Building an Insights Ecosystem: Part 3. Business Analysis

An interview by Jason Rowe & Yustyna Velykholova with Ioanna Pona and Dmytro Zubets, Business Analysis and Product Management Solutions

In today's competitive marketplace, enterprises are under constant pressure to improve profitability and business efficiency. Armed with meaningful insights, business leaders can make more informed decisions and take actions to improve performance and drive the bottom line.

Still, to derive the untapped value of data and insights, enterprises need to fully connect business, technology, and stakeholders within an Actionable Insights Ecosystem (AIE). AIE provides the cross-matrix capabilities needed for all-inclusive operational intelligence and insights-driven decision making.

In part one and part two of our panel discussion series, we’ve covered the foundation (EDP) and human-centric components (XD) required to build a comprehensive Actionable Insights Ecosystem.

But how can enterprises ensure their insights ecosystem addresses the right needs while being technically viable, financially and functionally reasonable?

That’s where business analysis (BA) comes into play, evaluating processes, identifying requirements, and delivering data-driven recommendations and reports to empower executives and stakeholders.

Business analysis is key to defining business metrics, KPIs, and identifying ways to refine existing business processes and systems. BA works in close engagement with IT, business leaders, designers, and end users to understand how possible data-driven changes can add value and optimize current operations, services, or software.

To delve into the role of business analysis for actionable insights, we're speaking with Ioanna Pona and Dmytro Zubets — BA experts for data-driven solutions at SoftServe.
 

JR: Ioanna and Dmytro, thank you for joining us. We’re asking each of our virtual panel discussion guests the same question to start. So, with regards to Actionable Insights Ecosystems, what is the role of Business Analysis and why is it important? Dmytro, let’s start with you.

DZ: The main idea of Actionable Insights Ecosystem (AIE) is to deliver the right insights, to the right people, at the right time. So, the AIE with its fundamental component Enterprise Data Platform (EDP) is a solution or a toolset that can solve the business problems and bring new value by realizing business opportunities for the enterprises. And this is where the role of business analysis is crucial.

BA works with the customer’s business need to frame it into potential business use cases where AIE can be applied. But it is not enough to just reveal and specify the potential business use cases, the next step is to justify the business value of using AIE ...what are the costs and benefits, what is the ROI, and so on.
 

JR: You mentioned that BA works with clients to frame potential business use cases where AIE can be applied. Ioanna, can you give us an example?

IP: For sure! Say that a manufacturing company’s goal is to reduce energy consumption and the enterprise is pulling data from industrial internet of things (IIoT) and facilities automation, to ERP and weather. An Actionable Insights Ecosystem holistically provides operational insights to make long-term decisions and drive down consumption. Business Analysis is essential in pinpointing the business value within the data.
 

JR: We know that unlocking data value is key to becoming a data-driven company, which is commonly thought of as a purely technical concept. But it sounds like Business Analysis plays a crucial role to SoftServe’s AIE clients.

DZ: Yes, Business Analysis is a key player during the discovery, design, and implementation phases. We're responsible for scope definition, eliciting and specifying requirements, and managing backlog during the implementation.

BA brings industry, trends, and marketing knowledge to the team and ensures that the Actionable Insights Ecosystem covers actual customer business needs.

IP: At SoftServe, such business needs have been as diverse as identifying new ways to use—and new commercial value in—legacy data sets, using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) (to recommend products beyond conventional recommendation algorithms), or even building systems to profile vendor performance using complex metrics beyond simple cost analysis.
 

JR: So, BA serves as something of a liaison between our clients and the multiple SoftServe teams who deliver AIE—ensuring that projects align from the start, and then stay on business point for everything from data as a foundation, to advanced technology integration, and even insights-driven experiences and management.

IP: Absolutely. The principle impact benefit of BA working in AIE development is to align and orchestrate the insights with strategic business value, otherwise we are only creating nice dashboards.

Business Analysis serves as the bridge between the business and the technology. Great BAs understand both the insights and the ecosystem.
 

JR: That’s a great point. Benefit means different things to business and technical stakeholders, and clearly, Business Analysis is key to AIE’s purpose of connecting the business, with tech, and users. Thanks so much for joining us!

DZ & IP: Our pleasure!

Are you delivering the right insights, to the right people, at the right times? Do your analytics capabilities meet the needs of business, technical, and external stakeholders?

Let’s talk about your data driven journey and how an Actionable Insights Ecosystem—backed by evidence-based analysis—can ensure insights benefit for all stakeholders through data democratization.