Tag: Strategic

The Role of Customer Feedback in Product Development

Written by Divya Joshi on August 7, 2024. Posted in Articles.

In today’s competitive business landscape, understanding your customers needs, preferences, and expectations is the key to the success of any product development strategy. And one of the most effective ways to achieve this is by leveraging customer feedback. This not only helps a company to improve their product and services but plays a pivotal role in developing marketing strategy and driving growth.

In this blog, we’ll delve into the importance of customer feedback and explore ways on how to use customer feedback to improve your products and services.

How does customer feedback improve your Product Development?

Improving Product and Services: Customer feedback is a valuable resource that provides direct insights on what customers think about your products and services. By analyzing the feedback, the organization can get to know what customers are looking for, what are the things they like about the products, anything missing from the products, things to work on to improve your service, and pain points. This information is essential for crafting marketing messages that resonate with your target audiences.

Building Trust and Credibility: Customer feedback helps in product development and improving the services of an organization. When you value customer feedback and use it for the development process, customers feel values, which in turn increase brand loyalty towards the product and positive word-of-mouth marketing. By integrating this with your product development company, you can ensure that their offers align with their market demands.

Improve Marketing Strategy: Customer feedback is like a source of information that highlights what’s working well, what isn’t, and what the company needs to do to increase their marketing efforts. With customer feedback, companies can identify unique selling propositions of their product, point out benefits or features in their product description to make the product more appealing to customers, and real-life endorsements from customers can be particularly persuasive to potential buyers for increasing product adoption and a seamless product launch.

Incorporate Insights into Marketing: Customer feedback helps provide data that can help you segment data into preference, purchase behavior, and purchase history. This allows for improved collaboration between marketing and product teams to create targeted campaigns that are more likely to resonate with each user segment.

Drive Customer-Centric Innovation: Customer feedback is necessary for driving innovation. By continuously gathering feedback, businesses can stay ahead of marketing trends and anticipate customer needs. This feedback brings out innovative ideas, understands the challenges in the market, helps you position your brand apart from your competitors, and makes you a market leader.

Validate Your Value Proposition: Customer feedback helps identify your value proposition, essentially confirming that your product or services provide the unique value you claim that is necessary for capturing market share. It helps you to identify that your product meets customer needs, how unique you are compared to your competitors, and the pricing is aligned with the perceived value and gauges overall satisfaction.

How Do I Gather Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback is necessary for successful marketing; it provides insights on customer demand, preferences, experiences, and current competitors. So here are some methods to collect feedback for marketing purposes:

Survey: Surveys are great tools for collecting feedback from customers. You can use email, social media, a website, or in person to collect feedback from people. This survey addressed specific people to understand their overall motivation for using a product or service. You can collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback through surveys.
Customer Feedback Page: Creating customer feedback is crucial for every product and service company. You can place it on your product or add it to your website. This helps enhance your marketing efforts and develop more targeted strategies. You can collect different types of feedback, such as ideas, feature requests, bug reports, and suggestions from your users.
Customer Interviews: This involves having a direct, one-on-one conversation with customers, allowing the organization to collect detailed feedback directly and without any interferences. Customer interviews help identify unmet demands and needs, validate product features, and discover paint points and areas for improvement.
Feedback Forums: Feedback forums are online platforms where users can share their opinions, experiences, and suggestions about their products, services, or topics with other people. This forum can be very specific to a company, product, or service, or it can be a general platform where multiple topics are discussed.
Focus Groups: these are small interactive groups of customers or potential customers who provide feedback in a discussion setting. They help provide deeper insights into customer perspectives and desires related to a company’s products.
Feedback Widget: It is a tool or feature embedded on a website or within an application that allows users to provide feedback as ratings, suggestions, bug reports, etc.
Customer Support: Companies can train their customer support team to gather feedback during their conversation with the user. During the interaction, they can gain insight on how to improve product offerings and what problems they are facing with the current user.

Conclusion:

Customer feedback is a great tool to help improve overall company performance, from sales to marketing to product development and growth. By successfully understanding what your customer needs, you can focus on product development, building trust, personalizing marketing efforts, and driving customer-centric innovation, and your business can drive more revenue.

