The Salesforce Business Analyst Certification is for people who already know how to use Salesforce and want to get certified. This guide helps you learn what you need to know for the exam, like project discovery and process mapping. It also gives tips for studying and taking the exam. Don’t forget to check out the Trailhead exam guide too, because you’ll need to know about specific features and be ready for different kinds of questions.
The Business Analyst certification is relatively new and started in July 2022. While it might seem easy at first, Salesforce suggests having a few years of experience before taking the exam. Until May 2nd, 2023, you needed to have a Salesforce Administrator certification before you could register for the Business Analyst one, but now you can take it directly. This certification will also have its own training module on Trailhead starting in the Summer of 2023.
If you want to move into a Business Analyst job in the Salesforce world, get better at gathering requirements and managing stakeholders, or just show off your skills, this certification is the one to go for.
What are the Key topics covered in the exam?
In Salesforce exams, there are different topics, and each one is worth a certain amount of points. When you take the Business Analyst certification, you’ll be tested on your understanding of six main categories.
1. Collaboration with Stakeholders (24%)
This part is all about how well you can figure out what’s needed and get everyone involved to agree on what to do next. It’s the most important part of the test and includes both easy and hard questions based on different situations.
To do well here, you need to really understand how a Business Analyst acts as a link between the business and the tech teams. You also need to show you know how to use Salesforce features for the job at hand.
In this part, you’ll need to be good at deciding what’s most important and talking things out with others. You might have to convince stakeholders to agree on a solution.
2. Customer Discovery (17%) and Requirements (17%)
These two parts together make up 34% of the exam. I think they’re pretty connected. The Customer Discovery part checks if you understand what a Business Analyst does and if you can figure out what’s happening with a customer’s system and how to make it better.
The Requirements part is about taking the ideas from talks with stakeholders about making things better and turning them into a plan for the future. You’ll need to write them down in a way that can be changed later and decide which ones are most important.
3. Business Process Mapping (16%)
Even though it seems easy, figuring out complicated business processes can be tough, especially when many systems and people are involved. This part of the test has questions about the best ways to write down processes, get what’s needed, decide what’s included, and plan for the future. It’s also about breaking big processes into smaller, easier parts.
4. User Stories (18%) and User Acceptance (8%)
These two parts go together and make up 26% of the questions. Writing down User Stories properly and testing if users are happy with them can really help a project succeed.
The User Stories part is about where to write them, what the acceptance rules are, and what makes a good story.
The User Acceptance part is about making a plan for testing and helping with the testing, and deciding if the project can go ahead or not if the requirements aren’t met.
What should be your Study Strategy?
Like many others, I booked the Business Analyst exam right when it started. I wanted to make sure I knew about processes, the best ways to do things, and what a Business Analyst does in a project, like Salesforce says. How much time you need to study depends on what you’ve done before and what projects you’ve worked on.
As usual, Salesforce made sure that with the new certification, there’s a special Trailmix. It has all the info you need to do well on the exam, including modules for each part of it.
Trailhead is a good way to learn by doing, especially with scenarios that teach consulting skills, like understanding what’s needed. If you want to go deeper, try the Superbadges. They cover more complicated situations that touch on many topics. I suggest doing the Admin Super Set while you study for this certification, especially the Business Administration Specialist one. It has a really interesting scenario to work on.
Here’s a fun way to make studying more exciting: make up a business with its own needs and problems. Create a new Salesforce Developer account and pretend you’re a company selling to other businesses. You can have a complicated sales process, lots of data, and different ways you share things. This lets you try out everything you’re learning and figure out how to use it for yourself.
Exam Strategy
We’ve collected some tips over the years to help you get ready for the exam. They’ll give you the best shot at passing with flying colors.
Cheat Sheet
First, if there are any ideas you find hard to understand, make a cheat sheet and try to remember it before the exam. This will help you remember everything. You can also write down the main points if that’s how you learn best.
Carefully on Every Question
During the exam, really focus on the question and read it a few times. For questions based on situations, the options will give you good hints about the right answer. If you’re at a test center, use the pen and paper they give you to draw diagrams or charts that can help you understand the answer better. But remember, you can’t do this for online exams.
Narrow Down your Choices
When choosing your answer, try to eliminate the ones that are obviously wrong. Sometimes Salesforce includes answers that mix up different features or are just plain false. They might also add in tricky choices—features that seem right but aren’t the best way to do things. You can usually spot these by thinking about the standard Salesforce features that do the job. For instance, you might consider creating a custom approval process with a flow, but why do that when there’s a standard feature you could use instead?
Mark for Review
You also have a helpful tool called the “Mark for review” checkbox under each question. It’s handy if you’re not sure about an answer or can’t think of one right away.
At the end of the exam, you can go back to the questions you marked for review (and all the others) to see how you did. It’s a good idea to review every question if you have time. I always do this during exams and often catch mistakes or find answers to questions I hadn’t finished yet.
If you don’t pass the exam the first time, write down the topics you found hardest. This way, you can study them more and try again. It’s best to schedule the retake as soon as you can to keep your momentum and not forget things you don’t use every day. The retake fee for the Business Analyst exam is half price, and you can try up to three times per update. But this might change, so make sure to check the retake policy.
Conclusion: Salesforce Business Analyst Certification
Overall, the Business Analyst certification is a good one to get. It’s especially useful because it teaches you how to work well with different people involved in a project, whether they’re from the business side or the tech side.
