Tag: Business Analysis

The Pitfalls Of Efficiency: Process Improvement Is A Balancing Act

Written by Adrian Reed on April 24, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Business analysis work often involves improving processes. This might include simplification of a process, reengineering or automation. When used well, IT can be used to enhance (or even completely rethink) a process. The ideal outcome is to design a process that is quicker, more convenient and more cost-effective than what it replaces.

When aiming for efficiency, it’s important to ask “for whom are we optimizing this process?”. This might sound like an odd question to ask, but often there’s a fine balancing act. A process that appears very efficient for a company might actually be very inefficient and inconvenient for its customers. Standardizing a procurement process might create internal efficiencies for the company involved, but might place additional work on the company’s suppliers.

An Example: “No Reply” Secure Email

I was recently a customer of a company that would send correspondence via secure email. I’d receive a notification via regular email, and I’d then need to log in to the company’s secure email portal to read what they had sent me. This was fine, except the emails they sent were all from a ‘no reply’ address. While the secure email system they had implemented literally had a ‘reply’ button, there was a disclaimer on every email they sent which said “don’t reply, as we won’t read what you send us” (OK, it wasn’t that blunt, but you get the idea!).

This led to the crazy situation where the only way of replying to their secure emails was to either call via phone (and queue for 45 minutes), or put a reply in the mail.

This is an example of a situation where convenience and savings are predominantly biased towards the company, with some minor benefit for the customer. Prior to sending secure email, they would put correspondence in the regular mail. Moving this to an electronic platform presumably saves in printing, postage and stamps. It’s of marginal benefit to customers too, as they receive correspondence quicker (providing they look at their email regularly).

But the real customer benefit would have been to be able to correspond and reply with the company via secure email. Ironically, by implementing the solution the way that they did I suspect their ‘no reply’ mailbox is actually full of replies from customers who didn’t read their disclaimer!

There is no “right”, it’s a balance

As a customer, I found the situation frustrating, but there is no inherent or universal ‘right’ answer here. It might be that the company in question had deliberately chosen not to accept incoming secure email for compliance reasons, or perhaps they feared they’d be flooded with lots of customer inquiries as they are now ‘too easy’ to contact (although I’d argue that if this is the case then there’s probably a bigger root cause they ought to be contending with!).

The point here is that it should be a conscious balancing act. It is all too easy to create a situation that is more efficient for one group of stakeholders, but actually worse for another. An employer who decides to streamline their process for employees who need to claim travel expenses might decide that they can save time if they ask their employees to input more data at the time they submit their claim. If they get the employee to select where the expense was incurred, the amount of sales tax that was included in the expense, the category of cost and so forth, then this saves time later. Yet an employee who isn’t a tax expert might find this frustrating (“Is train travel exempt, or zero-rated for sales tax?”). Of course, in reality this will likely affect the quality of data too, as people try their best (but don’t know which of the different tax code options to choose).

This is a specific example, but it highlights a wider point: it’s important to consider process improvements from the perspectives of the stakeholders impacted. This involves considering what efficiency as well as effectiveness looks like for each key group.

As with so much in business analysis, stakeholder identification, engagement and empathy is key!

Beyond Frameworks: Agile Insights from a BA’s Odyssey

Written by Afaq Qazi on April 18, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Reflecting on my journey from a Junior Business Analyst to a seasoned Business Analyst and eventually evolving into a role where Business Analysis and Product Management intersect, I’ve had the privilege to contribute to organizations as diverse as Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and EPAM, alongside navigating the unique challenges of smaller entities.

This path, spanning over 13 years and multiple domains, has equipped me with a deep understanding of Business Analysis from the grassroots, teaching me the crucial balance between adhering to frameworks and embracing the agility necessary for today’s dynamic business environment. This narrative is an exploration of that journey, emphasizing the transition from rigid methodologies to agile adaptability, and the critical importance of customer focus and stakeholder management.

In the early stages of my career, the allure of frameworks was undeniable. They presented a structured way of understanding Business Analysis and Product Management, offering a semblance of control and predictability in the chaotic realm of project management.

