Business analysis is about improving business performance. It is the foundation for innovation, business agility, cost reduction, cyber security, and risk control. Exceptional business analysis delivers better products and/or services to your customers, often through leveraging digital technology. We use business analysis as a framework for solving business problems and capitalizing on opportunities – enabling business to turn ideas to revenue, strategy to customer service, vision to product, & strategy to implementation. Business Analysts have this capability because we are highly competent at establishing traceability, backwards & forwards.
“Increased ROI: Business analysis keeps the focus on the value delivery to the customer. Enabling organisations to better define products with business analysis to deliver the right outcome that meets customers needs and eliminate requirements with minimal value.
Increased success rate: 71% of failed software projects can be traced to poor requirements – CIO Magazine, 2006. Mitigate the risk of failed initiatives with business analysis throughout all planning levels and prioritise implementation of requirements with the most potential benefit to the customer.
Reduced costs: Better defining the product and focus on the right requirements eliminates unnecessary changes or rework with logical and orderly decision-making, tailoring and aligning solutions to the business or customer needs.
Gain competitive advantage: Accelerate product delivery and be the first to market to gain market share by creating a clear roadmap from the current to future states and building a consensus among stakeholders”. IIBA
Exceptional business analysis helps organisations improve business performance!
Every organisation – For Profit, Not for Profit and Government Agency performs business analysis! Everyone performs business analysis! However, everyone does not have the skill, tools, methods, experience, certification and competency of an exceptional Business Analyst (BA).
BA’s are Consultants or Management Consultants who deliver business analysis value through professional advice about how improve a company or organisation efficiency.
BA’s are a cross between a forensic analyst and a translator working between business and technical solutions to improve problems or take advantage of opportunities which improves business performance.
An exceptional Business Analyst performs elicitation, analysis, specification and managing requirements effortlessly somehow sorting the “wood from the trees” to enable stakeholders (business and technical) to make informed decisions which improves business performance.
Tracing is key to business analysis, if you can’t trace both forward and backwards then you cannot see all the moving parts and determine solution options. This is my top skill for any person performing business analysis.
A Business Analyst should be independent from managing or being accountable for the customer journey processes. Analysed and synthesised options to “c” level or middle management has to be independent so that innovation & thinking differently can prevail.
Management Consultants typically use a preparatory method however BA’s have an open source method which is a the IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge BABOK or The PMI Guide to Business Analysis.
Effective Business Analysts engage and empower stakeholders, allowing them to find better ways to deliver outcomes and value to customers.
Here’s the thing about exceptional business analysis
Business Analysts help your company to think about the “why” before going ahead with an investment which will help prevent technology initiatives from providing little or no value to your organisation.
Here’s an example of exceptional business analysis. A client sought a solution to manage their approval process and documents. These were associated with their major energy capital projects, having a value of up to $100 million.
We analysed the business process automation, mapped the future state processes, and explored the business and functional requirements through a series of stakeholder workshops. This was achieved by using aspects of our methodology and customising templates from our Business Analysis Centre of Excellence (BACOE) https://www.business-analysis.com.au/ba-portal/
Based on these documented processes and requirements, we developed an automated workflow solution.
The outcomes of the process automation solution were:
- increased consistency of the approval process
- an automated audit trail for the approvals
- an increase in document tracking, resulting in a greater efficiency with approvals
- reduced time spent on approvals by eliminating manual approvals
- reduced resource wastage on printing
In the final analysis, we found that by minimising the delays for approvals, this reduced the external contract resources required for approval processes. Within six months, the cost of developing the solution was paid for by the benefits of the automated workflow.
An exceptional Business Analyst requires a unique skillset that many senior executives have never experienced. However, you need to engage in proper business analysis to provide a greater chance of transformation success.
As increasingly competitive organisations look to become more innovative to survive and prosper with technology, business analysis is critical.
If you want to deliver better products & services to customers, then increase your business analysis capability now!
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