Filter Results

Audience

Industry

Year

Business Analyst Internship for Freshers: Applying Design Thinking to Real Business Problems

26 Oct 2026

Author - Navin Chandra Rao

Figuring out where an organisation’s processes break down is the core of the business analyst job. For many freshers, an internship is the first time they handle this work in practice, using sales figures, customer comments and workflow maps from different teams.

What the Intern Actually Does

An intern on an operations team might follow one order from placement to delivery and record each step. Any delay that keeps happening at the same point gets written down.

Delivery delays are a frequent complaint, and each can come from a different source. An unpaid order, wrong stock records or a slow processing queue are all possibilities. Before anything changes, the analyst tests each one.The analyst checks every one of these before recommending a change in such business processes

Getting Ready as a Fresher

Academic projects are a practical place to start. A project on customer feedback, sales performance or delivery delays lets you practise collecting data and explaining what it shows.

Area	What it involves
Academic projects	A project on customer feedback, sales performance or delivery delays. It shows how you collect data and explain it.
Excel and Power BI	Cleaning a sales dataset, writing the formulas and building the charts in Power BI. Interviewers usually ask about the steps behind the visuals.
Case studies	A business problem, the information it would need and a proposed fix. A workflow map shows where the delays happen.
Interview preparation	Being ready to explain which information you used, how you investigated and how you reached your conclusion.
Questioning routines	Questioning why a step is necessary, talking to the people who follow it and considering alternatives can reveal unnecessary processes. Some steps remain in place simply because no one questions them.

A fresher who asks why a step exists may find that nobody remembers the reason. Talking to the people who use the step often reveals it, and comparing it with other options shows whether it still makes sense.

Skills Freshers Need For a Business Analyst Internship

Where Design Thinking Comes In

Process records show what happened and where things went wrong. They offer little insight into why it happened or how people experienced it. Design thinking helps fill that gap by involving the people affected.

Where Design Thinking Comes In

Analysts talk to customers, watch staff at work and see how people use a product. These conversations often pick up problems the data does not show, so the team can agree on the problem before choosing a fix.

Analysts still break the problem into parts and test the likely causes. The user’s view runs alongside that work.

Design Thinking Image

A Real Example: Winter Air Quality in Gurugram

Outdoor workers in Gurugram face poor air quality in winter. Students on a SOIL design thinking bootcamp interviewed people who work outdoors, then built prototypes and presented their ideas. Applied to this problem, the stages look like this:

Stage	Application to the problem
Empathise	Speak to outdoor workers about their daily experience of the air.
Define	Identify the specific difficulties linked to winter air quality.
Ideate	Explore possible responses to those difficulties.
Prototype	Develop initial versions of the proposed responses.
Test	Gather feedback and examine how each response performs.

The same method works inside a company. An intern who talks to staff and watches a process can see where work slows down. That helps the team choose which changes are worth making.

Illustrative example: a hospital with long waiting times

Initial assessment: The hospital may need more doctors or larger waiting areas.
Possible finding: Patients may not know where they stand in the queue or how long they will wait.
Possible response: A queue display or notification system could share that information without major infrastructure changes.

How Does SOIL Prepare Students for Business Analysis Roles?

SOIL’s Centre for Design Thinking & Innovation runs activities in user research, design thinking and prototyping.

Design Thinking Bootcapms

How Consortium Partners Shape The Curriculum

Prototyping Labs

Experiential Fridays

Conclusion

Business analysis needs accurate reading of data and attention to the people inside a process. Data shows what is happening, and user research explains why it matters to those involved. Freshers can practise both through academic projects and internships.

Working across these formats builds user research and problem-solving skills, and students get used to people from very different backgrounds. That habit transfers well to business analysis: keeping the people affected by a problem in mind while looking at the processes behind it.

About the Author

Navin Chandra Rao Head, Center of Design Thinking & Inoovation Professor of Practice, SOIL

Navin Chandra Rao is a Professor of Practice at SOIL Institute of Management with 26 years of industry experience. He has worked with organizations such as Maruti Udyog, JCB India, CNH, and IKEA. His experience includes supply chain management, purchasing, global sourcing, vendor development, and business operations. He has also held leadership roles in supply chain, HR, and retail services.

PGDM vs MBA: Understanding the Key Differences to Make the Right Choice Founder & Chairman Mr. Anil Sachdev PGPM vs PGDM: Key differences to choose best path for your management career

Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM)

Post Graduate Program in Management (PGPM)

Post Graduate Program Management - Human Resources (PGPM-HR)

Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM)

Post Graduate Program in Management (PGPM)

Post Graduate Program Management - Human Resources (PGPM-HR)

Posts By

Topics

Audience

Industry

Year

Never miss a beat. Get Blog updates regularly in your inbox