can have a mini whiteboard within that product. And over in Google, they have Have Jam boards, which are similar, and again, very limited functionality. Pretty sure that the mark soft white board will evolve, when they might even purchase one of these other white board products.
But start with mural or Moreau and start using it and your daily workflow as a ba, And so I let that move those on to number 8. And number eight, on our list is a collection of tools which I call Erp /, crms, both big and small. So I've there is another podcast episode talking specifically around what these applications mean, Erp. Enterprise resource planning and CRM, being customer relationship management and somewhere in the middle is xrm, which is kind of a merge between the two.
These are the Large Enterprise pieces of software that you should know as be a should at least know, one version or one very popular version of each of these two segments. Erps and serums you go into the Microsoft Family, what used to be called marks of Syria, which is now Dynamics 365, is a very popular tool. You should understand that it will help you understand. When you go into an organization, that's aligned with Microsoft, what the The
kind of Enterprise sweet tools. Look like there are P has kind of been divided into modules. Are they all integrate together? There's there's a there's a whole like Financial Suite that can integrate they're all coming under the Dynamics. Family, these days though, and so that has a crud screen as ways in which you can configure the system, it has ways, you can integrate the system, they've got power apps, where you can build low code, no code apps on top of these systems.
So, I've got customer portals, you really should understand one of these. And of course, the greatest competition in the serum space, for Microsoft would be salesforce.com again. I've used that product probably
Microsoft and more and anger. But early days Salesforce, I was involved in an implementation there at that very similar in terms of what they do. They've just got different ethos has or reasons for existence and different kind of code bases, but you should understand what these tools. And least understand one of them from an Erp point of view.
The biggest piece in the world are things like sap, their think very old-school interface almost budget, you know, first generation Windows 95 kind of stuff but to understand that they have Registries and they have ways in which you can like config a codes and you know, the VIPs are usually much more old-school but they have You can generate screens and you can, you know, have modules. So very similar to the Syrian family and the kind of, I would say evolving that way.
There's Gigi JD Edwards is PeopleSoft marked. Sorry, Oracle own, those are core a big player in there. Yeah, peace space. And you probably should have touched at least one of those systems. The just understand the different models that they use. So from the I would understand what my action is to use the understand what an Erp is, find one or con.
Find understand how I'm Works. You've got to be lucky if you get access to uncover, a very expensive, understand that set and the Oracle family live within that space quite heavily and the Microsoft sales forces of the world live in the serum space more. So in saying that Microsoft will sell you all of those things and in the serum space, there are quite a few free smaller ones, so you can get load up. HubSpot for free, I use it and that'll give you a general idea
of serum. So get your hands on one of those, a free ones, Ojos another free one, sign up, and then you can start using these products and understand the kind of processes that they solve and help. Now, I'm not suggesting here, of course, that you have any flavor, or you're jumping to a technology side, but understanding the limitations of these systems does make you a
better business analyst. Let's move quickly to number 77, is the other August typical Enterprise kind of business Suite that most businesses have that kind of sit on top of our theorem. And then I P system and that's the CSM sorry CMS which is the content management system. So the website software so you may have heard of Squarespace, that's you know, one place that you can make websites shopper.
If I, they're all, you know, kind of er, e Commerce cms's content Management systems but the most popular one in the world is WordPress. So if you can get that software for free, you can just load up a little instance locally or you can Chuck it on a hosting server of your head to do that and having a play of understanding, what a Content management system does, understanding a little bit about web design understanding
modules and plugins and how you. An expose information to your work in customers and to the public is really important as you guarantee that your business has a website. And this is what kind of what software we use to get it. Our website so WordPress, you can get that for free and let that up. You can even go to wordpress.com, door all go, thank and you can get a free block and so that's on WordPress.
