Business Analysis Process over the Last 30 Years - Essay Example

Business analysis process over the last 30 years Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 22, 11, 2010 Outline Introduction Role and the need of business analysis in an organization Evolution of business analysis over the last 30 years Future speculation on business analysis development and role Summary and Conclusion Introduction Because of the dynamic nature of the business world, there is need for organizational changes in order for them to remain relevant in their market place. Since early 1960’s there has been a growing concern for organizations to study the ever changing consumer needs or customer behaviour in order for them to remain relevant in the market. More so, with the ever increasing complexity and advancement of technology, more information is now available to consumers who then have a wide range of choices to make in order to satisfy their needs. This has necessitated the need to develop customer value by provision of quality services and products that meets the need of consumers in the market. The genesis of business analysis has therefore been inspired by the changing customer needs and the need for organization to remain sustainable in their market niche. The role of business analysis is thus to indentify the options available for problems that the business faces and the future expectations of the business and develop a comprehensive solution strategy for all these business needs. Some of the common solutions for the business needs includes but not limited to the following areas; process implementation, policy development, strategic planning, system improvement and organizational change. Additionally, the main focus of the business analysis process is to identify necessary changes for the organization that are vital for it to attain its fundamental goals. There are a number of techniques available for the business analyst to utilise in developing necessary organizational change. These techniques fundamentally address both internal and external challenges and advantages that the business has. Internal factors include strengths and weaknesses of the business while external factors include threats and the opportunities that the business has. The most basic technique used in business analysis is SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats); the other techniques relevant are PESTLE (Political, Economical, Sociological, Technological and Environmental) and MOST (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) among others. The development of business analysis has been fostered by two major things over the last thirty years; customer behaviour due to changes in needs and technological advancement that has increased both the market scope and competition as well. This analysis therefore focuses on the development of business analysis in the light of organizations over the last thirty years and the future expectations of business analysis as these two major factors continue to change. Notably, most organizations have integrated information systems to their organization structure in order to leverage on the efficiency of technology while other organizations have slowly adopted technology over time as the cost of obtaining technology continues to drop. Role and the need of business analysis in an organization The most fundamental reason why organizations require business analysis is because of the need to identify and solve their needs and challenges. This is the primary reason because once the challenges and the needs of the organization are addressed; its performance in its market niche will improve. Business analyst is the personnel mandated the task of addressing business needs and challenges, business analysts are necessary in the daily activities of the organizations because of this imperative role they play within the organization. As an example, since early 1980’s many banks have continually adopted the use of ATMs as part of their service improvement. This has aided banks in improving their services to their customers because of the convenience, cost and efficiency improvement. In the recent times plastic money has developed and in a way improving banks services to their clientele even more (Macintosh, 2007). Business analyst have continually developed and speculated the future changes of organizations business and the way of conducting business. Another example due to the development of both the telephony and network infrastructure, there has been a significant improvement of communication structures of many organizations because of the usage of layer three switches which implements the Transmission Controlled Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) to reach vast geographical region. Business analysis has thus created necessary strategies of leveraging the current technology for future speculation of organization’s markets. Evolution of business analysis over the last 30 years Business analysis has undergone a big revolution for the last three decades; the improvement of business analysis has been fostered by market and technological changes that has faced the business world in the past years. In early 1980’s there were less complicated information systems available for organizations and most organizations depended on paper work to carry out their tasks. The information processing was therefore slower than it was in later 1990’s and now. Availability of business analysis awareness and tools was limited three decades ago. In the past two decades there has been an increase in awareness on the need to leverage on effective business analysis by improving how organizations perform in future. A good example of the improvement that has been made in the human resource sector is employee appraisal and performance monitoring. Currently organizations are more performance oriented and as compared to the past three decades because of the increased concern and the need to close business gaps