Five Ways BAs and Inventory Managers Can Make Jobsites More Profitable, Together

Written by Lucas Marshall on December 13, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Business analysis is a critical skillset and operational imperative companies need to prioritize as they look to be profitable and understand how they can make measurable improvements as they scale. This fact is not lost on corporations, either—for example, 72% of manufacturing executives said that they considered advanced analytics to be important, according to a report by BCG.

The construction sector, meanwhile, consistently finds itself in a precarious state in terms of profitability no thanks to employment challenges, influx materials pricing, and the disjointed nature of the construction ecosystem. For example, experts estimate job growth in the construction industry is projected to be at a stagnant 1.1% for ten years (Data USA via Finances Online). Underperformance, Autodesk concludes, is an industry-wide norm with 72% of firms saying projects have taken longer than anticipated—and 44% of firms putting longer completion times into their bids, according to data from Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). In fact, merely 25% of projects came within 10% of their original deadlines, a KPMG report found.

The World Economic Forum (via Autodesk) estimated that a 1% reduction in construction costs could save society $100 billion globally. As the construction sector ecosystem looks to execute projects in a quickly changing environment, these existential challenges warrant organizational changes to better negotiate the trials and tribulations at hand.

We also have to consider the average construction company’s costs to better contextualize these challenges and opportunities. If we assume that the average cost of a construction project is comprised of overhead, materials, tools and equipment, and labor, then focusing on what you can control will help move the needle toward greater profitability. For example, while you might not be able to affect the cost of materials, you can negotiate work to accommodate the resourcing you currently have, and you can make plans for improving internal processes to drive greater efficiency.

I’ve previously written about how project managers in the construction industry should embrace change management, as well as how the industry might adopt big tech’s displaced software engineers to address industry digitization problems, and how the construction industry looking to adopt lean management principles may borrow some of the similar practices from agile software project management.

Studies show that business analysts are more prone to support collaboration in agile projects.

With this in mind, in this article, I look to unpack two roles—the Business Analyst and the Inventory Manager—and discuss how a collaboration matrix between these roles can help construction companies work leaner, more efficiently, and drive greater profitability over time.

The Role of the Business Analyst & Why BAs May Be a Critical Construction Industry Hire

Considering construction’s profitability concerns, the role of a business analyst (BA) from the corporate environment is one that construction companies may look to fast-track.

Responsible for “bridging the gap between IT and the business using data analytics to assess processes, determine requirements, and deliver data-driven recommendations and reports to executives and stakeholders,” a BA in a construction company setting can “offer valuable insights to enhance financial planning and resource allocation,” reads the job description for a Senior Construction Business Intelligence Data Analyst role at CBRE Group, a global commercial real estate company, which was available at the time of writing this article.

Consider CBRE’s job posting for some of the job-specific functions a Business Analyst in the construction industry may entail:

Applying advanced analytical techniques to conduct prescriptive, diagnostic, descriptive, and predictive data analysis on diverse construction-related data, incorporating data from Quickbase, eBuilder, SAP, and Google Sheets.
Developing dashboards, meticulously maintained [… that] provide real-time insights into construction project data while ensuring these dashboards are user-friendly, intuitive, and deliver vital information to project collaborators (e.g., stakeholders).
Generating regular and ad-hoc reports for the leadership team, highlighting essential performance indicators, project status, and emerging trends, while translating sophisticated data into practical, actionable insights, incorporating earned value measurement concepts to evaluate project performance.
Providing meaningful support for annual capital planning by conducting comprehensive analysis of historical data, project costs, and resource allocation, offering valuable insights to enhance financial planning and resource allocation.
Developing and maintaining strategic forecasts for construction projects, demonstrating data analytics to identify trends and make informed predictions about future outcomes, incorporating earned value measurement techniques to assess project performance and forecast project completion accurately.
Providing data-driven insights that support critical business decisions, helping to improve operational efficiency and profitability.

Construction forecasting is one critical business process a business analyst may help owners more accurately predict through advanced analytics, historical trends, and advanced technology management (e.g., artificial intelligence).

When they collaborate with other critical business functions (e.g., inventory management, discussed next), greater outcomes may become more easily within reach.

The Role of the Inventory Manager in Construction Projects

An inventory manager in the construction industry (aka: tool crib manager, tool room manager, asset manager, equipment manager, etc.) is responsible for the strategic direction, allocation, storage, and flow of all the physical assets needed to perform construction work—e.g., building materials, tools, vehicles, and equipment.

