Business Drivers and Requirements EI Chapter 2 GBR

Business Drivers and Requirements Overview Enterprise Integration creates the agile infrastructure that has a real impact on success. But technology alone has no value. Thoughts? Companies can use the same technology and have different results. EX. GM – Goal to reduce time needed to design and engineer cars. Other examples HOW TO ACHIRVE GOAL – focus on business objectives and improving processes with available technology and in the confines of your architecture. FURHTER DISCUSS The technology that GM used is available to anyone, the difference is the FOCUS! The learning point is integration needs to tie into business needs.

Business Drivers for Enterprise Integration Business initiatives that are driving integration: Reducing business cycle times to increase efficiency and competiveness. discussed last week Improving customer satisfaction. discussed last week Mergers and acquisitions Why? Regulatory compliance Some of these initiatives are strategic and others are tactical. What is the difference? Strategy is the “what” part of the equation and helps you answer the question, “What are we trying to accomplish?” Tactics, or the “how” part of the equation. Your tactics help you answer the question, “How are we going to accomplish our goal?”

Increasing business efficiency and competiveness Strategic initiatives - include moving to real time business processes or integrating transactions across the value chain to reduce time and cost. This strategic approach to improving business efficiencies requires integration to automate and manage business process. Is this true? Improving business efficiency is an ongoing project, it does not stop. Tactical initiatives - to improve business efficiency include eliminating reconciliation issues, data inconsistency, and reporting discrepancies across the enterprise. Tactical initiatives take less time and resources than strategic initiatives. You believe this? Thoughts?

Improving customer satisfaction When companies embark on a customer satisfaction project they may want to consider the following: Technical solutions – specs Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) – Salesforce! Do you know any others? Mobile integration – BYOD, smartphones Combination of all of the above Some of the projects maybe enterprise wide and strategic others are more tactical. You will be the cook and decide the right mix!

Improving customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction can be measured by: Customer retention statistics Response time to customers Number of complaints Issue resolution rate (% and time) Error rates Customer value (computed as sales per customer or lifetime value of customer) Because of the need to track and analyze customer satisfaction, process management and analytics are key technologies for strategic initiatives.

Mergers and Acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions will result in redundant and incompatible systems. This leaves companies with a couple of choices: Choosing one system over the other and a large conversion project is required. Which one? Leaving the systems in place and integrating them. What do you think about this? Implementing an entirely new system. Choose one, do nothing, or replace everything

Regulatory Compliance A number of regulatory requirements (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act, T+1 trade settlements can be handled through enterprise integration. In many ways compliance and regulatory issued are being defined through enterprise integration and technology. EX. The finance industry wanted to move towards one day settlement instead of three. The reason is longer settlement can cause reporting discrepancies. The goal is to automate the settlement of the trade across multiple systems, platforms, languages, and technologies. Can you see the value of integration?

Defining Requirements Taking the time to understand and document the business is essential to ensuring the alignment of IT with business strategy. (Sounds like EA & Enterprise modeling huh) Failure to accurately define business requirements can lead to wrong decisions and failed implementations. The question that needs to be answer is: What business problem are we trying to solve? The business requirements will determine whether the initiative is strategic or tactical. The process, technology, and approach can differ. Decisions will need to be made.

Business drivers and requirements specification Achieving the right balance of documentation is difficult. Too much is a waste of time, overlooked, and poorly maintained. Use the just enough approach through business drivers and requirements specification listed below: Intro – short executive overview, should tell you who, what, why, and how. Scope – is it enterprise wide, specific business, or business initiatives. Key participants – identification of stakeholders Statement of purpose – communicates the business goals of functions of the initiative. Cost estimates – list the highest cost and in an estimated time. Why? ROI – documents potential or expected ROI for business the business initiative. Metrics – key performance indicators – indicates the business goals Risks – collection of everything that or may go wrong.

Best Practices The business drivers and requirements specifications will be the guiding light of your project. It will keep people focused on goals that leads to a higher probability of success. Ensure all enterprise integration efforts aligned with business goals and objectives. Involve IT in strategic business planning. Appoint business projects managers for all IT projects. Why? Create business metrics to measure success of IT projects? Hmmm Revisit business goals and objectives.