Top 12 Business Operations Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume

A Business Operations Manager keeps the engine humming—coordinating people, systems, and processes so work flows and outcomes land. The skills you spotlight on your resume matter. Below, twelve capabilities that show you can manage and sharpen operations, with real decisions and results behind them.

Business Operations Manager Skills

1. Salesforce
2. QuickBooks
3. Tableau
4. SAP
5. Oracle
6. Microsoft Excel
7. Project Management
8. Lean Six Sigma
9. Agile Methodology
10. SQL
11. Power BI
12. Jira

1. Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud CRM platform for managing sales, service, marketing, and operations in one place—data unified, teams aligned, work traceable.

Why It's Important

It centralizes customer data, automates processes, and delivers analytics that inform decisions and revenue moves. Less swivel-chairing, more clarity and speed.

How to Improve Salesforce Skills

1. Customize around your process: Align objects, fields, page layouts, flows, and validation rules to how your business actually operates.
2. Integrate systems: Connect email, ERP, finance, support, and marketing tools so data stays consistent and handoffs don’t stall.
3. Drive adoption: Role-based training, simple layouts, clear naming, and quick wins. Measure usage and coach where it lags.
4. Harden data quality: Standards for naming, required fields, duplicate management, and scheduled cleanup. Good data, good reporting.
5. Upgrade reporting: Build layered dashboards for execs, managers, and reps. Use report types, row-level formulas, and subscriptions.
6. Review regularly: Quarterly audits to retire clutter, tighten permissions, and roll out new features that actually help.

Do this well and Salesforce becomes a force multiplier, not just a system of record.

How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume

2. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is accounting software for invoicing, payables, payroll, and financial reporting—clean books, timely insight.

Why It's Important

It streamlines finance ops, reduces errors, tightens cash control, and supports budgets and forecasts that steer the business.

How to Improve QuickBooks Skills

1. Automate intake: Bank feeds, rules, and receipt capture to cut manual entry and shrink reconciliation time.
2. Tune the chart of accounts: Clear categories, classes, and locations for reporting that actually answers questions.
3. Customize reports: Memorized P&L, cash flow, AR/AP aging, and cohort views tailored to decision cycles.
4. Integrate key apps: Payroll, CRM, payments, inventory, and commerce connections to remove duplicate work.
5. Budget and forecast: Build rolling forecasts, track variances monthly, and trigger actions when thresholds hit.
6. Close on a cadence: Monthly close checklist, review reconciliations, and periodic data cleanup to keep numbers trustworthy.

How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume

3. Tableau

Tableau turns data into interactive visuals and dashboards so patterns jump out and decisions don’t drag.

Why It's Important

It translates complex data into insight you can act on—faster, clearer, shared across teams without endless spreadsheets.

How to Improve Tableau Skills

1. Master the basics: Data connections, joins vs blends, filters, parameters, context filters, and calculated fields.
2. Visual design that tells a story: Choose the right chart, reduce clutter, highlight outliers, and guide the eye with hierarchy.
3. Build purposeful dashboards: Design for questions users ask, add interactivity, keep performance snappy with extracts and tidy data models.
4. Dig into analytics: Level-of-detail expressions, table calcs, forecasting, and trend lines for richer insight.
5. Standardize: Templates, data source certifications, and naming conventions so dashboards scale without chaos.
6. Iterate with feedback: Ship, learn, refine. Usage stats and stakeholder reviews will sharpen the next version.

How to Display Tableau Skills on Your Resume

4. SAP

SAP provides enterprise software that unifies finance, supply chain, HR, procurement, and more—operations stitched together end to end.

Why It's Important

It standardizes processes, surfaces real-time data, and scales with growth, giving managers control and foresight across the business.