An inventory manager assures jobsite materials, tools, and equipment arrive on jobsites as they’re needed, are in working order (e.g., tools are properly serviced, materials are not damaged, etc.), and are returned or rerouted across projects as needed to prevent slippage and excess asset turnover.

With an inventory manager at the helm of the construction supply chain, companies might realistically see a 10-12% reduction in labor cost originating from avoiding non-productive idle time or downtime—that is to say, when materials are where they’re needed, manpower doesn’t need to search for them or idly wait for their arrival.

How BAs and IMs Can Work Collaboratively to Drive Better Profitability Outcomes

Now that we’ve discussed what a Business Analyst role may look like in the construction sector, as well as the role of an inventory manager in the same sector, how might these cross-functional teammates work together to drive better profitability outcomes?

Here are five ways:

1. Procurement Strategies

A business analyst, tied into company forecasting, can work closely with inventory managers to establish objectives for procurement strategies and capital investment as well as determine needs based on ongoing inflight projects and company annual goals.

Together, they might reasonably achieve strategic themes when approaching inventory-related financial commitments and implement cost-saving measures, including:

Appropriate Safety Stock Purchasing – Together, a business analyst and inventory manager can cross-pollinate company-specific analytics related to equipment purchasing, historical trends of project needs, and existing commitments in order to reasonably define policies for shelving inventory and planning for needs (i.e., how much to buy, when). Such a collaboration can help prevent excessive inventory procurement that would otherwise lead to unnecessarily rising overhead, while it can also help facilitate proper procurement to prevent inventory stockouts. What’s more, using advanced analytics via artificial intelligence can help predict future needs.
Proactive Inventory Audits to prevent needless spending over project lifecycles as well as to provide better long-term inventory management outcomes.
Deploying cost-centric, advanced inventory management strategies like just-in-time inventory. This method prioritizes strategic, lean operations in order to deploy only what’s needed when it’s needed, preventing excessive inventory procurement (and like above, preventing unnecessarily rising overhead). The method also requires inventory managers to proactively intervene to prevent jobsite hording, hence why inventory tracking (e.g., Bluetooth tags, GPS trackers, etc.) is critical.
Performing XYZ analysis to calculate: fixed demand (X), fluctuating demand (Y), uncertain demand (Z). Determining these inputs can help inventory managers more effectively achieve more positive outcomes by ranking the frequency and predictability of demand for items over time.

2. Job Costing

In addition to financial forecasts and reporting, business analysts can work with inventory managers to adopt a job costing solution. Job costing in construction refers to the proactive process and steps taken to track the associated costs and revenue of a given project throughout its lifecycle.

The process can be used in inventory management, where inventory managers can apply rental rates (daily, weekly) to equipment that is deployed to the field (either individual or bulk inventory that’s been kitted/bundled and sent at once). Job costing software then calculates the cost accrued for each day (or week) those items are in the field.

This process can help:

Inventory managers better account and monetize on the equipment they send to their network of jobsites.
Financially incentivize borrowers to return equipment in a timely manner, reducing the “time on site” of a particular piece of inventory as well as the need for additional safety stock, unnecessary rerouting of equipment from other jobsites, etc.
Provide additional revenue streams to construction businesses.

3. Reporting

In addition to the business analytics dashboards that a construction business analyst might build for a business owner as discussed in the above-mentioned job description, inventory managers can work hand-in-hand with business analysts to provide additional reporting opportunities, including:

Tool Management Reports – reports about ongoing usage of inventory (e.g., average “days on site,” as we discussed above, to help make improvements on how inventory is used in the future; service-related alerts, to help proactively take charge of equipment maintenance, improve longevity, and decrease overhead; inventory assigned by jobsite or person, to increase accountability; etc.)
Asset-specific reports, such as utilization on some smart power tools, which can help diagnose problems before a jobsite-halting breakdown occurs as well as provide quality assurance to customers and inspectors that installations were performed to specification.

4. Interoperability

Construction interoperability is the practice whereby construction systems (e.g., software platforms, apps, processes) interact with each other and the extent to which they possess the ability to operate seamlessly and share information between each other.

A KPMG report revealed that only 16% of executives surveyed say their organizations have fully integrated systems and tools—a serious problem when we consider how fragmented the construction ecosystem is. Consider, too, that only 36% of firms have implemented a process for identifying bad data and repairing it (Autodesk/FMI report).