that could be costing the organization (Cummings 2008). One major technological revolution that was evident in the early 80’s was the introduction of ATM services in most banks all over the world. This was intended to create a competitive advantage for organizations during that period. According to the business analyst of those times, ATM services were a major competitive advantage as it was an important customer value addition. ATM services however lost its advantage when all banks adopted the system and it became a liability as the cost of maintenance increased. In the past one and a half decade, there has been a tremendous growth of online related transactions fostered by improved data transmission and data security. This has been the genesis of the future banking technologies as speculated by business analyst (Macintosh 2007). Credit cards and debit cards have increased their presence over the past decade because of their convenience and security. Most bank business analyst have leveraged on these online transactions as a way of creating competitive advantage and at the same time remaining relevant in their market niche. As compared to the early 80’s there is more plastic and virtual money in the current world and business transactions are more global unlike in the past three decade. This can therefore be attributed to increased technological advancement and implementation by most organizations (Carbonell 2006). In 1980, as the software development progressed, System Analysis Design Methodology (SSADM) was introduced to the UK government. The major reason for this introduction of the system was to provide a comprehensive framework for data capture, storage, conversion and propagation. The information system analyst of that time valued the integrity of information flow within the organization. As stated by Webber (2007) over the last two decades, tremendous improvement has been made with regard to system improvement and security improvement of data. In the past decade, system and communication improvements have been fostered by business analyst in most organizations all over the world. The fundamental reason for this development has been to reduce the overall cost of doing business by leveraging on standalone systems that perform business analysis with minimum support from a business analyst. The ease of communication process in the recent past has made it possible for outsourcing of other areas of an organization such as server handling, security of data and maintenance of the computer network in an organization (Buchanan, 2005). This has been proposed and implemented by organizations over the past two decades and mostly in the past decade because of the need to improve on these areas by handing them to specialised personnel and at the same time reduce the cost incurred by organizations because it will not require creating sectors of these services. Another aspect of business analysis that has grown over the past decade is the increased concern of ethics and social responsibility for all organizations after the accounting scandals in the United States that involved Tyco, WorldCom and Enron international. Their accounting irresponsibility led to the enactment of Sarbanes Oxley in the year 2002 (Bou & Saborra 2007). The perception created by companies that run for money and forget its social responsibility have not lasted in their market as evidenced by the case of Enron and others that participated in this major scandal. Business analysis in the past decade has therefore fostered the need to enhance both professional and business ethics as a way of creating a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. Future speculation on business analysis development and role As technology and customer behaviour continues to change, there will be an increased sensitivity to efficiency and customer value in the future. Business analyst services demand will grow but the number business analyst will probably decline as they became more redundant because of the increase in the automation. According to Forbes (2005) the role of business analyst in future will became more central to any organization activities since the need to became more competitive will increase as a result of increased number of competitors in the market. In essence, as the number of online transaction and data transmission increase, reliance on technology will consequently increase thus creating data integrity and security concern. Business analysis of the future is bound to finds ways of decreasing cost of production within the organization by leveraging more on technology. Since there is always an exponential increase in technology, data rate transmission will foster implementation of more video/teleconferencing and development more secure VLAN which will allow company’s employees carry out their work without necessarily being within the vicinity of the organization. The other aspect that business analysis will probably propose is the usage of a more secure communication process that will successfully take advantage of data integrity because of the security development that will be enhanced (Carbonell & Rodriguez 2006). Future organizations will also be seeking to decrease their cost through organization resizing strategies that will see organizations reduce their human resources in most sectors of their structure. Automation will be increased in order to take the places of human resource that is usually expensive. Areas where automation will fit include human resource sectors of payroll and reward schemes, accounting department, purchase and employee appraisal. Few employees will be required because of the developed effective systems that will be cheaper to manage and effective in their performance. Most sectors that determine business progress will also be automated and tracked on an hourly basis in order to increase organization’s sensitivity to the changing market trends. More so, most organization will opt to recruit cheaper labour from