CGI Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers
Curated interview practice questions with answers. These are practice scenarios, not a verified list of past interview questions.
About CGI hiring for Business Analytics roles
CGI is a Canadian IT and business consulting services company providing systems integration, managed services, and software solutions. Its India global delivery centres support clients in government, banking, utilities and manufacturing. It hires in India for software engineers, test engineers, data analysts and support engineers.
For Business Analytics roles, this CGI practice set focuses most on Requirements and Agile (7), Case Studies and Guesstimates (7), Excel for Business Analysts (5), SQL for Business Analysis (5). It has 16 easy, 21 medium, 3 hard questions, so you can start easy and work up to the harder ones.
Company type
IT services
Headquarters
Montreal, Canada
Main India offices
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai
CGI Business Analytics interview process
Online assessment (aptitude + technical)
Technical interview
Managerial round
HR round
Typical pattern based on public candidate experiences. Rounds vary by role, team and year.
Solved for CGIStart practicing
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A data object (page shape with a folded corner) represents information that an activity needs or produces during one process instance, such as an invoice or an application form. It is linked with dotted associations. A data store (cylinder) represents information that persists beyond the process instance, such as the customer database or ERP. Showing them helps developers see which systems are read or updated at each step and helps spot missing integrations.
02
Write an Excel formula for a two-way lookup that finds sales for a given product and month.
A spike is a time-boxed story used for research or experimentation to reduce uncertainty, not to deliver a feature. Its output is knowledge, such as a recommendation or a prototype. A BA might request one when the team cannot estimate a story because an external API, a data source or a regulation is unclear, for example checking whether a payment gateway supports partial refunds. The time box, often one to three days, prevents open-ended investigation.
04
What is an impact-effort matrix and how do you use it to prioritise recommendations in a case?
An impact-effort matrix is a 2x2 grid that plots options by expected business impact against effort, cost or time. High impact and low effort are quick wins to do first; high impact and high effort are major projects to plan; low impact and low effort are fill-ins; low impact and high effort should be dropped. In a case interview, it helps you end with a clear, prioritised recommendation rather than a long list of ideas.
05
What is AS-IS and TO-BE process modelling, and where does BPMN fit in?
AS-IS modelling documents how a process works today, including pain points, delays and handoffs. TO-BE modelling shows the improved future process after changes or a new system. Comparing the two reveals the gaps and requirements. BPMN, Business Process Model and Notation, is the standard notation, using events, tasks, gateways for decisions and swimlanes for roles, so both business and IT read the diagrams the same way.
06
What is COALESCE in SQL and how does it differ from ISNULL or IFNULL?
COALESCE returns the first non-NULL value from a list of expressions, for example COALESCE(mobile, landline, 'Not available'). It is ANSI standard and works in all major databases. ISNULL (SQL Server) and IFNULL (MySQL) accept only two arguments and are vendor-specific. Analysts commonly use COALESCE to show zero instead of NULL after a LEFT JOIN, such as COALESCE(SUM(o.amount), 0), so that customers without orders appear with zero revenue.
The time value of money means a rupee today is worth more than a rupee in the future, because today's rupee can be invested to earn a return and future money carries inflation and risk. Future cash is converted to present value using PV = FV / (1 + r)^n. At a 10 percent discount rate, 1,10,000 rupees received after one year is worth 1,00,000 rupees today. It is the basis of NPV, IRR, loan EMIs and valuation.
09
What does the LTV to CAC ratio tell you and what is a healthy value?
LTV to CAC compares the lifetime gross profit from a customer with the cost of acquiring them. A ratio around 3 to 1 is commonly treated as healthy. Below 1 means you lose money on every customer. Far above 5 may mean you are underinvesting in growth. Always compute LTV on gross margin, not revenue, and check it by channel, because blended averages hide loss-making channels.
10
Why do Agile teams estimate in story points rather than hours?
Story points measure relative effort, complexity and uncertainty compared with a reference story, using a scale like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. People are better at comparing sizes than predicting exact hours, and points do not depend on who does the work. Over a few sprints the team's velocity, points completed per sprint, makes forecasting reliable. Points should never be used to compare productivity across teams.
Decide whether and how to enter a market by evaluating attractiveness, competition, capabilities and entry mode (build, buy, partner), then risks and next steps.
# B1 = discount rate (for example 12%)
# B2 = initial investment entered as a negative number
# B3:B7 = cash inflows for years 1 to 5
=NPV(B1, B3:B7) + B2
# NPV() assumes the first value comes at the end of year 1,
# so the year-0 investment is added outside the function.
14
What is the difference between XLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH?
