Deloitte Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers

Top-down: NCR population aged 18–30 × share of graduates × share wanting paid upskilling × average fee. Cross-check bottom-up with institutes × batches × students × fees. State your assumptions.

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.

Clarify the underlying goals, present data and trade-offs, facilitate a joint session, escalate to the sponsor if needed and document the agreed decision.

Break sales into footfall, conversion and average basket, compare with last year and competitors, and check stock, pricing, staffing and local events.

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

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.

Agile delivers value in small increments with feedback. Scrum organises work in sprints with planning, daily stand-ups, review and retrospective, led by a Scrum Master and Product Owner.

COUNT(*) counts all rows; COUNT(column) counts only rows where that column is not NULL.

Both look up values flexibly; XLOOKUP is simpler with built-in not-found handling, while INDEX-MATCH works in older Excel versions.

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

A short requirement written as 'As a user, I want X so that Y', backed by acceptance criteria. Good stories follow INVEST: independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small and testable.

A BRD states what the business needs and why. An FRD details how the system should behave to meet those needs (functional specifications).

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

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;

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

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

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

Define named scenarios such as best, base and worst with different input values and compare the outputs in a summary report.

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

Low-fidelity layouts of screens that help stakeholders visualise and agree on requirements before development starts.

Define a goal metric, a baseline and guardrail metrics, run an experiment or before-after comparison and review adoption, retention and revenue impact.

Fixed costs stay constant regardless of volume, such as rent; variable costs change with volume, such as raw materials.

Functional requirements describe what the system does (login, reports); non-functional ones describe how well it does it (speed, security, availability, usability).

A table assigning Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed roles per task so ownership is clear.

Log the change, assess impact on scope, cost and timeline, get approval through change control or backlog grooming, and update documents and stakeholders.

Check data accuracy, then segment by city, restaurant, time and user type; look at supply, delivery time, pricing, competitors and seasonality before proposing fixes.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

An Excel add-in for building data models with relationships and DAX measures over millions of rows, beyond normal worksheet limits.

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

A query nested inside another, used for filtering or calculating values such as customers whose spend is above the average.

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

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

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

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

Stakeholders and the sponsor review the Business Requirements Document for completeness and accuracy, and the business owner gives formal sign-off before design begins.

Top-down: two-wheeler market x EV share x addressable segment. Bottom-up: target households x adoption rate x price. Compare both for a sanity check.

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

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

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

Number of outlets x daily customers x average bill x operating days, then validate using footfall, peak hours and similar chains.

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.

A measurable value showing progress to a goal, such as conversion rate, average order value, cart abandonment rate and customer retention.

Every KPI is a metric, but a KPI is tied directly to a strategic goal (e.g. monthly churn). A metric can be any measurement (e.g. page views).