However, as I progressed, the limitations of these frameworks became increasingly apparent. The real-world application of Business Analysis goes beyond the confines of any framework. It demands an acute awareness of the shifting business landscape and the ability to think on one’s feet—a blend of deep analytical thinking and pragmatic street smarts.

This evolution in perspective was mirrored in my approach to project management. Initially, my focus was on mastering the technical aspects: understanding the ‘what’ and ‘why’ to navigate towards solutions and create value for users. Yet, I quickly learned that the essence of effective Business Analysis lies in the ability to communicate, adapt, and understand the broader business context—skills that are foundational yet flourish only with experience and deliberate practice.

Communication emerged as the cornerstone of my professional development. The capacity to engage with a diverse set of stakeholders—customers, engineers, designers, and executives—and synthesize their insights is paramount. It’s a skill that goes beyond mere articulation; it’s about understanding the audience, choosing the right words, and effectively conveying complex ideas in a manner that resonates.

This skill set has been instrumental in navigating the complexities of projects, ensuring alignment across teams, and driving towards common goals with clarity and purpose.

As I embraced the agile methodology, the importance of flexibility became glaringly evident. Agile is not just a buzzword; it’s a mindset that values adaptability, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement.

It challenged me to think differently about project management, to be more iterative in my approach, and to prioritize direct feedback loops with stakeholders and customers. This agility has been crucial in climbing the project ladder, allowing for rapid pivots and adjustments in response to new insights or changing market dynamics.

Customer focus and stakeholder management have been the bedrock of my growth as a Business Analyst. Recognizing the criticality of these aspects, I’ve dedicated myself to becoming adept at navigating the complex web of stakeholder relationships and ensuring that the voice of the customer is always at the forefront of decision-making. This has involved honing my ability to manage expectations, articulate value propositions clearly, and foster an environment of trust and collaboration.

In retrospect, the journey from adhering strictly to frameworks to adopting a more flexible, agile approach has been transformative. It has taught me that while frameworks provide valuable guidance, the essence of Business Analysis and Product Management lies in the ability to adapt, communicate effectively, and maintain a relentless focus on the customer and business objectives.

As I continue to navigate this ever-evolving landscape, these insights will remain central to my approach, guiding my decisions and actions in the pursuit of creating meaningful, impactful solutions.

4 Tips for Managing Ambiguity as a Business Analyst

Written by Giorgos Sioutzos on April 17, 2024. Posted in Articles.

As a business analyst, it is common to face ambiguity in many different forms and aspects. It may be the ambiguity of the business analysis approach you have chosen, the requirements, or the design decisions that you have to contribute to.

Ambiguity and constant changes are something that is expected. It’s up to you to respond constructively. The following tips may help:

#1- Approve Ambiguity

Although you may want to have full control over the circumstances, it will not happen. It may take time and changes in order to establish a business analysis approach to customers’ needs or understand the full aspects of the system to be developed. It is fine not to have the full picture from the beginning of the analysis journey, but it is your job to progressively clear out the context and the scope. Approve the ambiguity of the intrinsic part of the analysis.

#2- Mindset Shift

Ambiguity can cause plenty of negative thoughts and worries. Instead of entering into a negative, endless dialogue, try to view ambiguity as an opportunity for new approaches, for innovation, and for gaining experience. Ambiguity can cause team members frustration and challenges, as the situations triggering it are mostly out of our control. It is important to reframe biassed thinking patterns concerning ambiguity into positive ones.

#3- Utilizing Effective Risk Response Strategies

As a business analyst, you should cooperate with the project manager to recognize factors and assumptions that can affect the business analysis objectives. You have to understand the sources of the risk and craft alternatives you can use if those risks actually occur. Whether you are a lead business analyst or other team member, your ability to identify and respond to risks effectively will affect the team’s ability to successfully complete project tasks.

