Technology As Innovator

Oct 13

The Clients of a Business/System Analyst

Category: How Business Analysts work 2 Comments »

Business Analyst changing role

Role	What they expect	How to satisfy them
Customer Side
Users	A system that solves their problems, is easy to use and attractive	Create requirements that meet their needs, is user-friendly and matches GUI Design Guidelines
Project Champion	Business goals are satisfied. Project meets deadline, within budget	Manage scope of the project. Review Vision regularly
Development Side
Software Engineers	Feasible and unambiguous Requirements	Disambiguate Requirements. Select feasible approach
Quality Side
Quality Control	Testable Requirement	Disambiguate Requirements
Quality Assurance	Comply with Process	Follow Process
Management Side
Project Manager	Requirements managed, traceable, extensible, scalable	Manage Requirements. Maintain traceability
Business Analysis Manager	Develop competencies	Work, learn, contribute and grow
Peers
Other Business Analysts	Knowledge sharing	Share knowledge in logical and meaningful way
Sub-ordinates
Coachees	Coaching & guidance	Evaluate performance. Provide feedbacks in a constructive manner. Give advice on development
Trainees	Useful, practical and interactive trainings	Conduct trainings that combine theory foundation and practical experience

So great! We have the chance to meet, work with and learn from a lot of interesting and talented people.

The job of a Business/System Analyst is so fascinating and challenging. I am not, at all, surprised to see the growing interest in this position.

Tags of this article: coaching,customer,How Business Analysts work,How Software is managed,project,quality assurance,quality control,training,user.

Last update October 13, 2007

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Sep 20

ERP Series vol 3: CRM

Category: How Information Systems are managed No Comments »

4. Customer Relationship Management

4.1. Definition

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) consists of

All Customer-focus functions such as: sales, marketing, customer support
Software and Tools for automation of these functions
Processes to integrate and support the tasks and tools

CRM Definition

4.2. CRM Typical Elements

Sales force automation

SFA tools track prospects, contacts, and activities, allowing managers to follow leads through the pipeline, forecast revenue, and catch bottlenecks. Because of the revenue-forecasting requirements, SFA has always emphasized metrics even more than other areas of CRM..

Tele-Marketing and Tele-Sales Tracking

In many ways, their requirements are closer to those of support tracking and indeed many vendors offer contact center modules that can serve both inbound and outbound contact centers.

Product configuration

Product configuration tools allow users to customize complex products to their exact requirements.

Marketing automation

Often called campaign management, marketing automation allows the design, execution, and management of campaigns. Depending on the sophistication of the tool, the campaigns may use a variety of media and include segmentation and list management capabilities. Marketing event planning is another potential component of marketing automation.

Support tracking

Support-tracking features include the ability to track the history of support requests from inception to resolution, including routing, ownership, escalations, and transfers. Another important area is the provision of a customer database to track service contracts. The contracts area is where integration with the sales system or with the accounting system may come into play.

Field service

Field service has different requirements than service that is provided from a support center, much as a telemarketing group needs different features than a field sales force. Like field sales, field service employs a mobile workforce and it has special requirements such as the management of parts and spares. Many field service tools allow users to communicate through wireless communications.

Knowledge base

Knowledge base functionality is useful in all areas of customer-focused functions. It has the ability to expose the knowledge base to the users through a variety of search capabilities, as well as the ability to support the creation and maintenance of documents.

Customer portal

Web-based customer access to the CRM system is now an absolute requirement. Customer portals and the functionality around them are sometimes called e-CRM and the subsystems are called e-sales, e-marketing, or e-support.

Analytics

One of the benefits of CRM is an improved ability to view and analyze customer-related activities. Together with Business Intelligence and KPI, Analytics function provides a very powerful tool in managing customer expectation to meet the enterprise’s objectives.

CRM Elements