Why Do You Need a Consultant?
Some years ago, I witnessed a failed purchase order (PO) system implementation. The application had its out-of-box and solid program for the PO approval process for conventional organizational reporting structure. The client company’s organizational reporting structure was not conventional. For example, a normal reporting hierarchy is analyst > manager > director > VP > COO/CIO/CEO, but the client’s reporting structure could be, in some departments, analyst > director > CIO.
This caused problems during the configuration of the PO approval process because the default program could not be used without modification or customization. The development team decided to customize the PO approval process. The end product was a hard-coded program with every position in each department. This solution worked at the time of the implementation, but very soon problems emerged.
What happened? It was very simple, the reporting hierarchy has changed, and since the solution was hard-coded, it took more than required supporting resource to solve the issue for the users (meaning modifying the code each time there was a change in the reporting structure). It was later discovered that the development team did not communicate with the business and thoroughly understand the business requirements. They assumed that the company’s reporting hierarchy would never change.
This is one of the classic examples of why more than 50% of IT projects fail. According to Azmi Jafarey, an experienced CIO and Technology Architecture, the number one reason is “putting technology before business needs.” Once the business needs are fully understood, the project can achieve the great business outcomes at minimum cost.
Carrtegra’s professionals have over 10 years of experience analyzing the business needs, identifying business problems, and proposing solutions. We work with stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate, and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies, and information systems. We deliver results. Our professionals utilized a blended approach to defining and managing business requirements. Our professionals will:
- Sort through the chaos and ambiguity of what is told to them by many people and extract a concise description of the business
- Provide guidance to stakeholders on devising effective and efficient approaches to achieve the project objectives
- Liaise with various business units to gather requirements and resolve issues
- Analyze and map processes (current state/future state)
- Contribute to enterprise architecture development from a business needs point of view
- Act as a communication broker to facilitate problem solving sessions with cross-functional groups
- Work with project stakeholders to validate their requirements and analysis models via techniques such as reviews, pilots, and story boards
With Carrtegra professionals you can enjoy:
- Increased alignment between the business objectives and IT
- Increased customer satisfaction with end deliverable of projects