As we jump on to number 7 on our list today, we really talking probably it's fair to say the Angeles less Ian's family, which includes Dura, Confluence and Trello a, you may have used one or more of those tools. I'll start with Trello, Trello is a combine tool used for your in progress, you know, not started kind of done blockers, I see the lots of companies using it for their workflow. In terms of We are tasks are at, you can share those. You can drag tasks and cards
local cars around. You can integrate that with things like slack and teams Confluence is the kind of internal intranet. We can edit Pages. It's kind of like a Wiki that's usually associated can be associated with a place to put your requirement specifications or I'll twos. And then that moves us on to jira, which is actually the grunt the product that you do need to know about Dura is the kind of requirements management
tool. It's also a help desk product, but primarily you can use it in the software space for your, scrum, your agile, Sprint's, or even waterfall just in terms of your backlog management, your user stories and your efforts. And, you know, it's used by at least half the clients that I
know. You know, primarily you do not need to know Jarrett. And so now I'm when I say know how to use it, I mean you should be able to create your own kind of project, and you should better sit that project up. It's pretty easy. It's click click through and you should be able to create user stories and if it's within their. So learn that. If you don't know that already, I should mention that the other
popular tool. These days is your devops usually in a development environment it has Has a kind of dura type very limited but type available where you can manage user stories and you can link those two bugs and issues just like jira. But it's within the usual space. You can also get a copy of that for free and also the gra side you can get for free for a couple of people as well.
So jump on the learn those products, understand Confluence and yeah, it's probably worth knowing a little bit around Trello. Cool. So they're all kind of yeah, I guess requirements management tools. There are there were other tools like rational Rose when I was growing up and there was also ea2 as Enterprise architect and you may see those.
I think those tools are very intense, some organizations use them, especially if they've got a strong tag of architecture practice and so maybe just understand what those those are, the usually quite expensive and they Very, very much focused on how we used to do software development so you may not see those around as much especially in the agile space. Number five, we're talking about diagramming tools. And so I'm going to say to you that you do need to know how to
use. Vizio, I went on a few be here is we're going to be listening to this podcast and they're literally, they're back is going to be, but I put up because I have said the word physio Vizio is an interesting product takes a while to get used to like quite a lot of the Microsoft Suite. However, it is actually very powerful and there are a lot of because you can eat at the stencils. So So easily you can make your own stencils, you can make and eat it Excel if you want to
automatically create diagrams. Once you understand you get to a Tipping Point with Visio it is your friend. Yes it's a pain sometimes the connectors not looking good, just use the Buddy, change the connector to around one, you'll be okay but it is you know it is an Enterprise product and you should be really using in 20 of your men. We approach this bot Lane diagrams. It used to have a very high price tag you can Actually do you video documents for free now and you can actually edit them
for free. So, no longer you've got that limitation of doing something in Visio, not being able to share the documents, that's not true, but if you do want to share it in someone, for whatever reason doesn't have access to the Microsoft Family, you can export it as a SVG which is a scaled Victor so you can show it in that form scar vectors A very good because they don't lose their quality as you scale them.
The whole point but also you can check the, you know, you're working copy if you like into something like mural or mirror and then you can start with shopping on it and then make the changes later because you've users post, it's the kind of make changes on top of the image and then you can go back and do your Administration later. So videos are kind of a must-have is there are other tools if you want.
So it is free. Now in terms of its web version, which is As good as anything else out there. And if you have Microsoft Microsoft 365, the other alternative of course, is that you can jump into the Google family. They have one at the name is popped out of my head for a second but it's not. I know it's not great but draw.io is very popular. So if you want a free, one draw.io would be the way to go and you really want a tool that you can export and import.
Put into the 0 if you needed to. So I think that would be your requirement. There, you have to understand those diagramming tools as we've talked about and some blog and on LinkedIn. There is AI diagramming coming very soon and they're kind of linking to the white building tools. So we might find there's a mash-up between the white building tools in the diagramming tools become one at the moment.