Under accrual accounting, revenue is recorded when it is earned and expenses when they are incurred, regardless of when cash moves. Under cash accounting, transactions are recorded only when cash is received or paid. Companies in India report under accrual-based standards (Ind AS). Example: an annual software contract billed in April is recognised as revenue month by month over 12 months under accrual, even though all the cash came in April.
16
What is user activation and what is an 'aha moment'?
Activation is the point at which a new user first experiences the product's core value, such as completing a first lesson, sending a first payment or creating a first project. The aha moment is the specific early action that strongly predicts long-term retention, found by comparing retained and churned users. Teams then design onboarding to get more new users to that action quickly and track the activation rate.
17
Write a SQL query to calculate monthly customer churn rate for a subscription business.
WITH monthly AS (
SELECT DISTINCT customer_id,
DATE_TRUNC('month', billing_date) AS month
FROM subscriptions_billed
)
SELECT
prev.month AS month,
COUNT(prev.customer_id) AS customers_at_start,
COUNT(prev.customer_id) - COUNT(nxt.customer_id) AS churned,
ROUND(100.0 * (COUNT(prev.customer_id) - COUNT(nxt.customer_id))
/ COUNT(prev.customer_id), 2) AS churn_pct
FROM monthly prev
LEFT JOIN monthly nxt
ON nxt.customer_id = prev.customer_id
AND nxt.month = prev.month + INTERVAL '1 month'
GROUP BY prev.month
ORDER BY prev.month;
18
Which Excel functions do business analysts use daily?
A self join joins a table to itself using two aliases, so you can compare rows within the same table. A classic business example is an employees table with a manager_id column: joining employees e to employees m on e.manager_id = m.employee_id lists each employee with their manager's name. Another example is finding customers who placed two orders on the same day by joining orders to orders on customer_id and date with different order IDs.
21
Guesstimate: how many cars are sold in India every year?
Structure it: households × car-owning share ÷ replacement cycle + first-time buyers + commercial fleet. State each assumption clearly and sanity-check the final number.
22
What is conditional formatting and how would you use it in a business report?
Conditional formatting changes a cell's look based on rules or formulas. In reports you can highlight targets missed in red, use data bars for sales size, colour scales for a region heatmap, icon sets for trend direction, or a formula rule like =$E2<$F2 to colour an entire row. Use it sparingly and with a legend so the eye goes only to the exceptions that need action.
23
What is a process flow and which tools do you use?
As a customer, I want to reset my password by email so that I can get back into my account.
Acceptance criteria:
• Reset link expires in 15 minutes
• Password rules are shown while typing
• A success message appears after reset
25
How is a product owner's role different from a business analyst's role?
The product owner owns the product vision and the backlog order, makes final priority decisions and accepts completed work on behalf of the business. The business analyst works on understanding problems in depth: eliciting and analysing requirements, modelling processes and data, writing detailed stories and acceptance criteria and supporting the team and testers. In smaller teams one person may do both, but the PO decides what, while the BA clarifies how it should work.
26
How do you adapt your communication for executives versus technical teams?
Executives want outcomes, impact, risk and decisions needed, in a one-page summary or a few slides with clear numbers. Technical teams need precise details: data fields, business rules, edge cases, acceptance criteria and dependencies. Operations users need process steps and what changes in their daily work. Same facts, different depth and vocabulary. Ask each group how they prefer to receive updates and adjust.
27
What are DAU, WAU and MAU, and what is the stickiness ratio?
DAU, WAU and MAU count unique users active in a day, week and month, where 'active' must be clearly defined, such as completing a core action. The stickiness ratio is DAU divided by MAU and shows how often monthly users return. A ratio of 0.5 means the average monthly user is active about 15 days a month. Daily-use products like messaging aim high, while a travel app naturally has low stickiness.
28
Should a supermarket chain launch its own private-label products?
Evaluate attractiveness and ability. Attractiveness: private labels usually earn higher margins, so check category size, how price-sensitive customers are, and whether brand loyalty is weak in categories like staples and cleaning. Ability: supplier availability, quality control, shelf space and brand trust. Estimate the margin gain against cannibalisation of branded sales and supplier relationships. Recommend starting with a few high-volume, low-loyalty categories and measuring repeat purchase.
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.
30
UAT starts tomorrow, but the business has not nominated any testers. What do you do?
Escalate immediately to the business sponsor with the impact: each day without testers delays sign-off and go-live. Ask for named testers with protected time, even part-time. Meanwhile, prepare so no time is lost: finalise test cases, check the environment and data, and plan a short tester briefing. If testers cannot be released, propose re-planning UAT dates rather than letting IT or the BA test on the business's behalf, because acceptance must come from the users.
