As “experts” in the field of business intelligence, we are called upon day in and day out to help customers find ways to use the data they capture to help solve problems, find opportunities, and to add value to their companies. However, too many times in the process of understanding the customer, the approach taken is to figure out what they do now and make it better. While finding more efficient ways of doing business does add value to the customer, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. By incorporating three little letters, W-H-Y, into the process of understanding our customer, we can often find numerous other ways to help them be successful.
The Pitfalls of Traditional Requirements Gathering:
Traditional Requirements gathering often takes the approach of examining what the customer is currently doing. For example:
• What types of reports do you currently run?
• What type of data do you currently use?
• What type of analysis do you currently do?
While these are all relevant questions to ask as part of the process of understanding our customer’s line of business, too many times this is where the discovery process ends. Often we leave out the word “WHY” when we asking the questions. For example, when asking the question, “What types of reports do you currently run?”, the real value in the question comes when you ask why they need to run these reports. Not only does it give you, as the advisor, better insight into what things are important to their business, it also opens doors to other avenues of data or other applications of existing data that may be of use to the customer. Likewise, the more you can get at the root of why the data is important to the customer the more you can come to understand their pain points, and in doing so, become less prone to be seen as a window dresser and more as a problem solver. As simple as it seems on more than one occasion I’ve had the business area say, ‘it’s really refreshing to feel like someone is taking the opportunity to truly understand our business and help us figure out ways to make it better.’ The amazing thing is that to this point, all you’ve really done is asked questions and listened to what they had to say, and you’ve established yourself in a position of trust.
Helping the end user community determine how to make it better:
It doesn’t take a variety of independent studies to conclude that including your customers in the solution development process will likely result in a much higher adoption rate. Now, there is a time and place for everything. For example, bringing an end user into a meeting to discuss hardware specifications and communications protocol, will often leave the end user feeling lost and confused. This type of session tends to leave them feeling like they have nothing to bring to the table, and it is typically a waste of their time.
However, bringing an end user into a meeting to discuss report layout and navigation will be time well spent. First of all, they probably didn’t have much of a say in how the currently do things, and giving them a say in how the new system will work is very empowering to them. Not only will the end user feel like they have had a say in the process, but it should also expedite time to market by reducing back and forth between developers and end users at user acceptance testing. Likewise, the process of coming up with those specifications will often lead to other discussions that will result in finding other useful ways to unlock the power of the data they have at their disposal.
Result = BI app that was built by and for the end user
At the end of the day, the end user will be the one that has to live with the system that is built. While we as advisors often take a fair amount of pride in the solutions we craft, 9 times out of 10 we get to walk away from a customer to move onto something new. For the customer though, they are left with something that they will work with day in and day out. The relationships we build with our customers are the foundation for future opportunities, and nothing serves us better than to walk away from a project where the end user is excited about what they’ve help create versus something that’s been dropped in their lap. The more we take to time to realize this, the better we set ourselves up to work with the customer in the future.
In summary, it’s not enough as an advisor to survey what’s already in place for a customer and figure out a way to make it look better or run faster. The real value we add is when we help them uncover unique new ways of harnessing the power of their data. Taking the time to understand the customer’s business and how they go about managing the success of that business goes a long way in helping us make those types of discoveries. Taking that information and involving the end users in the development of the solution help cement the value of the work that is being done. It all results in a BI application that is built by and for the customer. Let’s face it, that’s the end game we should all be playing for. At the end of a project, if all you wind up doing is making the same reports run faster or with a different wrapper, at the end of the day your customers may be the ones saying WHY???
No comments:
Post a Comment