How will the growing emphasis on business process modelling impact upon the role of the traditional business analyst? Keith Hindle explains why it may pose a significant threat.
Business is becoming increasingly interested in both process modelling and process management. If you are an IT specialist, however, you may be wondering what business process modelling and process management are, and whether they are relevant to you and your job. The simple truth is that IT will only succeed if it shows that it can support the business - in other words, IT must be aligned with the business. In many organisations this has not been particularly successful. In this article we will examine how business process modelling and management will help to bring about this alignment. In most cases this will affect the skills required by the business as well as the IT specialists, particularly the business analysts who act as a bridge between the business and IT.
The need for alignment between the business and IT
The major impact of technology investment on both the business and its performance is unquestioned. But the converse is also true; those businesses that invest a great deal in technology must be able to demonstrate that the investment is worthwhile.
So how can businesses be convinced that an IT investment is worthwhile? There seem to be a number of approaches, often outlining the increased efficiency that IT can introduce. Efficiency means that we are doing more for less - getting the same or better results for less input.
This approach has worked well in the past where IT applications have automated previously manual activities. IT did the same work more quickly and cheaply. The most common way to demonstrate this increased efficiency was through the cost savings, maybe in the form of return-on-investment or the payback period calculations. However, IT had little impact on the strategy of the business and, apart from the financial benefits, was of relatively little interest to senior management. The non-financial benefits were regarded as insignificant and often lumped together as non-tangibles, to be considered only if the financial arguments were borderline, as illustrated in Figure 1.
The situation is now very different. Much of the potential automation has been completed and the associated cost savings have already been made. It is difficult, for example, to calculate the direct savings that arise from the provision of better management information. The business knows that the information is necessary and that it will result in better performance, but those benefits are difficult to express in monetary terms. Moreover, those benefits depend not only on the IT system that supplies the information, but also on the capabilities of the staff that use that information.
In contrast to the earlier situation in which the financial benefits outweighed the non-tangibles, the easy-to-quantify financial savings may be small compared to the other non-financial factors. One way out of this problem is to realise that the other factors, whilst expressed in non-financial terms, may be measurable. If an application has an effect on the achievement of a measurable business objective, then management will be interested, particularly if their own performance is measured in terms of that objective.
The effectiveness approach emphasises how IT helps the business to better achieve its objectives. It does not necessarily take over from efficiency considerations - it supplements them. But it does introduce its own challenges. IT may not know the business's strategies, plans and objectives. Indeed the business may not have a detailed breakdown of the high-level objectives. There are ways of identifying the lower levels - one of the best known approaches is to analyse the critical success factors, or CSFs, that are essential to the achievement of the objectives (see Figure 2).
By doing this exercise at lower and lower levels, the business can identify factors that are directly affected by proposed IT applications. Thus a supermarket point-of-sale application can speed up the check out activity, resulting in better customer service and/or lower operating costs, depending on how the business decides to use the technology. This type of analysis forces the business to think through the impact of the technology and clearly specify what changes/benefits it is seeking. This, in turn, will affect the way that the systems are built and implemented.
The CSF technique is powerful and the term has entered the management vocabulary. But it is not easy to apply. You need an intimate knowledge and understanding of the business to identify the relevant factors and understand how the cause-and-effect linkages between them operate. What the analyst requires is a down to earth technique that will support the above exercise. The recent interest in business processes is relevant in this context. Again, we are not suggesting that business process modelling replaces the identification of objectives, but rather that it supports that identification.
Benefits of a process view
A process is a set of activities that produces an outcome of value to the customer or beneficiary. There are many advantages to adopting the process view of a business, in particular:
- It highlights outcomes;
- It is end-to-end, taking account of all the activities required to produce the desired outcomes;
- Is cross-functional, cutting across the functional areas within the business.
Processes are the language of business. Business people need to be able to think in process terms.
Business process modelling is often regarded as a simple mapping exercise which describes the steps within the overall process. In fact, there are more strategic aspects to the technique. Before the detailed mapping can start, the analyst needs to scope the boundary of the work and set priorities. This involves identifying the processes in the area under evaluation, and then showing how they relate to, and are dependent upon, each other. The external description of each process includes the desired outcomes, stated in measurable terms. If I am ordering from a supplier, for example, I may specify how long that process should take, how accurate the received order should be, and the tolerances on the quality of the goods supplied. These measurable outcomes allow us to judge:
- The quality of the existing process, by comparing actual against desired measures;
- The importance of the process, by linking the outcomes to the higher level business objectives.
Both of these factors are important when deciding which processes are most in need of attention and improvement.
