Case Study

Fiona Rennie shares how you can become a Business Analyst through almost any pathway. Her passion for analytics combined with her natural leadership abilities were continuously nurtured at Social Security Scotland to ensure her future career success. 

While not the most technical person you will meet, Fiona has found success through her natural analytical talents and approachable demeanour. This had lead to meanful work provide services that benefit those in our society that support.

What educational path did you take to become a Business Analyst?

I didn’t take a educational path as I left school with minimum qualifications. Instead I worked within an administration team, and then began working with a project team and quickly released I had a bit of a gift for analytical work. I was mentored and coached by a senior BA contractor and later picked up some formal training. It was really all about learning the tools and techniques, having guided and supported practice to develop the levels of skills and experiences needed and then applying them in a variety of businesses.

What is your favourite part of your job?

I’ve been lucky enough to forge and progress my Business Analyst career thanks to the Digital Data & Technology (DDaT) profession in Scottish Government. My work has enabled me to play an important part in developing citizen facing services, that have helped support some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I am not what you’d call “techy”, but I am great at solving problems, working with others and understanding their needs. I’m also open, friendly and I like working with details and all of these skills have helped me in my role as a Business Analyst. I’m able to understand business problems and translate business needs to my technical developer colleagues to ensure they deliver the right solutions.  I also improve the way businesses do things by identifying and upgrading processes that are inefficient.  

Can you give me an example of one of your citizen facing services and how it works?

In Social Security Scotland we have many citizen facing services including online applications and webchat. We administer a number of benefits, such as low income and disability benefits, these products and services are accessible to all citizens of Scotland  through various application and support channels. Citizens can call, make appointments or go online to complete and submit applications, these are then reviewed and outcomes communicated via letter. Letters can be produced in braille, large print an a variety of languages to ensure they meet the needs of clients. We share and receive information from various other organisations to ensure decisions are made in the quickest possible time and our API’s allow us to verify and obtain a variety of information required for the benefit of our client’s. We work hard to ensure that all our clients are treated with fairness, dignity and respect regardless of the channels they go through or the service/products they use.

Fiona is now the Principal Business Analyst in the Chief Digital Office for Service Management and Service Development. As a woman in a technical space, being part of the DDaT profession has enabled her to keep learning and developing new skills – and challenged to expand her knowledge. There is a wider DDaT community that can provide support and help her understand how problems are being solved across Scottish Government network. There’s opportunity for talent development and real career pathways in Social Security Scotland, as they diversity their teams and are looking at new ways for people to enter the business analyst profession. They want to ensure we can represent the communities we serve and are accessible as employers.