its environment, advising senior management on suitable policies, and the effects of policy decisions. Architect Organizations may need to introduce change to solve business problems which may have been identified by the strategic analysis, referred to above. Business analysts contribute by analyzing objectives, processes and resources, and suggesting ways by which re-design (BPR), or improvements (BPI) could be made. Particular skills of this type of analyst are "soft skills", such as knowledge of the business, requirements engineering, stakeholder analysis, and some "hard skills", such as business process modeling. Although the role requires an awareness of technology and its uses, it is not an IT-focused role. Three elements are essential to this aspect of the business analysis effort: the redesign of core business processes; the application of enabling technologies to support the new core processes; and the management of organizational change. This aspect of business analysis is also called "business process improvement" (BPI), or "reengineering". IT-systems analyst There is the need to align IT development with the business system as a whole. A long-standing problem in business is how to get the best return from IT investments, which are generally very expensive and of critical, often strategic, importance. IT departments, aware of the problem, often create a business analyst role to better understand and define the requirements for their IT systems. Although there may be some overlap with the developer and testing roles, the focus is always on the IT part of the change process, and generally this type of business analyst gets involved only when a case for change has already been made and decided upon. In any case, the term analyst is lately considered somewhat misleading, insofar as analysts (i.e. problem investigators) also do design work (solution definers). The key responsibility areas of a business analyst are to collate the client's software requirements, understand them, and analyze them further from a business perspective. A business analyst is required to collaborate with and assist the business and assist them. Function within the organizational structure The role of business analysis can exist in a variety of structures within an organizational framework. Because business analysts typically act as a liaison between the business and technology functions of a company, the role can be often successful either aligned to a line of business, within IT, or sometimes both. Business alignment When business analysts work at the business side, they are often subject matter