Feeling overwhelmed by the options in the world of AI? This guide will help you select the right AI tools for your business analysis needs. You’ll learn about key features to consider, explore popular options, and understand how to make the most of AI technology.
Responsible AI #
When you work as a business analyst in an organization, you need to protect confidential information, personal information and respect privacy. Generally, an organization signs a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with all employees to protect the organization’s confidential information. It’s a statutory compliance that an employee has to follow very strictly.
With such compliance in place, you have to be very careful in using AI-powered tools. Many companies restrict the usage of ChatGPT in their private networks due to privacy reasons because these tools send your queries to their external server for processing hence it’s not advisable to feed any confidential information to these tools. Considering all privacy and ethical constraints, it’s very hard to find good AI-powered tools that offer security and privacy while interacting with them.
You must select AI tools that prioritize Responsible AI, safeguarding user data and trust. This means a commitment to privacy, security, and ethics.
List of Responsible AI Tools for Business Analysts #
Based on my experience with AI tools, I have carefully evaluated the following list of Responsible AI tools and compiled a comprehensive guide on how to use them to maximize your productivity as a Business Analyst without compromising confidential and personal information.
AI Tools for Writing & Communication #
Business Analysts need to write a lot as part of their day-to-day activities.
Here are a few tasks that require professional writing with proper tone, and grammar and most importantly it should be unambiguous, clear, and concise.
- Respond to Official Emails
- Write Software Requirement Specification documents
- Write User Stories
- Preparing Visual Presentations
- Chat with internal teams and customers through collaboration platforms
No matter how fluent you are in English, there are chances of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, improper tone, etc.
I spent a lot of time drafting an email or had a hard time reviewing my requirement spec and user stories to make it error-free and make sure that it conveyed the right message.
Thanks to the following AI tool that does the heavy lifting on your content verification to let you write effortlessly and confidently.
Grammarly #
Credit: Grammarly Inc
Grammarly is the most popular Responsible AI tool to assist you in writing clear, mistake-free text whenever you type.
These are the key features of Grammarly:
- Instantly detects and highlights spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors while you write. It fixes the errors when you hover over them.
- Its generative AI helps you rewrite, simplify, and adjust the tone of your sentence. It also helps you generate ideas and draft a message such as email response, thank you note, story, and much more.
- Grammarly can be used on all operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux), Web browsers, and Mobile.
- It protects your confidential data. You can request a personal data report from them for verification.
Here are a few examples of how I used Grammarly to speed up my BA writing tasks.
Correction of spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes
Whenever I write something in MS Word or Google Doc or any text-based app, a small Grammarly icon appears at the bottom. It automatically highlights the mistakes and when you hover over any mistake, it will suggest the correction as shown in the screenshot below.
Improve or rewrite a sentence
Once I complete my sentence and feel that it needs to be improved, I just select the sentence and click on the pencil icon from Grammarly. It will improve the sentence and display it in a small pop-up as shown in the screenshot below. To use that improved sentence, just click on the “Insert” button and it will replace the original sentence with the improved version.
AI Tools for Research #
Whenever you get a business requirement related to a domain or topic that you’re unfamiliar with, it’s required to do some research on the domain or topic to get a full understanding.
Before the dawn of Generative AI, we used to do a lot of Google searches, take notes, copy links, summarize etc. for this sort of research. This is very time-consuming.
Now with the help of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, we can finish our research almost instantly by just prompting the relevant queries to these tools.
Caution: These tools send your prompt and information to their server for processing hence do not submit any confidential information to these tools.
Use these tools primarily for research or to get knowledge on a specific topic related to the business domain. These are the most popular Generative AI tools (Chat Bots) that can be used for your business analysis-related research work. All these tools offer a free and paid versions.
Perplexity AI #
Credit: Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI is specifically designed for the research work and it always provides citations in the response.
Another unique feature of Perplexity is the contextual conversation i.e. it allows you to set one of the following Focus areas to start a focused conversation with the tool. Also, you can create a collection of related searches to make it more organized.
- All - search across the internet
- Academic - Search in published academic papers
- Writing - Generate text or chat without searching the web
- Wolfarm|Alpha - Computational knowledge engine
- Youtube - Discover and watch videos
- Reddit - Search for discussions and opinions
Google Gemini #
Credit: Google Gemini
Gemini AI is a Multimodal Generative AI chatbot by Google DeepMind. It is offered as a standalone app as well as integrated with Google Workspace.
It allows you to start conversing with the tool using a text-based prompt or voice.
It does not provide citations in the response directly but you can click on the “Double-check response” button to see the citations and related searches.
The unique feature here is the ability to modify the response to make it shorter, longer, simpler, more causal, or more professional. Also, it generates 3 draft responses always to help you choose the best one for your needs.