#4 – Have a Compass

Having a specific compass for ambiguous situations is essential to guiding your decisions and actions. Orienting yourself and leading your team through a period of ambiguity can be supported by a stable and valuable foundation of personal and organizational vision, mission goals, and objectives. Knowing at any time why you are doing something and what you want to achieve and being true to yourself and your team can guide you as the North Stare in unpredictable and chaotic situations.

By viewing ambiguity as an opportunity, you can reduce the stress imposed by an ambiguous situation, experiment with new processes and ideas, and develop your team members. Identifying a goal or value that can be used as a “compass” can contribute to avoiding actions and behaviours you will regret later.

How AI will Affect Business Analysis in 2024

Written by Shaz Shafiq on April 4, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been making waves in the field of technology, and experts firmly believe that it will continue to grow in 2024. AI has become an integral part of our daily lives, manifesting through voice assistants for customer service, chatbots, market trend prediction, proactive identification of potential health issues, and other such things. In recent times, businesses have increasingly embraced AI to enhance their efficiency and secure a competitive advantage. That is why the importance of artificial intelligence is being taught in business analyst courses.

AI is transforming the business landscape, playing a pivotal role in boosting growth and operational efficiency. It has evolved into a formidable ally, assisting businesses to get data-driven insights, optimize processes, and enhance decision-making capabilities. Once a blurry science fiction vision, AI has become a necessity for modern businesses. Its journey from just a theoretical groundwork in the mid-20th century to corporate boardrooms in 2024 has been astonishing. But how will it affect business analysis and the jobs of professionals in the future?

Well it is reported by Goldman Sachs that Ai could potentially replace 300 million full time jobs world wide.

The good news is Business Analysis as a job cannot be replaced with Ai, but the job can be supplemented with Ai.

The reason for this is, business analysts help organizations effectively implement change initiatives, the biggest change since the emergence of the internet has been the use of Ai, which is set to disrupt many markets. In order for organisations to stay competitive, organisations will have to implement the changes to their processes and embed the wave of Ai, and which role in particular helps organisations implement change? Business Analysts!

Let’s now delve into AI’s role in business analysis and how things will unfold.

Enhanced Data Analysis

AI is capable of processing complex data in large volumes and at a high speed. This will lead to more accurate business insights in less time. AI-powered text analytics tools can quickly analyze unstructured data like social media comments or customer reviews, which will provide valuable insights into customer preferences and sentiment. This allows businesses to make more informed decisions, increasing productivity.

Predictive Analytics

The adoption of AI for predictive analytics is now widespread in the realm of business intelligence. Companies, both large and small, are leveraging AI models to swiftly analyze various data sets, such as sales, customer information, and marketing data. This utilization of AI empowers businesses to proactively anticipate market trends, understand customer behaviors, and identify potential risks.

While predictive analytics has been a part of business strategies for as long as data has been collected, the integration of AI has revolutionized the process. This foresight becomes instrumental in guiding strategic decisions and enhancing the overall efficiency of business analysis procedures.

Automation of Routine Tasks

AI is poised to automate routine and repetitive tasks in business analysis, thereby reducing errors, enhancing efficiency, and liberating human resources. This, in turn, enables business analysts to concentrate on more intricate and strategic facets of their work. The automated tasks encompass processes like data collection and report generation, which, when handled by AI, release valuable time for value-added analysis.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

AI-powered NLP will allow business analysts to interact with data using natural language. It means that users with business analyst certification as well as non-technical users will find it easier to understand and access complex datasets. This will lead to collaboration between different departments within an organization.

Personalized Business Insights

AI will allow the customization of business insights based on individual user needs. Analysts can receive tailored recommendations and reports, improving the relevance and applicability of the information provided. AI facilitates a highly personalized customer experience by sifting through customer data in large volumes, including purchase history, browsing patterns, and social media behavior. This capacity for thorough analysis helps businesses recognize individual customer preferences, thus tailoring their interactions and recommendations to cater to these specific tastes and requirements.

Improved Decision Support Systems

AI-driven decision support systems are likely to have a great impact and become integral to business analysis. These systems can process large volumes of data, assess various scenarios, and recommend optimal decisions. This will provide valuable guidance to business analysts and decision-makers.

