Disassemble

We are experts at disassembling, documenting, and abstracting complex business processes.

Analytic engagements always need to start by defining business objectives, including measurable metrics by which we measure success or failure relative to the current state. That requires extensive conversations with the business side owner of the area and understanding his or her short, medium, and long term objectives. The outcome of this analysis is a carefully balanced plan that trades-off cost, delivery speed, quality, and long term objectives in an optimal way for the business owner. Often these conversations help for the first time articulate to the business these trade-offs.

After goal analysis, we take stock of the current state. Typically most of the time is spent in understanding the data environment and making decisions about the migration path to the desired state. It is often this activity that determines the success of failure of a project. Too ambitious plans for reforming data result in unacceptable delays. Too moderate goals result in a data model whose complexity we must accommodate in code. That is more complex and expensive and often does not improve the current state sufficiently.

Taking apart modeling and quantitative aspects of the current state is usually straightforward but tedious as often, a significant amount of business logic resides in opaque spreadsheets, complex SQL, or in commercial software designed for vendor lock-in.

An essential activity is documenting business processes and any analog/paper/manual steps. This work is often relationship sensitive as individuals executing these steps may not be enthusiastic about the project. The key to resolving such resistance is to show how new approaches let team members upgrade their skills and graduate to more value-added roles. We are apt in knowledge transfer, and tutoring as the ultimate value of the engagement for the client critically depends on how well we accomplished this.

Finally, it is vital to understand current and new controls, governance, and regulatory requirements from the start as it is best to incorporate information security considerations at the beginning of the project.