Together, inventory managers and business analysts can start to build system interoperability that can both provide a single source of truth and prevent cost driving incidents like rework (e.g., from the same Autodesk/FMI report, 14% of all construction rework may have been caused by bad data, creating $88.69 billion in avoidable rework globally).

Possible interoperable systems include:

Connecting data flow between a project management system (e.g., Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Contractor Foreman, Houzz Pro) and architecture, design, and civil engineering (e.g., Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Bluebeam, Autodesk BIM 360, Civil 3D, ArcGIS, Bentley STAAD, etc.)
Connecting data flow between inventory management systems and mission-critical systems (e.g., project management, design, etc.)
Building digital twins (e.g., asset twins, component twins, system twins, process twins) to provide holistic views of cross-network activities, predictive analytics, and real-time data and simulations to aid in decision-making.

5. Planning for Addressing Technical Debt

Technical debt is a phenomenon whereby dependencies one introduces when deploying new software and hardware solutions lead to operational slowdown.

A colleague and I have outlined five ways construction companies can prevent technical debt. A business analyst and/or construction technologist may work hand in hand with an inventory manager to prevent technical debt relative to construction operations from piling up – e.g.,

They may work with IT to deploy cloud-based systems (i.e., real-time collaboration).
They’ll deploy inventory tracking hardware to ensure real-time inventory activity is recorded.
They’ll ensure mobile apps integrate with construction ERPs.
They may work with the cybersecurity team to ensure proper MDM deployment and data security best practices relative to inventory.

Bottom Line

The construction industry faces some dire operational challenges.

While construction companies might not be able to affect the cost of materials, they can focus on factors they can control—e.g., improving internal processes, empowering the team to work more seamlessly together.

When working collaboratively, business analysts and inventory managers can help companies operate more agilely, more strategically focused, and they can help achieve greater profitability over time.

The Value of Business Analysis Competencies in the Successful Delivery of IT Projects.

Written by Nosa Adagbasa on November 29, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Several schools of thought have proffered reasons why projects fail; notable amongst these are studies by Forbes, the British Computer Society, Gartner, and many others. Generally, the causes of IT project failures have been described as ranging from poor business cases, requirements management, project management, talent, and poor processes.

Conversely, certain factors, which are described below, can be identified as factors responsible for successful projects.

BA competencies are a set of knowledge, behaviour, attitudes, and skills that enable a business analyst to perform business analysis successfully and efficiently. These BA competencies can be mapped to the factors that guide the successful delivery of IT projects.

Accurate problem definition and analysis

This is central to delivering successful projects as it entails proper identification of problems, the scope, and thoughts around solutions. One major reason for IT project failure is that the business is often focused on the consequences or symptoms of an underlying problem and quickly directs technology to resolve these symptoms. At best, the result is an expensive IT solution that is sparsely used by the users, who often find workarounds or, at worst, IT projects that fail.

BA Competency: Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

This competency employs critical thinking, system thinking, and problem-solving techniques, amongst many others, to help carry out root-cause analysis and produce problem statements that help correctly identify a problem.

People

People are an organisation’s greatest asset. Several schools of thought, including Herzberg’s, Maslow’s, etc., have carried out studies on employee productivity. Too often, while embarking on IT projects, the focus is on the technical skills of the project team, while knowledge around behavioural attributes, emotional intelligence, and concepts that affect productivity resides with the human resources team, who are seldom part of the IT project team.

BA Competency: Behavioural Characteristics and Personal Quality

BAs understand behavioural characteristics and human resources concepts of motivation, productivity, and emotional intelligence and constantly need to keep these in sight as they seek to understand the problem and define relevant requirements for a successful solution.

Knowledge of organizational structure and culture

While structure deals with norms, rules, and policies, culture is concerned with organisational values, behaviours, and attitudes, and both can affect the agility of project delivery. Thus, an optimal combination of the two is vital to successful project delivery.

BA Competency: Business Knowledge

This involves the application of business acumen, industry, organisation, appropriate methodology, and solution knowledge. Peter Drucker famously declared that culture eats strategy for breakfast, buttressing the importance of a thorough understanding of business to aid organizational success.

Effective Communication

This is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is received and understood with clarity and purpose. The challenge for many businesses is that this is not recognised as a skill that goes beyond writing and speaking. It involves non-verbal communications, listening, and analysis. When this is lacking in an IT project, the risk of failure is increased.

