Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
The differences between product support analysts and business analysts can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 1-2 years to become a product support analyst, becoming a business analyst takes usually requires 2-4 years. Additionally, a business analyst has an average salary of $74,431, which is higher than the $59,531 average annual salary of a product support analyst.
The top three skills for a product support analyst include product support, escalate and technical support. The most important skills for a business analyst are project management, data analysis, and business analysis.
| Product Support Analyst | Business Analyst | |
| Yearly salary | $59,531 | $74,431 |
| Hourly rate | $28.62 | $35.78 |
| Growth rate | 10% | 9% |
| Number of jobs | 165,138 | 170,514 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 4 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 71% |
| Average age | 42 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 2 | 4 |
Product support analysts provide support to clients by addressing their issues through phone calls or emails. They assess the failures, systemic problems, hardware, and bugs. Their responsibilities include application and operating system configuration, recovery and maintenance, database backup, and SQL modifications. They test the products, communicate the mistakes or related issues to QA, and establish customer workarounds. Logical thinking, solving problems, and providing solutions are necessary for this job.
Business analysts are employees who are responsible for interpreting business data and coming up with business solutions. They are well-versed in whatever business the company is in, and they have strong business acumen. They collect data related to the business and then interpret and analyze the data. Business analysts should be able to conduct different levels of analyses and must also be able to create a sound study. Once the analysis is done, they provide recommendations or strategic direction to decision-makers that will help the business become sustainable and grow.
Product support analysts and business analysts have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Product Support Analyst | Business Analyst | |
| Average salary | $59,531 | $74,431 |
| Salary range | Between $43,000 And $81,000 | Between $53,000 And $103,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Mountain View, CA |
| Highest paying state | New Jersey | Washington |
| Best paying company | Meta | The Citadel |
| Best paying industry | Finance | Finance |
There are a few differences between a product support analyst and a business analyst in terms of educational background:
| Product Support Analyst | Business Analyst | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 68% | Bachelor's Degree, 71% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Stanford University |
Here are the differences between product support analysts' and business analysts' demographics:
| Product Support Analyst | Business Analyst | |
| Average age | 42 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 57.7% Female, 42.3% | Male, 53.9% Female, 46.1% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 11.4% Unknown, 5.3% Hispanic or Latino, 15.0% Asian, 14.1% White, 53.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4% | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 11% |