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Capgemini Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers

Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.

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01

How do you write a query to find users active in consecutive months?

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Get distinct user-month pairs, self-join or use LAG on month per user, and keep rows where the previous month is exactly one month earlier.
02

What is Kano model in prioritisation?

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A model classifying features as basic, performance or delight attributes based on how they affect customer satisfaction, helping decide what to build first.
03

How do you analyse variance between budget and actual?

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Variance = Actual - Budget, shown as amount and percentage, with conditional formatting to flag large gaps and comments on the drivers.
04

What is the difference between a chart and a dashboard?

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A chart shows one view of data; a dashboard combines several charts and KPIs on one page for monitoring.
05

What is a CTE?

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A named temporary result introduced with WITH that makes long queries readable and reusable in the same statement.
06

How do you handle large datasets in Excel?

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Use tables, Power Query, remove volatile functions, filter before calculating and move to Power Pivot or a database when rows reach the millions.
07

What is root cause analysis and which techniques do you know?

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Finding the underlying reason for a problem using the 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams or Pareto analysis, then fixing the cause not the symptom.
08

What is a KPI tree?

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It breaks a top metric into drivers: Revenue = Users × Conversion × AOV; Users = New + Returning, and so on. It shows which lever to pull and where a drop came from.
09

How do you approach a guesstimate question?

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Clarify the scope, break the problem into logical parts, state assumptions with round numbers, compute step by step and sanity-check the answer.
10

How do you validate that a report's numbers are correct?

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Reconcile totals with source tables using SQL, check filters and joins for duplication, compare with prior periods and verify with business owners.
11

Which what-if analysis tools does Excel have?

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Goal Seek (find the input for a target output), Data Tables (see outputs for many inputs) and Scenario Manager (save best, base and worst cases).
12

What is SQL and why do business analysts need it?

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A language for querying databases. BAs use it to pull data themselves, validate numbers, check reports and answer questions without waiting for engineers.
13

Guesstimate: how many cups of tea are sold in Delhi per day?

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Population about 20 million, adult tea drinkers about 50%, cups bought outside per person around 1 on average. This gives roughly 10 million cups, then adjust for offices and stalls.
14

Do a quick SWOT analysis for an ed-tech company.

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Strengths and Weaknesses are internal; Opportunities and Threats are external. Example: S = strong faculty, W = low brand awareness, O = AI upskilling demand, T = free online content.
15

A client's profits are falling. How do you structure the problem?

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Split into revenue and cost, then revenue into price, volume and mix, and cost into fixed and variable; check internal factors and external market factors.
16

Tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder.

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Use STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Show that you listened, found the underlying goal, used data to align people and reached a documented decision.
17

How do you handle NULL values when calculating averages?

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AVG ignores NULLs; use COALESCE(col, 0) if NULLs should count as zero, depending on the business meaning.
18

What is the difference between OLTP and OLAP systems?

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OLTP handles many small day-to-day transactions; OLAP supports analysis over large historical data with aggregates and reporting.
19

What is a process flow and which tools do you use?

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A diagram of steps, decisions and owners in a process, made using BPMN or flowcharts in tools like Visio, Lucidchart or draw.io.
20

What is a stakeholder and who are the typical stakeholders in a project?

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Anyone affected by or influencing the project: sponsors, product owners, end users, developers, testers, operations and customers.
21

How would you improve a company's low app conversion rate?

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Map the funnel, find the biggest drop-off, check usability and load time, run A/B tests on fixes and track conversion lift.
22

XLOOKUP vs VLOOKUP?

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XLOOKUP can look left or right, uses exact match by default, returns a custom value if nothing is found and doesn't break when columns move. VLOOKUP only looks right and needs a column number.
23

How would you forecast next quarter's sales in Excel?

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Use FORECAST.ETS or a trendline on monthly history, check seasonality, compare with a simple moving average and present a range, not a single number.
24

Guesstimate: how many cars are sold in India every year?

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Structure it: households × car-owning share ÷ replacement cycle + first-time buyers + commercial fleet. State each assumption clearly and sanity-check the final number.
25

What is a stakeholder analysis?

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Identifying everyone affected by the project and mapping their influence and interest to decide how to communicate with and involve each group.
26

How do you validate data before analysis?

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Check row counts against the source, nulls, duplicates on keys, value ranges, date coverage and that totals reconcile with finance reports.
27

What is a break-even point?

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The sales volume where total revenue equals total cost. It equals fixed cost divided by contribution margin per unit.
28

Guesstimate: how many pizzas are sold in Mumbai on a weekend?

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About 20 million people, roughly 10% order pizza on a weekend, about 1 pizza per 2 people in an order. This gives roughly 1 million pizzas, adjusted for outlets and delivery capacity.
29

Which Excel functions do business analysts use daily?

