How to create value with business analysis

Accelerating uncertainty, disruptive innovations and heightened customer expectations create more pressure than ever on organizations to deliver meaningful value for their clients. The role of a business analyst is to help organizations focus on value and work more efficiently even in turbulent times.

This November, the business analysis conference Analysis Disruption will bring together 200 participants who want to gain a clear understanding of how to generate business value. The presentations and discussions will offer insights on how to engage end users and stakeholders, how to utilize data to the fullest and how to push for change.

“Analysis Disruption is meant for people who help organizations identify and adopt the necessary changes by building a bridge between business problems and technological solutions,” explains Kadri Siinmaa, Program Chair at the conference.

Filip Hendrickx, business architect and innovator at Altershape agrees that innovation is hard: ideas are cheap and plentiful, but execution often falls short and few ideas lead to valuable results within a reasonable time and budget.  

In his workshop, Hendrickx will introduce an approach that helps BAs facilitate their organization’s innovation process, from ideation to value creation. He suggests a validation driven approach, which enables analysts to build customer feedback and agility into the process right from the start.

Siinmaa highlights that one of the most exciting parts of the program will be a panel session with experts elaborating on how to integrate the needs of people and the potential of data science.   

In the panel discussion, the Head of Data Science at Nortal, Lauri Ilison alongside customer experience experts will discuss how to create customer driven solutions that exploit data to the fullest. Fredrik Milani, business analysis lecturer at the University of Tartu, will moderate the debate to provide an understanding of how to combine different approaches – such as data science, process modeling and service design – to deliver more value.

“The world is changing faster than ever. Aiming to always stay one step ahead of the client, we’re going to have to adapt faster than ever, too,” Siinmaa adds. “Analysts not only need to keep up with the latest technology but also to combine different methods. You have to be ready for change and find inspiration outside traditional BA discipline and project boundaries.”

New-generation business analyst from Canada, Alaeddin Hallak will share his perspective on value-minded analysis and how analysts can truly focus on outcomes instead of outputs. In addition to the opening keynote speech, he will host a seminar about a new decision-making technique, the PrOACT approach, which enables analysts to break down complex decisions into key elements. 

Siinmaa hopes that the conference helps to highlight the importance of business analysis.

“The media tends to pay more attention to why coding is the most important skill of the future and why we need more and more programmers,” Siinmaa says. “But we also need analysts who would first create a clear understanding of the strategy and customer needs and only then define the optimal solution in co-operation with the programmers.” 

Analysis Disruption is the only business analysis conference in the Baltic and Scandinavian region, organized by the analysts for the analysts.

You can read about how and why Nortal started organizing events for analysts here.

We also encourage you to come to Analysis Disruption conference. Please sign up here.

Kadri Siinmaa, Partner and System Analyst at Nortal, holds a PhD in political science. She advises customers on identifying the optimal solution to their business problems and leads analysts working for Nortal’s government and health projects. Just recently, she took on the challenge to build a tax administration for Botswana with the aim of increasing revenue collection and reducing the administrative burden.