Saturday, May 30, 2015

Right Solution Alone Leads To Success…

Why right solution leads to business success? 
Time and again it has been emphasized that the value addition to your business is the key to your success, it means we need to check if the solution is right for the business. Earlier business solution and models based on the standard and proven parameters were not found successful on many occasions. The reason has been attributed to clinging of these companies to age old tracks and not thinking beyond...

The organization has to adopt a thorough professional approach in finding solutions to the problem areas. At the same time the solutions have to be right on their own and also on the whole. In short, the success of any project is directly proportional to the value additions and the values realized to the organisation…

Finding the right solutions and bringing value addition to the organization is the main task of a Business Analyst. The solutions cannot be generalized. He has to possess radical skills for solution implementation. A solution has to be exactly tailored to the problem at hand and is widely known as customization…A Business Analyst has to study the type of industry and the prevailing norms apart from aspects such as products and services. A synopsis of the operational structure of the organization and its customers are further tools for identification of the right solution.

There are many routes to success and value additions. They are like desires. We have a world of things we desire but the success comes only with the need for analytical approach. The thought process starts with a showcase full of desires. For example, a travel portal wants to have seat selection as a requirement at the initial stage where as Business Analyst will have to make the client/stakeholder understand that it is a ‘desire’ or future requirement ie once the travel portal is built and implemented successfully in the production environment and they can take the ‘desire’ category requirement to enhance their solution in future. This way the solution building and implementation can be managed in scheduled cost and time.


Thought process then moves to maturity and leads to a need. The need to prune confusing expenses results in a study leading to analysis and finally the right solution. The process is both intelligent and effective in modern times.


Once the right solution is in place and the process gets implemented, the burden of escalating costs recede just because the eyes are set on the end effect and an assurance of positive value addition to the organization. This quantum is much more than the added burden sustained…

Business Analysts need to showcase the value addition brought by their skills. It is the Business Analyst who has the upbeat skills to understand the inputs and deliverables applicable to individual client or customer. This alone can bring the desired success and true business value to any organization through the right solutions prescribed...

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Feasibility Study in Business analysis

How we approach the problem or opportunity is the content of our business solution. Whether or not it is feasible is a separate matter. It goes without saying, therefore, that prior to initiating any business plan an assessment of its feasibility is a must.

Simply put, the term ‘feasibility’ refers to the goal which is achievable along vital parameters such as market readiness, customer acceptance, technical compatibility with the existing internal as well as external systems and other technologies integrated with the solutions such as GPS or RFID etc.

To illustrate, any kind of online transaction business over a decade ago would be tricky terrain. Few people had credit cards. Secondly, there were no payment gateways (service providers to e-commerce business to receive the customer payment on their behalf). Besides, the internet was unchartered territory and banks were reluctant to share their data online or any third party payment service providers. The copyright and infringement laws were not as strict, nor were there any state of the art security solutions to guarantee customer privacy.

Today, however, setting up online business in is definitely feasible and doable. The democratization of the credit card, the support of the latest technology to secure the solution and stringent rules has made it feasible.

Another example GPS enable the real time delivery status and can provide additional required data. In the past, transportation of frozen or perishable goods was a risky business. Whereas advanced solution enabled with GPS not only allows the company to monitor the real time vehicle moments but also allows checking the temperature of frozen good inside the truck and issue the instructions to the driver if required.
Apart from operational feasibility--costs incurred in training/recruiting the additional staff to run the solution as well as setting up infrastructure, a study of whether/not it is worthwhile to spend an x amount of time on the said project (schedule and time feasibility) is essential.  For example, if something is going to be deployable only after five years hence, is it worth the effort as risk of unpredictable future of that solution at that time?

Another question to be answered is: does this solution conform to the existing culture within the organization? Is it likely to alter mindsets---and in what direction?
Last but not the least, the solution must be in sync with the laws and a process (Legal and Compliance) of the land is imperative.


Returns on Investment—both tangible and intangible determine the value of the business solution. More details in the next article.

