It depends from organization to organization.You must know how to use MS Office.( Expert level)Some companies use Rational Rose and Visio. Clear Quest Requisite Pro License for these tools are expensive so most of the companies end up with Ms. Office and Visio only.

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A lot of IT companies have that document templates usually in MS word format.
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kevin le
Answered On : May 2nd, 2007
Reational requisite Pro
Rational Rose
Rationa ClearQuest
Rational Clear Case
MS- projet
MS-Visio
Test Director (mercury)

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Ziad Sultan
Answered On : May 5th, 2007
1) Visio 2) ER-Win and 3) Rational Rose ....
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Microsoft Tools :
Word (to start and paste the Requirements and commonly used!)
Power point ( presentations show flow charts of a textual template( frame work) of the requirements, or prototype (simulation) of the Business User Interface)
MS Excel (Tables with Rows and columns variables / used to maintain Data Dictionary).
MS vision (1. Used to make Use cases . 2. Flow charts/ wire frames just b4 sign off from Business Users and PM).

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EA enterprise Archeitect
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There might be various tools that you as a business analyst would be using depending upon the work environment.
The primary tools are:
MS-Office (Especially Word)
MS-Visio (for visualizing the concepts, creating diagrams)
But a lot of bigger organizations have been using Rational Software. Rational software licensing is expensive so you might not find it being used everywhere.
Rational Requisite Pro (for Requirement Management)
Rational ClearCase/ClearQuest (For change management)
I have also found that some places like using MS-Sharepoint, telelogic DOORS and other tools for document collaboration. I would say, keep a working knowledge of MS Sharepoint, at least.
Sometimes you might end up being a BA com QA. As such, it is nice to have a working knowledge of creating Test cases, using Load Runner, QTP etc.
Except for these tools if you have knowledge of RDBMS, Oracle, SQL, different operating systems, some OOP, it is always a plus.

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As mentioned out by some of the incumbents here, Business Analysis is more to do with documentation of the requirements and how efficiently the expert communicates information across to the team developing the application/product(s). As mentioned, some of the tools are standard based on whether the company serving their clientele is either Product/Service based. There are documents that templat(ized) either by the marketing teams or by the external vendors for the companies. Some of the documents that are required are either in Microsoft Word document or otherwise.
Each team within the enterprise based on their requirements use multitude of tools to communicate information with respect to development across to their teams using the below mentioned tools:
1) Wireframes using software like Balsamiq, Microsoft Visio
2) Template in the form of Microsoft Word
3) Microsoft Project, Version One to manage their projects
4) Team Track, Bugzilla- as their defect tracking tools
5) CRM application to keep track of issues flowing from the client or internal clients (testing team)
6) Online File repositories like Microsoft Sharepoint to disseminate documentation across inter-teams
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PCK Krishna
Answered On : Mar 13th, 2012
Most of the business analysts use following Tools:
- Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Visio
- IBM Requisite Pro
- BPMN 2.0
- SharePoint
Offcourse most important tools are communication skill and interpretation power.
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