01
What is the 80/20 rule in business analysis?
Show answer
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.
Infosys Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers
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02
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.
03
How would you forecast next quarter's sales in Excel?
Show answer
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.
04
Explain Porter's Five Forces.
Show answer
A model assessing industry attractiveness through supplier power, buyer power, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes and rivalry among competitors.
05
What is a feasibility study?
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An early assessment of whether a proposed solution is technically, economically, operationally and legally viable before committing budget.
06
What is Power Pivot?
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An Excel add-in for building data models with relationships and DAX measures over millions of rows, beyond normal worksheet limits.
07
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.
08
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.
09
Build a break-even analysis in Excel.
Show answer
Break-even units = Fixed costs ÷ (Price − Variable cost per unit).
Add a data table to test different price and volume scenarios.
10
How do you manage conflicting requirements from two senior stakeholders?
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Clarify the underlying goals, present data and trade-offs, facilitate a joint session, escalate to the sponsor if needed and document the agreed decision.
11
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.
12
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.
13
BRD vs FRD?
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A BRD states what the business needs and why. An FRD details how the system should behave to meet those needs (functional specifications).
14
How would you measure the success of a new feature?
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Define a goal metric, a baseline and guardrail metrics, run an experiment or before-after comparison and review adoption, retention and revenue impact.
15
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.
16
How would you build a simple financial model in Excel?
Show answer
Separate inputs, calculations and outputs, link all formulas to input cells, add scenarios and checks, and avoid hard-coded numbers inside formulas.
17
What are fixed costs and variable costs?
Show answer
Fixed costs stay constant regardless of volume, such as rent; variable costs change with volume, such as raw materials.
18
Use case vs user story?
Show answer
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.
19
What is a CTE?
Show answer
A named temporary result introduced with WITH that makes long queries readable and reusable in the same statement.
20
What does GROUP BY do and how is HAVING different from WHERE?
Show answer
GROUP BY aggregates rows by column; WHERE filters before grouping and HAVING filters after, using aggregate conditions.
21
How do you use Excel's Scenario Manager?
Show answer
Define named scenarios such as best, base and worst with different input values and compare the outputs in a summary report.
22
What is the difference between SQL and Excel for analysis?
Show answer
Excel suits small to medium data and quick ad-hoc work; SQL queries large databases directly and repeatably.
23
How do you calculate the percentage contribution of each category?
Show answer
SUM(sales) per category divided by SUM(SUM(sales)) OVER () and multiplied by 100 gives each category's share of the total.
24
Which what-if analysis tools does Excel have?
Show answer
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).
25
Write a user story with acceptance criteria for password reset.
Show answer
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
26
XLOOKUP vs VLOOKUP?
Show answer
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.
27
How do you validate that a report's numbers are correct?
Show answer
Reconcile totals with source tables using SQL, check filters and joins for duplication, compare with prior periods and verify with business owners.
28
How would you improve a company's low app conversion rate?
Show answer
Map the funnel, find the biggest drop-off, check usability and load time, run A/B tests on fixes and track conversion lift.
29
How do you calculate monthly revenue growth in SQL?
Show answer
Aggregate revenue per month and use LAG(revenue) OVER (ORDER BY month) to compute (revenue - previous) / previous.
30
How do you create a dashboard in Excel?
Show answer
Prepare clean data, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, add KPI cards and slicers, and arrange everything on one sheet with a clear layout.
31
Guesstimate: how many pizzas are sold in Mumbai on a weekend?
Show answer
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.
32
What are functional and non-functional requirements?
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Functional requirements describe what the system does (login, reports); non-functional ones describe how well it does it (speed, security, availability, usability).
33
What is a KPI tree?
Show answer
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.
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 are wireframes and why are they useful for a BA?
Show answer
Low-fidelity layouts of screens that help stakeholders visualise and agree on requirements before development starts.
36
SQL: total revenue per month.
Show answer
SELECT DATE_TRUNC('month', order_date) AS month, SUM(amount) AS revenue
FROM orders GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;
-- MySQL: DATE_FORMAT(order_date, '%Y-%m')
37
What is the profit equation and how do you use it in cases?
Show answer
Profit = Revenue minus Cost, where revenue = price x volume and cost = fixed + variable. Split each part to find which one explains a change.