outside their countries because of the responsibilities that comes with local labour. Local labour demands more payment and are highly likely to form local trade unions that may result in strikes as witnessed in the past. In this sense, most organization will be advised by their business analyst to look for cheaper labour in the developing countries because of their cheapness since technological advancement will be improved. Unlike the current organizations, future organizations will be more efficient and greatly reliant on standalone software that tracks their progress and thus less need for many business analysts in the organization. There will be better developed system that will evaluate more accurately the functions of business analysis of forecasting. Some of the important factors necessary in the process of forecasting include cyclical trends, random events and seasonal variations among others. Financial calculations like income statements and accounting books will evolve and became more user friendly such that an individual with basic accounting knowledge will be in a position to prepare and fully comprehend the provisions of the accounting books in that case. More so, presentation of accounting statements to the public and the stakeholders will be increased in terms of frequency in order to foster decision making and meeting of accounting standards. Because of improved technological development and improved IT strategy coupled with business process. Future analyst will be more concerned with the impacts of technological improvement to their organization in order to ensure that there is maximum leverage created as a result of business improvement. Business analysis will thus focus more on aligning organization infrastructure, IT strategy and business strategy in order to enhance organization’s performance. The poor merging of technology and business needs leads to poor decision making and increase of cost to the organization. Based on this analysis Gitman (2008) speculates that the future of a business analyst is deeming because of lack of specialization. As it has been know traditionally and even now, a business analyst knows a number of fields concerning an organization but not better than professionals who major in those fields (Baratta 2010). As an example, business analyst knows how to develop a system but not as good as a system developer, A BA knows project management process but not as good as a project manager and so on. In essence, there is no specialization for the business analyst. Gitman (2008) speculates that the future of business analyst will be structured process design; a BA will thus be a master of process design and thus eliminating the need of a project owner. Since a business analyst is like a middle man, when business environment becomes tougher the BA will be the first one to be eliminated and that is why specialization as a process designer is required in the future BA. Summary and Conclusion As identified in this discussion, business analysis is essentially a process that involves identification of organizations needs (problems) and proposal of necessary changes that will foster an organization to attain its goals. Some of the solutions that are usually offered by a system analyst include system development, organizational change, and strategic planning and policy implementation. In order for a business analyst to accurately discharge their duties in the organization, there are a number of techniques at their disposal. These techniques analyses the internal and external environment of the business internal environment includes strengths and weaknesses while external environment includes threats and opportunities. Some of the common techniques for ensuring executing the process includes; SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats); the other techniques relevant are PESTLE (Political, Economic al, Sociological, Technological and Environmental) and MOST (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) and others. Business analysis process has developed over the last three decades, in the early 80’s, there were less complicated systems and thus slow information processing, and less tools for accounting and book keeping as compared to the last decade and now. The last decade has however seen an increase in data rates and thus improved communication process which has made it easy also to design software tools for business analysis. The strategic focus of the current business analyst is to enhance IT systems in order to leverage on organizations structure and business process that accompanies the IT strategies. The future expectations of business analysis process lies on leveraging IT by improving data rates speed which will then enhance security and smooth communication process. Future speculations of business analysis process looks at decreasing cost by animating most sectors of an organization such as accounting, payroll and purchasing. Continuous monitoring of organization’s performance is expected to increase as software technology advances. More so, the job of a business analyst is likely to be challenged in future because of lack of specialization skills like a project manager or a system developer. This will lead to increased specialization towards process design as a work of a business analyst. References Baratta, A 2010, Why is Business Process Design the future of Business Analysis. Business analysis times, Viewed 23 November 2010, fromhttp://www.batimes.com/articles/why-is-business-process-design-the-future-of-business-analysis.html Bou, JC & Saborra 2007, The persistence of abnormal returns and firm levels: Evidence from spain, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 28, no.2, pp 707-722. Buchanan, DL, Ketley, FD & Gollop, JJ 2005, “No Going Back: A review of the literature of Sustaining Organizational Change” International Journal of Management Review, Vol. 7 no. 4 pp. 189-205. 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