Expert Guide To The Salesforce Business Analyst Certification
5 min
Over time, the demand for Salesforce developers has significantly increased. With more and more businesses driving digitization, companies are looking for skilled Salesforce professionals to streamline their processes.
This makes it important for aspiring Salesforce professionals to stand out from the clutter. In 2022, being in the sea of mediocre professionals will not add to your professional journey. With a plethora of applications coming their way, businesses have become picky in choosing the Salesforce experts they work with.
Salesforce certification allows you to get an edge over your peers. It gives you an official stamp of approval from Salesforce regarding your skills and competency. Depending on your expertise and the area you want to excel in, getting Salesforce certified enhances your skills and encourages organizations to work with you.
This guide will discuss the nature and scope of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification. If you are a business analyst with hands-on Salesforce experience, this certification raises your skills a notch higher.
What Is The Salesforce Business Analyst Certification?
The Salesforce Business Analyst certification is designed for business analysts with Salesforce experience. It allows the candidates to facilitate business growth and drive business improvements using the Salesforce platform.
The Salesforce Business Analyst certification helps candidates understand business needs better, implement holistic business analysis activities, and collaborate with stakeholders. It lets you stimulate business processes using Salesforce and analyze the current business position to make necessary changes.
Getting certified helps you utilize your skills to facilitate project discoveries, perform project mapping, and write clear user stories with Salesforce. It opens doors to senior analytical positions in organizations using Salesforce to manage their customer relationships.
Here are some basic facts about the Salesforce Business Analyst Certification that you should know before diving deeper into the Salesforce certification:
- Basic facts about the Salesforce Business Analyst Certification
- The certification examination includes 60 multiple-choice questions
- Its duration is 105 minutes
- Candidates need to score a minimum of 72% to pass
- The Salesforce Certified Administrator credential is a prerequisite
- The exam costs $200 for the first attempt and $100 for a retake
Who Is The Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Suited For?
The Salesforce Business Analyst certification is suited for Salesforce Administrators or business analysts familiar with Salesforce’s functionalities. It is designed for candidates capable of understanding business needs, engaging with stakeholders, and driving business projects while working within the Salesforce environment.
Salesforce recommends that candidates have at least a couple of years of hands-on experience with the CRM platform before appearing for the certification examination. With the Salesforce Administrator certification as a prerequisite, the Salesforce Business Analyst certification is suitable for experienced professionals willing to leverage their skills.
You can apply for this certification if you have sufficient experience as a Salesforce Administrator and want to transition into a Business Analyst in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Key Topics Covered In Certification Examination
The Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination follows a well-rounded approach to test the candidates’ knowledge.
- The examination will test your knowledge in the following key areas:
- Collaboration With Stakeholders
- Customer Discovery
- Requirements
- Business Process Mapping
- User Stories
- User Acceptance
Let us briefly understand each of these areas, along with their weightage in the examination.
Collaboration With Stakeholders (24%)
The maximum weightage in the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination is given to the collaboration with stakeholders. This section addresses the candidate’s capability of gathering and understanding business requirements while collaborating with stakeholders. It involves identifying the right stakeholders and reaching an agreement by following the right steps.
Arguably the most important section in the examination, it includes simple theoretical and complicated scenario-based questions to test the candidate’s knowledge of the domain.
To ace this section and attempt it effectively, candidates should thoroughly understand a business analyst’s role as a link between the technical and business teams. All stakeholders have a vested interest in an organization, and collaborating often decides a company’s fate.
Moreover, candidates appearing for the certification examination should be comfortable with the use of Salesforce features in the context of specific business processes. This is also the section where the candidates’ negotiation and prioritization skills are tested, especially regarding scenarios where stakeholders sign off specific solutions.
Customer Discovery (17%)
17% of the certification examination’s weightage is given to Customer Discovery. Customers are at the core of a CRM solution and form an integral part of business management. To reach valuable conclusions, a Salesforce business analyst should be well-versed with the prospects and customers their organization deals with.
The Customer Discovery section of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination tests the candidates’ knowledge about a business analyst’s responsibility while mapping out the current state of every customer’s system. It also helps them find potential areas of improvement regarding personalized customer interactions.