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VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF, text functions, PivotTables and charts.
30

What are aggregate functions?

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Functions that summarise rows into a value, such as COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN and MAX.
31

How do you compute CAGR in Excel?

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CAGR = (End value / Start value)^(1/years) - 1, entered as =(B2/A2)^(1/n)-1.
32

How would you price a new subscription product?

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Combine cost-plus, competitor benchmarks and willingness to pay from research, test tiers with experiments and check margin and churn impact.
33

Difference between INNER JOIN and LEFT JOIN?

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INNER returns only matching rows; LEFT returns all rows from the left table and NULLs where there is no match.
34

A bank wants to reduce customer churn. What would you do?

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Define churn, analyse who leaves and why, segment customers, find drivers through data and surveys, design retention offers and measure uplift with a control group.
35

What techniques do you use to elicit requirements?

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Interviews, workshops, surveys, observation, document analysis, prototyping and brainstorming, chosen according to stakeholders and project stage.
36

Revenue grew but profit fell. Why could that happen?

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Look at the cost side: heavier discounts, higher CAC, logistics costs, product mix shifting to low-margin items, one-time expenses or pricing changes. Break contribution margin down by segment.
37

Explain Porter's Five Forces.

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A model assessing industry attractiveness through supplier power, buyer power, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes and rivalry among competitors.
38

What is a primary key?

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A column or set of columns that uniquely identifies each row in a table and cannot contain NULL.
39

What is the difference between SQL and Excel for analysis?

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Excel suits small to medium data and quick ad-hoc work; SQL queries large databases directly and repeatably.
40

What does a Business Analyst do?

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A BA bridges business and technology: gathers requirements, analyses data and processes, documents BRD/FRD and makes sure the final solution actually solves the business problem.
41

What is the role of a BA in Scrum?

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They help the Product Owner refine the backlog, write stories and acceptance criteria, clarify details with developers and support testing and demos.
42

What is the use of the IFERROR function?

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It returns a custom value when a formula errors out, keeping reports clean, for example =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(...), "Not found").
43

What is a market entry strategy case?

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Decide whether and how to enter a market by evaluating attractiveness, competition, capabilities and entry mode (build, buy, partner), then risks and next steps.
44

What does GROUP BY do and how is HAVING different from WHERE?

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GROUP BY aggregates rows by column; WHERE filters before grouping and HAVING filters after, using aggregate conditions.
45

What is customer lifetime value?

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The total profit expected from a customer over the relationship, roughly average margin x purchase frequency x lifespan, compared with acquisition cost.
46

How do you create a dashboard in Excel?

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Prepare clean data, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, add KPI cards and slicers, and arrange everything on one sheet with a clear layout.
47

How do you calculate monthly revenue growth in SQL?

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Aggregate revenue per month and use LAG(revenue) OVER (ORDER BY month) to compute (revenue - previous) / previous.
48

How do you evaluate a marketing campaign's ROI?

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ROI = (incremental profit - campaign cost) / campaign cost. Measure incremental sales using a control group or before-after comparison.
49

What is the 80/20 rule in business analysis?

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Pareto principle: about 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes, such as most revenue from a few customers or most defects from a few issues.
50

What is a use case diagram?

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A UML diagram showing actors and the actions (use cases) they perform with the system, giving a quick view of scope.
51

What is scope creep and how do you control it?

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Uncontrolled growth of requirements. Control it with a clear scope statement, change control process, impact analysis and sponsor approval for additions.
52

What is a traceability matrix?

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A table linking each requirement to design, test cases and delivery status, ensuring nothing is missed and helping assess change impact.
53

How would you decide whether to launch a new product?

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Assess market size and demand, customer need, competition, unit economics, capabilities, risks and strategic fit, then test with a pilot before scale-up.
54

What is the difference between revenue and profit?

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Revenue is total money from sales; profit is what remains after subtracting all costs and expenses.
55

Use case vs user story?

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A use case describes the full interaction between an actor and the system (main and alternate flows). A user story is a short statement of need from the user's point of view, refined with acceptance criteria.
56

What are the 4 Ps of marketing?

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Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the levers a business uses to bring an offering to market.
57

SQL: month-over-month revenue growth.

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WITH m AS (SELECT month, SUM(amount) AS rev FROM orders GROUP BY month) SELECT month, rev, ROUND(100.0 * (rev - LAG(rev) OVER (ORDER BY month)) / LAG(rev) OVER (ORDER BY month), 1) AS mom_pct FROM m;
58

How do you build a forecast in Excel?

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Use historical data with FORECAST.ETS or trend lines, state assumptions, compare against actuals and show best, base and worst scenarios.