38
How do you evaluate a marketing campaign's ROI?
Show answer
ROI = (incremental profit - campaign cost) / campaign cost. Measure incremental sales using a control group or before-after comparison.
39
What is a traceability matrix?
Show answer
A table linking each requirement to design, test cases and delivery status, ensuring nothing is missed and helping assess change impact.
40
Agile vs Waterfall?
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Waterfall runs fixed phases one after another with requirements frozen early. Agile delivers in short sprints with continuous feedback, so requirements can change. In Agile, BAs maintain the backlog and user stories.
41
KPI vs metric?
Show answer
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).
42
How do you chart a trend with a target line?
Show answer
Create a line or column chart of actuals and add the target as another series formatted as a line.
43
How do you write a query to find users active in consecutive months?
Show answer
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.
44
Guesstimate: how many cups of tea are sold in Delhi per day?
Show answer
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.
45
What is gap analysis?
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Compare the current state (as-is) with the desired state (to-be), list the gaps in process, people or technology, and plan actions to close them.
46
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.
47
How do you build a forecast in Excel?
Show answer
Use historical data with FORECAST.ETS or trend lines, state assumptions, compare against actuals and show best, base and worst scenarios.
48
What is the difference between XLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH?
Show answer
Both look up values flexibly; XLOOKUP is simpler with built-in not-found handling, while INDEX-MATCH works in older Excel versions.
49
Difference between INNER JOIN and LEFT JOIN?
Show answer
INNER returns only matching rows; LEFT returns all rows from the left table and NULLs where there is no match.
50
What is Agile and how does Scrum work?
Show answer
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.
51
How do you estimate the annual revenue of a coffee shop chain?
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Number of outlets x daily customers x average bill x operating days, then validate using footfall, peak hours and similar chains.
52
How do you protect a worksheet or workbook?
Show answer
Review > Protect Sheet or Workbook with a password, lock cells, hide formulas and allow only selected cells to be edited.
53
A food delivery company's orders fell 15%. How do you investigate?
Show answer
Check data accuracy, then segment by city, restaurant, time and user type; look at supply, delivery time, pricing, competitors and seasonality before proposing fixes.
54
What is a product backlog vs a sprint backlog?
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The product backlog is the ordered list of all desired work; the sprint backlog is the subset the team commits to in the current sprint.
55
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.
56
How would you price a new subscription product?
Show answer
Combine cost-plus, competitor benchmarks and willingness to pay from research, test tiers with experiments and check margin and churn impact.
57
How would you prioritise 10 features with a limited budget?
Show answer
Score them with RICE or value-vs-effort, align with goals, consider dependencies and risks, validate with stakeholders, then use MoSCoW for the release plan.
58
How do you approach a guesstimate question?
Show answer
Clarify the scope, break the problem into logical parts, state assumptions with round numbers, compute step by step and sanity-check the answer.
59
What is root cause analysis and which techniques do you know?
Show answer
Finding the underlying reason for a problem using the 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams or Pareto analysis, then fixing the cause not the symptom.
60
What are the 4 Ps of marketing?
Show answer
Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the levers a business uses to bring an offering to market.
61
What is a user story and what makes it good?
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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.
62
What is a market entry strategy case?
Show answer
Decide whether and how to enter a market by evaluating attractiveness, competition, capabilities and entry mode (build, buy, partner), then risks and next steps.
63
What is a RACI matrix?
Show answer
A table assigning Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed roles per task so ownership is clear.
64
How do you prioritise requirements?
Show answer
Use MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't), value versus effort scoring or the Kano model, agreed with stakeholders based on business value and risk.
65
How do you find the top 5 customers by revenue?
Show answer
SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount) AS revenue FROM orders GROUP BY customer_id ORDER BY revenue DESC LIMIT 5;
66
Guesstimate: how many cars are sold in India every year?
Show answer
Structure it: households × car-owning share ÷ replacement cycle + first-time buyers + commercial fleet. State each assumption clearly and sanity-check the final number.
67
Which Excel functions do business analysts use daily?
Show answer
VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF, text functions, PivotTables and charts.
68
What is the difference between COUNT(*) and COUNT(column)?
Show answer
COUNT(*) counts all rows; COUNT(column) counts only rows where that column is not NULL.