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5 myth about Business Analysis

Having interacted with several Business Analysts during my years in the Investment Banking industry, I find that only a very few really understand the intricacies of Business Analysis.

I am therefore proceeding to share a few myths and facts around it.

1. Domain knowledge is secondary
Domain knowledge is the most important factor. However, Business Analysts belonging to a technical background often feel that domain or business knowledge isn't that important in effective discharge of their role. Well, that’s completely untrue. IT solutions are only meant to facilitate in improving the overall business. Therefore, Business Analysts must first thoroughly attempt to understand the business before offering any solutions.

If a Business Analyst barely grasps intricacies of his domain, how will he either make suggestions to improve the business processes or launch new products?

2. Tools are more important
Tools are important as they help in creation of artefacts in a comprehensible format. Diagrams or pictorial representations help us to better understand complex requirements or processes. We are all aware that client or business side professionals usually avail of commonly available tools such as MSOffice, Share Point, MS Project, Visio and at times Business Object for fulfilling their requirements as information technology not being their core business only serves to act as a facilitator. However, vendors such an IT company, usually have most advanced tools and technology at their disposal in order to manage projects in their realm.

Analysts must, therefore, either focus on tools that are easily available to their stakeholders or convert any artefact into an easily and widely shared file.

For instance, the 19th century Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy writing on paper cannot be superior to a novelist writing on an iPad. At the end of the day, it is the story and its presentation that matter. Of course, technology does play a role in movie making business when sophisticated CGI (computer generated imagery) is used to bring even the hitherto unthinkable images alive on the silver screen.

3. Stakeholders hate new ideas
Business Analyst must understand a stakeholders’ point of view. Any drastic overhaul might only serve to jeopardise well entrenched processes.

4. Technical knowledge is must
Technical know-how is essential. We need to understand what a programmer is doing or how he is she or he working to incorporate your requirement. However, we need not step on to their role and do it ourselves as that will only culminate in your rubbing everyone else around you in a wrong way.

5. Requirement specifications for generating reports must commence development work starts.
No, that usually starts with a business needs documents. It gradually enriches and evolves through discussion held in the initial phases (requirement elicitation and management phases) of the of project life. Although it is completed before a solution is validated before development, it is an ongoing process where requirement is identified through discussions.

It is a fact that what we visualise initially will change to create a clear demarcation between estimation and actual.

I have many more examples up my sleeve. But for a start, these are good enough to start exploring new dimensions in order to broaden your thought process.

Good Luck!

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Friday, May 29, 2015

Writing a Business Case

A Business Case is the key document for obtaining approval for funding before starting on a new venture. Work on the document begins once business needs, including problem and opportunities, are clearly identified and elaborated upon.

Who prepares it?
Stakeholder: At times she or he actively contributes to reviewing and validating solutions based on the business case and requirement documents.

Business Analyst: Actively writes the Business Case or facilitates a person working on it.

Project Manager: Facilitates writing of the document by providing data to calculate development and maintenance costs of the end-solution.

Finance Department: Actively participates in creating the Business Case when funding is from an external source/s. It is also involved in reviewing and validating the same to examine feasibility of any new initiative before approving funds.

Business Owners: Proactively work on new initiative when funding is through external sources such as bank or investors.

Executive: A person seeking approval for internal or external funding for a new initiative.

Time for a quick look at what matters and what doesn’t while preparing a Business Case:

Purpose: Most importantly, understand the rationale behind your Business Case in order to remain focused while hard selling it. When you do that, it helps you in presenting and convincing management on investment on new projects or initiatives.

What should you focus on?
 - Identifying genuine stakeholders in order to obtain accurate data from to prepare the Business Case;

- Never lose sight of your initiative;

- Check feasibility;

- Calculate and validate Cost vs. Benefit analysis, and

- Be prepared with supporting documents related to your previous projects in order to consolidate you case.

Stakeholder Analysis:
- Identify your stakeholder.

- Document stakeholder information such as their roles, responsibilities, skill sets, special attributes, authority level, attitude regarding project and influence within their organisation. Such information will come in handy when you proceed to both define scope and collating data from respective roles in order to validate your Business Case.