I don't think there's anything even in mural or Bureau That's really as good as an advanced I guess is I wouldn't say is good but as advanced as Visio for rapidly creating diagrams, so I haven't ridden off completely. However, for simple diagram you can come up with your templates and actually use those whiteboarding tools of you really want to Sorry that leaves us to. That's the kind of begin to 5 in terms of tools. And so we going to jump down to the last or here. Number four might be
controversial. I'm going to suggest that you should understand what SQL has. Okay. You should understand. It's the language used query data from a database. You should have some idea release be able to generally understand how Here comes out of a database and SQL is the language we use to do that
generally. And so by having some knowledge of getting what you need out of a database that can mean that you can do some data analysis, that might need to do might need to do. I'm going to be talking about other products soon, but specifically just having a basic understanding of of getting data from a table, I think you should know as a ba, I think. If you don't know, if you could say it's a should have requirement. I think you should, you should go on to w3schools and learn
about SQL for free. You can generally get a database for nothing MySQL. For example, load that up and have a play around. Also included in there. I am going to suggest that HTML and CSS, or at least what they are HTML is what websites we pages are made out of Of and CSS is the style sheet. The look and feel of the page and JavaScript is kind of the most common front end. Scripting language, for lie, hiding showing things and kind of program at the front end and linked.
I guess that's linking to a family of basic programming. So if my notes Here, say SQL could have HTML JavaScript and basic programming having some Knowledge of that and we had a recoded, a high level will make you a better.
Be a it also, it's also amazing that if you pick up one of those skills, when you're on a project, you can actually help out and get things across the road across the line or start to help your users understand how their applications work of you have knowledge of these basic it functions. Iva to number three. And and this is very much opinion here. I think it's really important to understand what cloud integration Platformers.
And when I say cloud, integration sweets, I'm not talking about necessary AWS or is your or something, complicated, technically at that level until about what's built on top of it. So I'm talking about tools like zapier. And make.com. So if you haven't played with these tools, sign up for as a prayer cap as a account or make.com, and what these tools allow you to do is connect to existing apps that have an API or and a connector built for these platforms.
And you can take information from one system and you can integrate it with another and vice versa, or you can trigger events happening one EMD and you can send notifications to another application. Microsoft has, I think it's cold used to be called flow, Microsoft flow that they may
have changed. The name recently to say power automate, I think it is called now which does something very similar within the Microsoft Dynamics Power Platform family which can take information from Excel and then can, you know, read all the names and send an email out. Please have a look at these tools. It you would say it's probably integration.
Use the be the most expensive kind of kind of project that you would need to worry about because it's quite complicated to send information by it. What we called, by directly, one way, and Back Again, from one system to another, and you have to worry about lots of logic behind their, these tools don't necessary, get rid of that problem.
But they are built very light drag and drop style so you can easily, you know, send information from one system to another Easily, and they usually subscription-based like $20 a month and usually paying for the number of transactions that are happening. Or these steps with a new integration that happening check out zapier make.com as your starter, it's amazing. Actually, some of these tools
you may have heard of ift. If then, if then, then that I can't, I can't remember the acronym, but it's kind of like, What home automation is used a platform that you can use for home automation and what things like Alexa and your Google Assistant can do. So it's kind of like, you know, to my kettle on. And so when you receive the word cartoon kettle on, then turn on the kettle.
And so that uses something very, very uses exactly the same kind of concept or science behind it, which is your one application is connecting to another and asking that that Wi-Fi device, for example, to turn on and so they're very similar to understand those as a ba, you know, integrating those systems, or steps within two processes, which may be working in different systems or different workflows is.
You know, as we, you can get a lot of continuous Improvement, so it's with understanding that and there and moving quickly on to number two. The reason I bought this at number two is because data Science has become the thing and the last five years. And so, you know, you staff report writers. I remember doing a Crystal Reports, whatever it was 7 or 13, cause when I first started an it, and I understood how to use a reporting tool.
Now we've, you know, with the invention of machine learning and Ai and using data and lakes, and all these complicated things, you don't actually need to understand today. Maybe it's something that you're interested. Then what I was going to say is I think you need to understand at least a couple of reporting tools and the most popular tools that are out there to Mark the moment, power bi.
