What value do business analysts bring?

In carrying out their duties, business analysts support businesses in clarifying their thoughts around key initiatives (sometimes even helping to determine if those key initiatives are required in the first place), devise a strategy for executing the initiative – including but not limited to identifying change management and transition needs that should be in place for the planned initiative to have a chance at succeeding – and articulate all of these in documents generally referred to as business requirements specification and known by variations of this name across different types of businesses. The majority of the time, this document details the boundaries of the initiative, identifies how the initiative connects with the business’ short to long-term strategies and the details of what needs to be built or procured in order to fulfil the needs of the initiative and invariably the needs of the business.