How to Improve SAP Skills

1. Raise user proficiency: Role-based training, simple Fiori tiles, and clear SOPs to cut friction.
2. Streamline processes: Map current flows, remove handoffs and redundancies, and embed controls where work happens.
3. Tailor thoughtfully: Configure before customizing; keep enhancements lean to ease upgrades and support.
4. Govern master data: Ownership, standards, and periodic audits so reports match reality.
5. Integrate cleanly: Connect with adjacent systems using managed interfaces and consistent data models.
6. Maintain on schedule: Patch cycles, change control, and regression testing to keep stability high.
7. Close the loop: Feedback from users and stakeholders drives the next wave of improvements.

How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume

5. Oracle

Oracle delivers cloud applications, databases, and infrastructure that handle core operations and heavy-duty data needs.

Why It's Important

It brings reliable data management, integrated apps, and performance at scale—fuel for better operations and sharper decisions.

How to Improve Oracle Skills

1. Invest in training: Enable admins, analysts, and end users with role-specific learning and hands-on labs.
2. Tune performance: Monitor workloads, index smartly, review execution plans, and right-size infrastructure.
3. Automate the routine: Backups, patching, ETL jobs, and alerts—scripted and scheduled.
4. Elevate analytics: Use built-in BI and ML where it fits; standardize KPIs and semantic layers.
5. Harden security: Least-privilege access, auditing, encryption, and regular review of roles and policies.
6. Keep current: Planned upgrades with testing and rollback paths to capture features without risking uptime.
7. Integrate judiciously: APIs and data pipelines that are monitored, versioned, and documented.

How to Display Oracle Skills on Your Resume

6. Microsoft Excel

Excel is the workhorse for analysis, modeling, and data organization—quick checks to full-blown dashboards.

Why It's Important

Forecasts, budgets, scenario modeling, variance tracking—Excel underpins the day-to-day decisions that keep operations aligned.

How to Improve Microsoft Excel Skills

1. Go beyond basics: INDEX/XMATCH, SUMIFS, LET, LAMBDA, array formulas, and TEXTSPLIT for cleaner, faster models.
2. Automate the boring: Macros and VBA (or Office Scripts) to eliminate repetitive steps and reduce errors.
3. Pivot with purpose: PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers, and timelines for dynamic reporting.
4. Tell the story: Thoughtful charts, conditional formats, and compact dashboards that surface the signal.
5. Connect data: Power Query for cleanup and shaping; Power Pivot for relationships and DAX measures.
6. Stay current: New functions land often—fold them into templates and retire old workarounds.

How to Display Microsoft Excel Skills on Your Resume

7. Project Management

Project management plans, executes, and steers work so scope, time, and budget hold—and outcomes don’t wobble.

Why It's Important

It organizes resources, aligns stakeholders, manages risk, and keeps delivery predictable. Operations breathe easier when projects land cleanly.

How to Improve Project Management Skills

1. Blend methodologies: Agile for discovery, waterfall for certainty, hybrid for the messy middle.
2. Adopt the right tools: Use software that matches team size and cadence; standardize workflows and views.
3. Sharpen soft skills: Clear communication, tough prioritization, calm escalation, and bias for action.
4. Plan for risk: Identify, score, own, and monitor risks; keep contingencies real, not theoretical.
5. Clarify ownership: RACI, decision logs, and crisp definitions of done to avoid drift.
6. Close the loop: Retrospectives and postmortems feed the next plan—lessons captured, not lost.
7. Grow credentials: Training and certifications (PMP, PRINCE2, Scrum) if they help your context and credibility.

How to Display Project Management Skills on Your Resume

8. Lean Six Sigma

Lean cuts waste. Six Sigma reduces variation. Together they deliver smoother processes and better quality at lower cost.

Why It's Important

Efficiency rises, defects fall, customers notice, margins improve. Discipline meets data, and operations get lighter and faster.

