Many organizations are cutting back on new technology investments in 2009 and you may be wondering what to do with the surplus of business analysts you have on staff to support project work. A BA with exceptional knowledge of the business and strong analysis skills is a valuable asset to your organization. Consider refocusing their efforts instead of a layoff. Selected carefully, temporary reassignments can broaden your employee’s experience while making a direct contribution to cost-cutting and revenue generation goals.
Here’s a list of assignments you may want to consider for your organization and discuss with your BAs.
Find efficiencies. Set your BA on a path to look for ways your organization can save money. They probably have the detailed business and system knowledge to propose many ideas on their own, but they also have relationships across the organization that they can use to vet their ideas. Set targets for reducing printing costs or saving energy and task the BA for finding solutions, implementing changes, and measuring the results.
Participate in sales activities. Is your organization focused on sales in 2009? Consider having your BAs help your sales team on calls with potential clients. A BA’s detailed knowledge of your products and systems might just help seal a deal with a particularly challenging client and this experience will provide them with a new appreciation for the customer’s point of view.
Re-evaluate vendor contracts. Take this time to review the contracts you have in place with vendors, ensuring you are leveraging everything you are paying for or looking for ways to save money during the next renegotiation.
Conduct ROI analyses on all new projects. If you don’t have a comprehensive system in place for evaluating new project opportunities, you’ll need one to inform the prioritization of your now limited technology dollars. Develop a program for predicting and measuring ROI.
Conduct a competitive analysis. This may be taken care of by another department, but if not it’s an interesting assignment for a BA. Take the time to really dig into the details of your competitor’s products and do a thorough comparison.
Define the business architecture. You want to do it but there never seems to be the time. Use this opportunity to fully define and evaluate your business architecture.
Conduct a current capabilities assessment. Do you have undocumented systems? This can be a huge liability. Conducting a full assessment of your current capabilities can make your existing technology assets more valuable in the eyes of a potential investor. You might also turn up new opportunities to leverage what you already have to cut costs or drive revenue. Good documentation and a shared understanding of system functionality will position you to more efficiently build on that functionality during your next project.
Document existing business processes. Are your current processes documented? Have they been reviewed recently for opportunities to improve in efficiency or potential value adds for your customers? A downtime in new project work is an ideal time to re-evaluate how you run your business and a good BA can step up to this challenge, either by leading the project or facilitating many of the discussions.
Build an organization-wide project list. Think outside the typical technology project list and inventory all initiatives across departments. Build intelligible reports that show how these efforts are driving the business forward.
All too often we miss out on opportunities to refocus our staff in difficult times. In many cases, it will be a better business decision to keep a top-notch, dedicated employee than to make a cut. Be upfront, describe the situation, and look for opportunities. And, of course, don’t hesitate to let the employee bring new opportunities to you as well. And if you are a BA and sensing a downturn in your typical project work, be proactive and flexible. Propose one or more of these ideas to your manager and discuss how you can best serve the current organizational focus.
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By Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is an independent business analyst consultant. She is passionate about the BA profession and is committed to contributing by supporting this blog as a forum for business analysts to build on each other's experiences. View more blog posts by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg |
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Laura,
Great thoughts on how the business analyst can provide value to the organization.
Regardless of economic conditions – the bottom line is: the business analyst must provide value! So you must find ways to provide real value, which can be measured in dollars, you should not be affected by the current downturn.
And even if you are, you can take your expertise and value-centric business analysis approach to somebody else who wants to save money or increase revenue.
- Adrian
Of course I am not impartial when it comes to keeping BAs employed, but I do think these are excellent suggestions.
It seems that once project work has started everyone is always in catch-up mode, which leaves organizations open to making mistakes or overlooking important issues.
Organizations that employ your suggestions would be better prepared to initiate new projects that increase ROI.
Hi, I think a key skill to pick up that can help a lot of your suggestions is Six Sigma for process improvement and defect reduction. I need to dust off my green belt myself and put it to good use…