Business analysis is applying a unique skill-set to:
  1. Determine your business needs and identify the problems - during daily operations you may not view the business the same way as a Business Analyst who comes in with a set of tools that shines light on to the problem areas of your business
  2. Using tools to help your business stakeholders to prioritize the problems - as a business you may not want to address all the problems at once, a Business Analyst can help you identify the problems that will give you the greatest benefit
  3. Document your business needs - a key skill-set of a Business Analyst to provide you with documentation of  your needs that will help solve your problem.  This documentation can be used by anyone to develop your solutions.
  4. Provide sound recommendations to meet the business needs - because of the work and the conversations a Business Analyst has, they are in a unique  advisory role for the decision makers.  The Business Analyst can collate the information from various interviews, data analysis, process discussions and provide insights to provide business efficiencies.
  5. Facilitate the solution to meet the business needs - when a solution has been designed, the Business Analyst can provide can be an implementation consultant to ensure that the solution does indeed solve the problems that were established.
Business analysts can help you accomplish this by understanding how your business functions.  Business analysis uses multiple techniques to document and communicate the understanding so that everyone is aligned with the business objectives.