Microsoft Co-Pilot #
Credit: Microsoft Co-pilot
Co-Pilot is a great product from Microsoft and all the Windows and Bing users would have experienced it.
It is powered by Open AI’s ChatGPT modals.
With MS Co-Pilot, you can do general-purpose research as well as generate an image from the textual description. It always provides citations with each response.
Co-pilot is built into Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Bing browser to offer a seamless Gen AI experience.
ChatGPT #
Credit: Open AI ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the pioneer in the Generative AI space. It’s an AI chatbot developed by Open AI.
With ChatGPT, you can perform any kind of research by supplying text based prompts. It generates a response based on your prompt but does not provide any citations (source of information).
AI Tools for Document Analysis #
As a business analyst, you often refer to past documentation and knowledge base to get the context and for various purposes such as:
- As Is Analysis
- Understand a particular feature or function
- Study regulatory requirements document as part of requirement analysis
- Company-wide policies and procedures
It’s a very time-consuming activity to go through hundreds of pages, perform manual searches, and take notes to complete your study. There are chances to miss some critical information.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) Tools - NLP tools can be used to translate between languages or to summarize large amounts of text. This can be helpful for IT business analysts who need to communicate with stakeholders from different cultures or who need to quickly understand complex documents.
There are very few tools available in this space currently that are secure and compliant with GDPR.
MAXQDA - AI Assist #
MaxQDA is a Document and Data Analysis software where you can upload your PDF or Text documents to analyze them and retrieve key information using their Chatbot that analyzes the uploaded documents and answers your questions.
With MaxQDA AI Assist, you can perform the following tasks related to document analysis:
- Transcribe Media to Text
- Chat with Documents
- Explain selected text passages
- Summarize selected text passages
- Create Automatic Summaries
Doc Analyzer AI #
Doc Analyzer is an AI tool that works with your documents.
It offers dynamic, context-aware interactions with one or multiple documents (PDF and many other formats), enhanced by a variety of workflow automation & powered by cutting-edge AI research for superior document analysis. (Source: Doc Analyzer AI)
This tool is trained on various industry-specific use cases that involve document analysis.
Note: This tool is still in Beta mode as of writing this post (May 2024).
AI Tools for Data Analytics #
These tools have been around for a long time and now they are adding AI capabilities for various use cases. They can be installed within an enterprise network or private cloud hence it’s fully secure.
The following are the most popular AI-powered tools for data analytics:
Tableau #
Features: Tableau is a robust data visualization and business intelligence platform. It allows business analysts to interact with and analyze data effortlessly.
Benefits: Create visually appealing reports and interactive dashboards. Integrate machine learning algorithms for advanced analytics and deeper insights.
Microsoft Power BI #
Features: Microsoft Power BI is a comprehensive analytics platform. It allows easy data gathering from various sources, exploration, and visual presentation.
Benefits: Simplify insight extraction through visual forms. Ideal for business analysts to present data effectively.
AI Tools for Model Diagrams #
By Model Diagrams, I am referring to the Diagrams such as Flow Charts, Use Case Diagrams, Business Process Model Diagrams, etc.
The following are the most popular Free AI Diagram Generator Tools that can generate model diagrams based on the textual prompts i.e. Text to Diagram.
- Draw.io
- FigJam from Figma
To know more about these tools’ Generative AI features, examples and accuracy of generated diagrams, take a look at the following article.
AI Tools for Wireframes #
There is a UI/UX Design Tool called “Uizard” that offers the following AI-powered features:
- Autodesigner 2.0 – Generates UI designs from the Text prompts
- Screenshot Scanner – Converts screenshot to editable design
- Image Generator – Text to Image
- Text Assistant
- Wireframe Scanner – Converts hand-drawn wireframe sketches into digital wireframes
The most popular design tool “Figma” also recently launched AI-powered features for generative UI design. But it’s currently in Beta. Just watch this space for more updates on it.
Take a look at our following article to learn more about the “Uizard” and other wireframing tools:
Conclusion #
There are plenty of AI tools available for various use cases in the market and almost every day we hear about a new AI tool so this space is rapidly expanding its footprints.
Since a business analyst deals with sensitive and confidential information of an organization, he/she needs to be very careful and choose only those AI tools that are responsible and committed to security, privacy, and ethics.
The AI tools that I listed in this post are all committed to Responsible AI so there should not be any problem in using them as your assistant to business analysis tasks. But I strongly advise you to seek your organization’s approval before using any AI tool in the office to protect yourself and the organization from any data privacy issues.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this post is for informational purposes only. While we have made reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the information presented, the tools and applications mentioned may change or evolve at any time. We do not guarantee the functionality, effectiveness, or safety of any particular tool.
Additionally, you should always:
- Do your own research before using any tool.
- Read the terms and conditions of service for each tool carefully.
- Be aware of any potential risks associated with using online tools.