This section is called Customer Discovery because it deals with discovering valuable aspects of your customers and analyzing how your business engages with them throughout their buying journeys.
Requirements (17%)
Holding the same weightage as the Customer Discovery section is Requirements. This section deals with a Salesforce business analyst’s ability to combine and assess the ideas from interactions with stakeholders regarding the scope of improvement and change. This gives rise to the important business requirements that form the organization’s future state.
Candidates need to understand how to come up with these requirements, document them in business-specific solutions, and prioritize them according to the business needs. Fulfilling these requirements helps the management streamline business processes and get a step closer to the business goals.
Business Process Mapping (16%)
Irrespective of an organization’s scale, mapping business processes is an important element of seamless business management. This section of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination prepares candidates to map complicated business processes to achieve organizational goals.
Business process mapping often becomes challenging for the management, especially if multiple stakeholders and systems are involved.
- This section contains theoretical and scenario-based questions about:
- Obtaining business requirements,
- Process documentation, and
- Defining resources and scope for the future state
The section also tests the candidates’ ability to divide business processes into smaller and more manageable bits. After getting Salesforce certified, candidates can easily occupy senior managerial positions in organizations working within the Salesforce environment.
User Stories (18%)
A good chunk of the certification examination is dedicated to User Stories. This section deals with the well-documented user stories that facilitate smooth and effective Salesforce project execution. Documenting the right stories for the right project can significantly impact the project’s success.
Questions in this section revolve around how to create the right user stories, where they are stored, the acceptance criteria, the components of a good user story, and related aspects. It tests the candidates’ ability to create, store, and manage user stories to ensure seamless project execution.
User Acceptance (8%)
User Acceptance and User Stories often go hand-in-hand and are both important for successful project execution. Just like documenting and storing user stories, conducting user acceptance significantly differs from a Salesforce project.
This section of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination includes questions regarding how a business analyst prepares their test plan and guides the UAT (user acceptance testing) process. It also deals with how they mitigate potential risks by making go/no-go decisions if the solution at hand fails to meet the requirements.
Where To Study From For The Certification Examination?
If you are wondering where you should study from to prepare for your Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination, Salesforce has got your back! It provides candidates with enough resources to understand all concepts required to study for the examination.
Click here to access the trailmix curated by Salesforce Trailhead for the candidates appearing for the examination. You can also have a look at multiple practice questions and flash cards as you prepare for the examination by clicking here.
Tips To Ace The Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Exam
If you are appearing for the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination, here are a few important tips to keep in mind:
Prepare A Cheat Sheet
No matter how well-prepared you are, there will always be some concepts you struggle to understand completely. In such cases, prepare a cheat sheet and memorize these concepts before you appear for the exam. In the Salesforce Business Analyst certification examination, candidates often prepare cheat sheets to memorize the elements included in the Customer Discovery and Requirements sections.
Read Each Question Multiple Times
As trivial and basic as this tip may sound, it is always advisable to read every question multiple times before you answer. Most questions in this certification examination will be scenario-based and often tricky, especially in the Business Process Mapping section. Candidates should be able to map complicated business processes, giving simplified solutions for the same. Make sure you have understood a question well before you answer it.
Spend More Time Understanding Stakeholder Collaborations
Collaboration with Stakeholders holds maximum weightage in the Salesforce Business Analyst Certification examination. This is also the aspect that comes in most handy for business analysts once they start working with corporations. Make sure you spend more time understanding these collaborations to do well in the examination and once you secure a job at your dream company!
Focus On Three Major Ws While Studying User Stories
As you prepare for the User Stories section, make sure you focus on the 3 major Ws to understand the concept better and score well in the examination:
Who: Understand the individual(s) whose perspective the story will be written from
What: Understand the goal(s) you want to accomplish with the help of the concerned user story
Why: Understand why the concerned individual(s) needs Salesforce to attain their objectives
The Final Word
The Salesforce Business Analyst certification helps you hone your skills as a business analyst and get them approved by the CRM giant itself. Getting certified increases your chances of being hired by your dream company or occupying a better position at your current company.