The detailed business process model documents the steps within the process, providing a valuable lead in to IT system requirements. The analysis of the existing or 'as-is' process will often uncover problems, in effect the reasons why the process does not fully achieve its outcomes. IT may well provide alternative ways of working that can overcome these deficiencies. The definition of the 'to-be' process and the underlying IT system go hand-in-hand. The business process model facilitates communication between the business user and the IT analyst. The business needs to not only understand the models but also how to develop them. This requirement will become clearer when we introduce the term 'business process management'.
Facilitating the alignment of IT and business
We have already stated that business process modelling will facilitate the alignment between IT and the business. In support of this, it is useful to highlight the conclusions of a recent Giga research paper (1) that lists the obstacles to successful alignment. These include the observations that IT has difficulty in:
- Accessing business goals, objectives and strategy;
- Prioritising projects;
- Handling cross-functional developments;
- Talking to the business in their own terms;
- Taking on a more strategic role.
Business process modelling addresses all of the above:
- Processes are there to achieve measurable results;
- Those measurable results are linked to higher level business objectives in order to assess the importance of the process;
- Processes are, by definition, cross-functional;
- Talking to the business about processes must be in their own terms;
- Business process improvement is at the heart of business strategy.
 | 'Business process management may be a threat to the rise of the business analyst. Process management goes beyond process modelling. It provides facilities for simulating the behaviour of processes in order to predict their performance and facilitate tuning' |
The impact on the business analyst
What kind of impact is all of this having on the skills required of the business analyst? The business analyst acts as a bridge between the business and IT, translating the business's requirements into a form that can be understood by the system developers, as well as explaining to the business how it can take advantage of the capabilities of IT.
The term 'business analyst' means different things in different organisations. To some, the business analyst's job is specifically limited to defining information, usually in terms of IT system requirements. For an increasing number of organisations, however, the business analyst has a wider role that examines the environment in which the IT system operates, to ensure that the identified requirements are justified. In the terms used in this article, the business process defines the context for the requirements definition. I believe it is preferable to think in wider rather than narrower terms - it is more and more difficult to separate the definition of the to-be process from the underlying IT support. This approach is supported by the definition of the business analyst's role in the latest version of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), which includes 'initiating and influencing enterprise-wide business process analysis'. (2)
The increased breadth of the business analyst's role also reflects the evolving nature of the projects with which they are involved. There are very few projects involving IT alone. IT is now regarded as an enabler of business change rather than a provider of business benefits directly. It is the business change that is enabled by IT that results in the business benefits. As a consequence, the IT development work is seen as part of a larger business change programme. The focus of the business case shifts, therefore, from the IT development to the business change.
This greater responsibility now facing the business analyst implies an upgrading of their skills. At the very least, business analysts will have to be proficient at producing process models. It is heartening that the ISEB Business System Development Diploma scheme (3) has recently introduced a Modelling Business Processes Certificate. These mechanical skills are, however, only the starting point. If business-IT alignment is to really take place, the business analyst will need to act as a consultant, advising the business on how they can improve their processes. Inevitably this will involve measurement of a number of elements, including the existing processes, the expected performance of new processes, a comparison of actual against planned, and benchmarking against external organisations. That leads further into benefits management and realisation. The business analyst needs a range of both business and technical competencies - communication skills, business knowledge and political savvy as well as an appreciation of IT capabilities and the discipline necessary to carry through change built around new technology.
Many organisations are developing their business analysis skills and capabilities as can be seen by the increasing training commitment experienced by Parity Training and other training providers. But business process management may be a threat to the rise of the business analyst. Process management includes, but also goes beyond process modelling. It provides facilities for simulating the behaviour of processes in order to predict their performance and facilitate tuning. Process management then promises a major shift - the ability to implement the processes in software generated from the models. Business process management will allow the integration of legacy applications and web services, adopting workflow techniques. This will allow the business manager to modify, refine and even develop new processes from scratch, all based on process models. In the words of Howard Smith, one of the process management gurus, 'For years, IT has automated the business; now it's time to automate IT.' The truly agile business will depend on this technology. But if the approach becomes a reality, is this the type of work that the manager wants to take over? What kind of training do business managers need to equip them to do this? What will happen to the business analyst?
The Author
Keith Hindle is the Business Development Manager with Parity Training. In this role, he has shaped Parity's product strategy in the business analysis area. Keith has been involved with the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) schemes and has provided input to the Diploma in Business Analysis. He advises clients on their adoption and development of skills frameworks, such as the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).
References
(1) Overcoming obstacles to the alignment of IT and the business. Gene Leganza, Giga Research June 2003
(2) For more details about SFIA, access www.sfia.org.uk
(3) For more details of the ISEB examinations, access www.bcs.org.uk/iseb
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