How to Improve Lean Six Sigma Skills

1. Train by doing: Green/Black Belt work on real projects; coach teams through DMAIC and kaizen.
2. Map the value stream: See the whole flow, then remove queues, rework, and handoffs that slow it down.
3. Standardize work: Clear SOPs, visual controls, and 5S so the baseline holds and improvements stick.
4. Instrument the process: Operational definitions, trustworthy data, control charts, and capability analysis.
5. Bring tech where it helps: Workflow tools, automation, and simple analytics to sustain gains.
6. Benchmark and share: Compare against peers and internal bests; publish results to build momentum.

How to Display Lean Six Sigma Skills on Your Resume

9. Agile Methodology

Agile is iterative delivery with tight feedback loops, cross-functional teamwork, and a sharp focus on customer value.

Why It's Important

Faster pivots, better alignment, more transparency. Work adapts to reality, not the other way around.

How to Improve Agile Methodology Skills

1. Strengthen collaboration: Daily communication, visible boards, and clear working agreements.
2. Relentless prioritization: Value-driven backlogs, limited WIP, and frequent reordering as facts change.
3. Shorten cycles: Smaller batches, frequent demos, and retros that actually change behavior.
4. Measure flow: Lead time, cycle time, throughput, and flow efficiency—optimize for smooth delivery.
5. Decentralize decisions: Empower the team closest to the work; escalate only what truly needs it.
6. Invest in coaching: Scrum Masters and Agile coaches to remove friction and model good practice.

How to Display Agile Methodology Skills on Your Resume

10. SQL

SQL manages and queries relational data—extract, transform, summarize, and safeguard the information decisions rely on.

Why It's Important

Direct access to data removes bottlenecks. Better questions, quicker answers, tighter operations.

How to Improve SQL Skills

1. Nail the fundamentals: SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, JOINs, subqueries, and window functions.
2. Practice with real data: Build queries that answer business questions; iterate until they’re fast and correct.
3. Model for clarity: Clean schemas, primary/foreign keys, and views that present data in business terms.
4. Optimize: Understand indexes, execution plans, common table expressions, and set-based thinking.
5. Harden safety: Role-based access, sanitized inputs, and audit trails where appropriate.
6. Bridge to BI: Use SQL to feed dashboards, KPIs, and self-service datasets without duplicating logic.

How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume

11. Power BI

Power BI turns disparate data into dashboards and reports with refreshes, row-level security, and shareable insight across the org.

Why It's Important

It standardizes reporting, shortens analysis time, and anchors data-driven decisions in one governed place.

How to Improve Power BI Skills

1. Model first: Star schemas, proper relationships, and clean column data types for speed and simplicity.
2. Write better DAX: Measures over calculated columns when possible; keep logic reusable and documented.
3. Optimize performance: Reduce cardinality, hide unused fields, incremental refresh, and query folding with Power Query.
4. Design for decisions: Focused layouts, slicers used sparingly, and consistent themes and KPI definitions.
5. Automate refresh: Reliable gateways, scheduled refreshes, and alerts so data is fresh when it matters.
6. Secure wisely: Row-level security roles, workspace governance, and clear ownership.
7. Standardize assets: Certified datasets and templates to prevent metric drift.

How to Display Power BI Skills on Your Resume

12. Jira

Jira is a work management and issue tracking platform for planning, tracking, and shipping projects with transparency.

Why It's Important

It structures tasks, surfaces blockers, and keeps teams aligned with real-time visibility—essential for operational cadence.

How to Improve Jira Skills

1. Shape workflows to reality: Statuses, transitions, and conditions that match how the team truly works.
2. Use fields wisely: Required fields and templates to capture context upfront and avoid churn.
3. Dashboards that matter: Filters, gadgets, and saved views for execs, managers, and squads—signal over noise.
4. Automate routine: Rules for auto-assign, status updates, SLAs, and notifications that help, not nag.
5. Integrate the toolchain: Connect docs, chat, code, and support systems so information flows.
6. Govern cleanly: Permissions, project templates, and naming standards to keep scale from getting messy.
7. Teach and tune: Onboard well, review usage, prune old projects, and iterate configurations.

How to Display Jira Skills on Your Resume