As a BA working for the software company, the BA must be 
knowledgeable of the Software Development Life Cycle 
(SDLC), which is the main activity of the software 
development company. Knowledge and experience of at least 
one particular industry (such as manufacturing or 
financial) is required to be able to coonect with the 
clients and understand their workflow and processes. In-
depth knowledge of software and hardware is not required, 
but a general understanding of their features is a must.
Given a client, the BA is responsible to research about the 
industry and the client company (services, processes, 
organizational hierarchy and general information) prior to 
meeting with the stakeholders (usually high level 
management). They may already have made a BRD (Business 
Requirement Document) which the BA may review prior to the 
meeting.

*** Note: The process after this requires a very lengthy 
discussion. I suggest you read articles about Business 
Analysis. A good website for that is www.batimes.com.