Stratevolve

Our expertise includes assisting clients to better leverage IT and disruptive technologies to gain competitive advantage and reduce cost. We have skills and experience in aligning business strategies with major IT replacement or enhancement initiatives, including migration of legacy systems to ERP packaged software solutions.

Stratevolve business analysts act as a liaison between the business and its needs, and technology implementation organisations. The critical role we play is capturing business requirements that are consistent with the organisation’s strategy and end user demands, and translating those business requirements into specifications that are complete and robust.

Our approach includes working collaboratively with business representatives to identify opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of various business processes that will be IT enabled. In this way, business process efficiencies are built into the subsequent software specifications and code.

The tools and techniques used by our business analysts to help shape the future processes and technology specifications include structured methods around business process modelling, business process re-engineering, use case requirements capture and best practices research.

The uniqueness of our approach is to leverage our expertise in business strategy, change management, business requirements gathering and IT. The result is an integrated approach that ensures alignment from business strategy through to IT specification.

Sample case study:

Major transportation company with annual turnover > £1 billion

Situation:

Our client operates in a very competitive sector within the transportation industry. Their challenge was how to improve performance and competitive position. As well as facing significant competition in terms of pricing, its operational costs were increasing and there were constraints to becoming more efficient due to outdated work practices, structures and systems. In particular, the legacy systems, in place for over 20 years, imposed significant costs and constraints on the business and risked causing substantial business disruption and failure.

Solution:

Based on a strategic vision of the top management team, we identified a set of required future capabilities for business success. We then undertook research to identify and specify three different levels of capabilities – basic, progressive and pioneering – and created a capability development plan. Our solution involved innovative process re-design coupled with the introduction and re-configuration of leading technologies.

We were engaged to undertake a full review of all core business processes and to come up with re-engineered processes that either reduced cost or provided a competitive advantage.

Our business consultants facilitated a series of workshops and conducted time and motions studies to arrive at a potential future process model for key areas of the business.

Our consultants then undertook a further series of business workshops tailored to gather functional requirements for the planned new systems. The requirements were gathered through a combination of structured one-to-one interviews and facilitated workshops over multiple business groups and multiple country locations.

The enhanced business requirements were then shared with the specialist IT software development firm who translated the requirements into technical specifications. Our business analysts worked alongside both the business representatives and the IT development firm to ensure there were no gaps in understanding or specification leading to the development of the new system.

Benefits:

Core business processes related to booking, check-in and loading were re-designed to provide a differentiated and superior customer experience resulting in a distinct competitive advantage. Significant internal capabilities were enhanced that provided greater agility in the market place. The end solution utilised leading edge technologies that were combined in new and unique ways resulting in quicker and more efficient processes at lower cost.

This multi-year programme resulted in the transition to a new suite of technology modules to replace the outdated legacy system. A major benefit was a stable and robust IT platform to support new and improved business processes and practices. Further quantifiable benefits included reduced costs in excess of £5 million + and an increased share of segment revenue, amounting to £15 million +.