Real-time Analytics

AI will enhance business analysis through real-time analytics capabilities. By leveraging AI technologies, businesses can access the most up-to-date information, empowering them to make informed decisions promptly. The significance of this real-time capability cannot be overstated, especially in the dynamic landscape of market changes. With AI-driven real-time analytics, businesses can respond swiftly to emerging trends, evolving customer behaviors, and market fluctuations, thereby staying competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. This proactive approach to data analysis ensures that businesses are not only informed but also well-positioned to adapt and thrive in the face of constant change.

Advanced Pattern Recognition

AI’s advanced pattern recognition capabilities will enhance the detection of subtle trends and anomalies in data. This can be especially valuable in identifying emerging opportunities or potential risks that might go unnoticed with traditional analysis methods. Whether you have completed your business analyst training or not, the AI can make your task a lot easier and accurate.

Improve Risk Management & Fraud Detection

AI algorithms are designed in such a way that they can autonomously interpret and analyze even the most complex financial data. This allows them to uncover hidden patterns and irregularities that might indicate fraudulent activity. By leveraging natural language processing, data analytics, and machine learning techniques, AI systems can process large volumes of structured and unstructured data, find outliers, and generate actionable insights quickly. This approach empowers businesses, and financial institutions in particular, to detect fraudulent activities early and implement appropriate strategies to minimize the risk.

AI for Business Analyst in 2024: A Great Tool, Not a Replacement

The notion of AI making business analysts obsolete looks unlikely when considering the unique value that these professionals bring to organizations, a dimension that artificial intelligence struggles to replicate. Business analysts play a pivotal role in eliciting, prioritizing, and refining requirements in collaboration with stakeholders—a task that involves nuanced understanding and interpersonal skills that AI currently lacks.

Furthermore, business analysts serve as a crucial bridge between the business and its IT team, ensuring seamless communication and alignment of objectives. Their ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders is not only about conveying information but also about fostering relationships and steering projects towards their goals. This human touch is indispensable in complex organizational dynamics.

The proficiency of business analysts in understanding the end-to-end processes that they learn during business analyst programs, is a multifaceted skill that AI has yet to master. This involves a deep comprehension of organizational intricacies and the ability to navigate the complexities of both the business and technology realms.

Equally significant is the creative problem-solving approach that business analysts bring to the table. While AI excels in data-driven tasks and pattern recognition, the intuitive and creative thinking required for innovative problem-solving is a distinctively human trait that currently eludes artificial intelligence.

In short, the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of business analysts, encompassing collaboration, communication, understanding of business processes, and creative problem-solving, collectively form a skill set that AI, in its current state, cannot replicate. The symbiotic relationship between AI and human professionals, where each leverages its unique strengths, is likely to persist, ensuring the continued relevance and indispensability of business analysts in the foreseeable future.

Take Away

The profound impact of AI on business analysis is evident. The integration of AI technologies is revolutionizing the industry by automating routine tasks, enabling real-time analytics, and providing customized insights. This transformative shift not only enhances efficiency but also empowers business analysts to delve into more strategic aspects of their work.

The ability of AI to adapt to market changes swiftly ensures businesses remain competitive in the ever-evolving market. The use of AI in business analysis promises not just data-driven decision-making but a major change in how organizations leverage information for growth and innovation. The journey into the future of business analysis is undeniably shaped by the capabilities AI brings to the table.

Web 3.0: The Future of Process Catalogue Management?

Written by Adam Pearson on March 27, 2024. Posted in Articles.

Web 3.0 technology, in my view, can be used for new innovations and has the ability to deliver positive change quicker. Specifically, Blockchain technology could allow for a transparent, automatic and secure way to manage a business’ process catalogue.

