Salesforce Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers

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

Break-even units = Fixed costs ÷ (Price − Variable cost per unit). Add a data table to test different price and volume scenarios.

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

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

An early assessment of whether a proposed solution is technically, economically, operationally and legally viable before committing budget.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Clarify the goal behind each request, map them to business objectives, prioritise with MoSCoW, run a joint session, then document the decision and get sign-off.

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

Clear, testable conditions a story must meet to be accepted, often written as Given-When-Then scenarios.

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.

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

Use MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't), value versus effort scoring or the Kano model, agreed with stakeholders based on business value and risk.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The smallest version of a product with enough features to deliver value and gather real user feedback before investing more.

Testing how changes in key inputs such as price or volume affect the output, in Excel using data tables or scenario manager.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

Create a line or column chart of actuals and add the target as another series formatted as a line.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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;

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.