31
What is a star schema and why do BI tools prefer it?
A star schema has one central fact table holding numeric events (sales, orders) linked to surrounding dimension tables (date, product, customer, region). BI tools prefer it because filters flow cleanly from dimensions to facts, DAX and Tableau calculations stay simple, and compression and query performance improve. A flat single table repeats text values and gets slow, while a snowflake with many chained lookups makes filtering and maintenance harder.
32
Write a UAT test case for logging in to a banking app with OTP.
Test case ID: UAT-LOGIN-03. Precondition: registered customer with a verified mobile number. Steps: 1. Open the app and enter the registered mobile number. 2. Tap Send OTP. 3. Enter the 6-digit OTP received by SMS within 3 minutes. 4. Tap Verify. Expected result: the customer lands on the account dashboard, and the login is recorded in the activity log. Related negative cases: wrong OTP shows an error, and three wrong attempts lock login for 30 minutes.
Power Query is the data preparation engine inside Power BI and Excel. It connects to sources like Excel, CSV, SQL databases and web APIs, then lets you clean and shape data with recorded steps: remove columns, change types, split, merge, unpivot, append and group. Each step is written in the M language and replays on every refresh, so a monthly cleanup job becomes repeatable instead of manual.
34
Write a DAX measure to count distinct active customers in the last 30 days.
Active Customers 30D =
CALCULATE(
DISTINCTCOUNT(Sales[CustomerID]),
DATESINPERIOD('Date'[Date], MAX('Date'[Date]), -30, DAY)
)
-- MAX('Date'[Date]) makes it relative to the date in the current filter
35
What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL?
Both stack the results of two queries with the same number and type of columns. UNION removes duplicate rows, which needs a sort or hash step and is slower. UNION ALL keeps every row and is faster. Use UNION ALL when combining data such as online and store sales where duplicates are genuine or impossible, and UNION only when you specifically need a distinct list, such as unique customer IDs from two sources.
PESTEL scans the external environment across Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors. For an electric vehicle maker in India it would cover subsidies and policy, fuel prices and interest rates, consumer attitudes, battery technology, emission targets and safety regulations. It is useful in market entry and strategy cases to spot opportunities and risks beyond the company's control, and pairs well with SWOT.
37
Write a SQL query that groups customers into spend buckets using CASE WHEN.
SELECT
CASE
WHEN total_spend >= 50000 THEN 'High'
WHEN total_spend >= 10000 THEN 'Medium'
ELSE 'Low'
END AS segment,
COUNT(*) AS customers
FROM (
SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount) AS total_spend
FROM orders GROUP BY customer_id
) t
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY customers DESC;
38
What does GROUP BY do and how is HAVING different from WHERE?
A test scenario is a high-level statement of what to test, usually derived from a business process or user story, such as Customer applies a discount coupon at checkout. A test case is a detailed, executable set of steps with preconditions, test data, expected result and actual result, such as applying an expired coupon to a 1,000 rupee cart shows an expiry message. One scenario usually produces several test cases covering positive, negative and edge conditions.
A what-if tool that recalculates a formula for different inputs, for example loan payments across different rates and tenures.
Tips to crack the CGI Business Analytics interview
Revise core programming, SQL and testing basics, as CGI roles often involve maintaining and testing enterprise systems.
Learn about CGI's member-ownership model, where employees are called members and can buy shares.
Prepare clear examples of teamwork and client communication, which are important in CGI's consulting culture.
Keep a one-minute story ready for every project on your CV: problem, your part, tools, result.
Practise the hard questions on this page aloud; CGI interviewers usually ask follow-ups on your first answer.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are there in the CGI Business Analytics interview?
Candidates usually go through 4 stages: Online assessment (aptitude + technical); Technical interview; Managerial round; HR round. The exact rounds change with the role, team, location and your experience, so confirm the process with the recruiter.
Which topics should I prepare for the CGI Business Analytics interview?
This practice set leans on Requirements and Agile (7), Case Studies and Guesstimates (7), Excel for Business Analysts (5), SQL for Business Analysis (5). Revise those first, then practise explaining one or two of your own projects end to end, because most CGI interviewers ask you to walk through real work.
Are these the exact questions asked at CGI?
No. These are curated practice questions that match the skills and difficulty usually tested in it services interviews like CGI's. They are not a leaked or verified list of past questions.
Where does CGI hire Business Analytics professionals in India?
CGI has large teams in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai. Openings and locations change often, so check the CGI careers page and filter by city and experience.
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