Traditionally, when analysing processes things like Upper/Lower Specified Limits, Service Level Agreements, and Defects Per Million Opportunities are used to understand whether a process is performing satisfactorily. This requires a BA to take measurements, validate them and then work with the business to pivot the process back to delivering the agreed standard. The typical business trigger event for this is either automatic or internal– it requires a BA to pick up during routine quality testing, or an actor to notice and raise through an agreed mechanism. This is because the process infrastructure is basically storage; it could be coined as “static management”. This means things can be missed, as humans make mistakes and the data does not work for the business, rather the business works for the data.

There have been recent advancements in technology, namely Web 3.0, which can reduce or potentially eliminate the human error element and turn the process catalogue into a dynamic storage, in which the data works for the business. In particular, Blockchain technology offers several features that could transform the way we work.

A Blockchain has several features, such as: Nodes, Ledger, and Wallets. Nodes are users/devices that hold the ledger, in full or in part. The Ledger is the record of transactions that happen across the blockchain and wallets are areas, in crypto blockchains, where the cryptocurrencies are stored.

At a first glance, this ecosystem seems locked to currencies, I believe it can be adapted to handle processes. Each process would need to be broken down into its steps and identified by its inputs/outputs and business actors. This dataset is then integrated into a blockchain – with each block containing the data from a single process step. In terms of a traditional process map, the block is the process step and the transaction is the connector lines between two process steps. In process terms it would be Step, Connector, Step; in blockchain terms it would be Block, Transaction, Block.

When the process is run, new unique blocks are added to the chain with the details of that unique process step run, which are then linked to further blocks/steps via transactions, providing a completely transparent and auditable record.

This setup has an infrastructure advantage because a blockchain validates transactions through decentralisation, using other blocks already in the chain. It means process rules are embedded in a chain from existing blocks and are then used to validate new blocks, resulting in a guaranteed uniformed process run, as the blockchain would only validate the transactions in accordance with the blocks already there.

The blockchain allows for easy performance monitoring, as each block is recorded with management information as well as process information and this is all in one place, it is easy for an analyst to calculate run times, business actor performance on individual or multiple transactions and process efficiencies.

Once an improvement is identified, the process is updated and released onto the blockchain, then becoming the single-source-of-truth for transaction validation, therefore only allowing the most up-to-date process to be followed by business actors. In this sense, the blockchain is both the governing authority as well as storage for processes.

The problem with this is that it is still reliant on humans picking up on the fact that a process is not performing, so whilst we have an enforceable process level to six sigma, we do not have the benefit of removing the human error or time lag associated with a drop in process performance.

This can be resolved using a feature of a blockchain called a smart contract. Smart contracts are automated digital contracts which trigger when the terms and conditions of that contract are met. There is an equivalent document in the business world, which sets out an agreement between two parties to perform in a particular way or to a particular standard under particular terms – a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

The smart contract is the Web 3.0 equivalent to the SLA. However, a smart contract offers much more than just an agreement, it self-executes which means as soon as the terms are met, action is taken with virtually no time lag.

The smart contract is created using an if/when then statement. An example smart contract can be if a customer makes an enquiry and no one contacts the customer in 3 working days, then an escalation notice is sent to the assigned persons manager. As this is automated, as soon as the condition is met, the contract is acted upon – meaning management do not have to spend time reviewing whether the conditions within SLAs, making both service and personal performance management easier.

There are, however, some issues with blockchains which need further consideration to overcome: a large number of transactions can cause lag on the chain, due to the required effort to process them all, meaning slower transaction times. It may mean that this model is best suited to small startups/businesses. Blockchain technology is still new, and therefore is not thoroughly regulated yet, meaning it can be difficult to fit in with current governance structures. This can be tackled by robust risk management and future legislation or policies, meaning this model may be suited to an innovator type business.

In summary, Web 3.0 Blockchains can offer improvements to the operation, governance and management of processes. By leveraging features of blockchains, it’s possible to move from a static process catalogue to a dynamic, automatic and smart infrastructure which reacts quicker to changes in business environments, freeing up staff to find other efficiencies or grow the business in other ways. While there are concerns and issues around things like scalability and regulations, it is clear that Web 3.0 technologies can offer new and exciting opportunities.