Such stakeholders will contribute to reviewing and validating solutions through development and implementation, as well as creative successful collaboration among various teams.

Correct picture of Initiative
More colours can be added to the Business Case as per requirements of business data and stakeholders.

Thereinafter, it’s over to the project manager, who provides total cost of the project and its ownership including:

- Development Cost;
- Maintenance Cost, including technical support required to sustain the project that could either be outsourced or handled by an internal IT team;
- Hardware and software costs;
- Staffing cost, and
- Operational cost, which includes infrastructure for running a project.

Check Feasibility:
- Strategic fit for the organisation in-line with its vision statement or overall organisational culture.
- Technical fit, and if not, how much additional cost it would that entail.
- Financial fit in terms of being economically viable for the present organisational status. And if not, what options does the organisation have within reach?

Cost vs. Benefit Analysis

Cost
Tangible Costs
- Developing an existing project or working on new initiatives
- Employee training on a product or new initiative
- New user cost
- Hardware and infrastructure costs
- Software (operating system, security licenses, etc.)
- Relocation cost, as and when required
- Operational cost

Intangible Costs
- Disruption caused to any existing process or business while implementing a new solution.
- Recruitment and induction of new users.
- Any additional cost not covered here.

Benefits
Tangible
- Reduction in staffing cost
- Reduced in rental and operational costs
- Automation helps in improving quality by bringing down possibility of human error and enhancing turnaround time.
- Reduction in inventory
- Reduction in miscellaneous costs

Intangible
- Enhancement in business image with improvement in quality of products and services offered
- Increased customer satisfaction with better products and faster response
- Rise in employee satisfaction with reduction of repetitive work.
- Better management information system
- Improvement in presentation
- Better and faster corporate communication

Risk Analysis
- Identify risk based on previous success rate in similar projects or initiatives.
- Identify risk mitigation strategies
- Explore all viable options before short listing prospective vendors
- Update Cost vs. Benefit  as well as Risk Analysis documents throughout projects to mitigate risk.
Based on the above strategies, a business analyst or business owner can factor in ROI (Return on Investment), PV (Present Value), NPV (Net Present Value), FV (Future Value),  NFV (Net Future Value) and breakeven point to support her or his Business Case.

 In summary, the proposal must be factual, logical, doable and profitable.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

The importance of data repository in impact analysis.

Handling the change in business processes is one of the most difficult tasks faced by the large corporates, as the impact of change is unpredicted even after the change management team follows the standard process diligently to measure the impact of change in business process. Thus, making it more tedious and time consuming leading to the competitive disadvantage over small companies. On other hand, the small companies, including start-up have advantage of being agile in handling their business process changes effectively and creating a sizeable hole in their competitors who are large businesses providing combined and complex business solution. Although not noticeable initially, but it is creating an impact slowly and steadily. For example, mobile app companies or crow-funding companies are making their presence felt against large corporations.

The process would be less challenging, if the current common practice of using a commercial tool that uses fragmented data on change history to measure the impact for a change in business process were done comprehensively. For that, the common practice of maintaining the impact data as part of project files categorized under change management or requirement management and/or configuration management needs to be changed. Because, analyst or concern person who is incorporating the impact data in the analysis is mostly retrieving and processing it in manual or semi-automated way mostly using latest few versions based on analysts’ analytical ability and business expertise’s recommendations. The manual retrieval and large data in impact analysis could lead to an uncertain situation or incorrect result in future.

However, considering the frequency and urgency of change implantation in business-IT process, it would be recommended to use the automated tool to create a repository of change and compute its impact analysis to deal with fast paced dynamic business environment to stay ahead in the competition.

There is a real need for a tool that can provide a repository of complex mathematical calculation, business process and complete history of impact of changes to predict the impact in future change using various mathematical and technical calculations based historical data on change management. In addition, it can also use the human the ‘human workflow’, dealing with roles, task, emergencies, and exception related details for decision-making process and product life cycle (single and collaborative), virtualization mark-up, and collaboration internal and external business data for creative effective engineering for change management process.

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