So bi being, you know, business intelligence but Power bi is a way in which you can report on information. So consume information and display it. You can also try transform that information and mash it up and drill down on it. And also tabula is the other one. I think I'm pretty sure that's open source. Release cheaper than power bi and you can and that's more of a programming base that little bit
less then power. Bi Now, power bi is it's not a product that you can just sit down and learn it, but like, Microsoft Project you have to spend time learning it.
So what I'm going to suggest is If you want to understand what I'm talking about, if you want to understand what a data model is, and joining databases and, you know, displaying data from a data source, I would suggest then load up Excel and within Excel. Now, there is something called well, there's power query but there's also, yeah. Power query is probably your best starting point. And power query is free and it's like a mini power, bi so allow you to experience. What?
Power bi does but on a small scale and you can start to connect data sources. So basically pull data in to your data model and you can start joining those tables together and explore data, and start producing reports that you're in uses. See have some knowledge of these tools understand that they can collect information from anywhere. So there that display layer.
A lot of I was there was a time about ten years ago that every single Project or main programs on was almost single source of Truth or one place to view data into the way we used to do that. Of course, was having these reporting tools that were pulling data from a data warehouse, but these tools can actually talk to you individual apps. So this is a way of Measuring Up data so you can actually get some of those reporting requirements done quite easily
with these tools. So understanding what they do at least is a good starter and that finally moves us to number. One the number one tool that a better ba needs to know and and I'm going to stress the level in which I want you to understand here and that number one tool is our favorite Excel. So Excel also, I'll bring into that Google Sheets, which is the free Google version of it. Actually of late. I got a new laptop and it doesn't have office on it.
I can get around. Take pictures, hang it and holy moly. In am not having Excel on you computer as a PA is very frustrating. So I have been using sheets and I can do some of the things that I need to do an Excel but Excel, primarily you need to understand it, you need to understand everything around Google workplace and on an office or what's now called. Mark soft 365. Including teams and chat and all
those good things. But specifically, when it comes to Microsoft, Axl the level in which you need to know Excel as a b, a is not basic, okay? If you know anyone in a finance team they will know Excel pretty well. Okay though understand her do pivot tables do understand how to do vlookups. The line doesn't stand how to do graphs they'll understand how to connect data. That's the level that you need to know at a basic level as be a. So you none don't need it.
If you don't know what a vlookup is, You know, you're not at the level. You need to be at there are lots of free courses online. I'm pretty sure you can probably get a trial version of excel if you needed to or a cheap version just go online and look for, I don't know, an old version of office key that you can probably get like, five, ten dollars and install the, the old version of office and start playing with Excel, that it really hasn't evolved too much in the future
and like where it is now. It will evolve with AI, but to be honest, you can do all those basic formulas like adding sales doing. Like I said, vlookup is a very popular item doing a pivot table importing data, mashing it up. I would say it's the number one tall and tunes of piece of software that you as a ba probably it's just assumed you know it. So if you don't know Excel, go out. I know you might not sound exciting but you should know Excel to a certain advanced
level. So let's just recap what we covered. So I've said a number 10, kind of chat GPT and open a iron. Look Leo titles 9, we had white building tools like mural or Miro and berate we had erps and crms both big and small versions. Number 7, we had content Management Systems like WordPress. Silver stripe, for example, in New Zealand, which a lot of government departments.
Use number six, we talked about grr and the family within that, which included Confluence and Trello or Microsoft Azure devops 5 Vizio understand Vizio or draw.io or both while primarily both or I'm suggesting, you should have a least, a readable knowledge of SQL. And probably HTML CSS, and JavaScript and some basic programming language. But good place for you to learn three.
I'm talking about Cloud integration sweets, like as a peer and make.com and the fact that you can integrate systems together. Power automate is within that list. Number two, I'm saying reporting because data science is so massive. At the moment, you should understand what a data model is and how to report on data and how these tools work, like
power, bi and tabular. And number one, To the number one tool that a better business analyst needs to understand at an advanced level is Excel. And I would say Google Sheets, which is the Google alternative to Microsoft. So I hope you got value out of the. If you don't understand. We haven't learned any of those products or tools, add it to your list. Your action item is to take one of those areas. You don't know that well and to learn about it this week.