BA Competency: Communication Skills

Business analysts act as intermediaries between the business and IT and, as such, are trained in effective communication skills. They understand business and IT concepts and help to facilitate and interpret conversations to help all stakeholders deliver successful solutions.

User needs and top management support.

IT solutions are intended to meet user needs; however, a major reason for IT project failures is half-hearted support from top management. Often, top management is concerned with strategy and has a broad view of concurrent projects without knowledge of user needs. There is therefore a disconnect between project delivery and top management, with the resultant effect that projects don’t get the full backing required for success. Support is usually given in principle but lacking in practice as top management is often far removed from the projects.

BA Competency: Interaction Skills

Business analysts not only act as the intermediary between IT and the business but can also act as an intermediary between top management and the business. With their interaction skills, they can drive conversations among stakeholders and ensure that difficult questions are asked and resolved to ensure the successful delivery of projects.

Business-Led Modular Technology and Data Platform

Organizations that intend to deliver successful IT projects need to have a modern technology architecture driven by business needs, as evidenced by data. Advances in technology mean that businesses no longer have the choice of being either technology-savvy or operating on the fringes of the technology spectrum. Technology drives agility in today’s business environment, and the influx of AI makes it more expedient that businesses that want to thrive will need to invest in sound technology architectures and platforms.

BA Competency: Tools and Technology

This BA competency fosters the knowledge and use of tools and technology to drive productivity. From the use of general communication and office productivity tools like ‘Teams, Slack, etc. to business analysis tools like Jira, Azure, Visio, etc. to AI tools like Chat-GPT, Google Bard, Slides AI, etc., business analysts are equipped to be versatile while continuing to broaden their toolset.

Clear Process Flows and Business Requirements Management

This covers the end-to-end process of delivering an IT project; it encompasses identifying the right requirements, managing stakeholders, ensuring an accurate depiction of information flow through the organisation, and managing change.

BA Competency: Professional Techniques

This deals with delivering excellence by design. It is an aggregation of several BA competencies with a focus on ensuring that excellence is delivered at every point of the customer journey. This implies understanding an organisation in terms of its people, processes, steps, and the data required to make each step as efficient as possible.

Concluding Remarks

Historically, the rate of IT project failures has been high; however, opportunities now abound to turn the tide. As knowledge and awareness continue to increase and the business analysis skillset becomes more mainstreamed across organisations, there is an opportunity for business analysts to hone their craft, be more visible, and help stem the tide.

5 Effective Strategies to Address Employee Burnout in an Organization

Written by Mahendra Gupta on September 27, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Gallup’s survey reveals that 76% of employees experience workplace burnout at least sometimes, with 28% reporting feeling burnt out “very often” or “always.”

The statistics mentioned above indicate that numerous employees constantly experience burnout-related issues. This is mainly due to unrealistic deadlines, unclear job expectations, long work hours, etc. It can result in lowered productivity, high turnover, prolonged absenteeism, etc.

However, organizations can implement specific measures that can help minimize or prevent burnout and create a positive work environment. This, in turn, helps improve team performance and the firm’s bottom line.

This blog discusses the signs of employee burnout and how SAVIOM’s resource management solutions can help combat it.

Let’s begin.

Signs of Employee Burnout in an Organization

According to the World Health Organization, employee burnout is a phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Furthermore, it can be characterized by feelings of depletion, exhaustion, negativity, and lowered professional efficacy.

When employees feel burnout, it hampers their performance, affects work quality, and tends to make more mistakes. Therefore, organizations must observe the symptoms and take corrective actions before it becomes a severe issue.

Here are 5 essential signs of employee burnout to watch out for:

Increased absenteeism

Employee absenteeism is a common sign of burnout. When resources experience exhaustion, fatigue, etc., they might take more unplanned leaves to alleviate their work stress and cope with burnout. Additionally, they may try to avoid the work environment due to a lack of motivation to perform their respective tasks.

Lack of engagement

When employees lose interest in work, struggle to complete their tasks on time, or make frequent mistakes, it becomes a symptom of burnout. Due to the high-stress levels and exhaustion, they can become disengaged from daily tasks or find work monotonous and meaningless.

Lowered productivity and performance

When organizations face performance and productivity issues with employees, it shows that resources are experiencing burnout constantly. When they cannot cope with current deadlines, are overwhelmed with work, or feel a loss of purpose, it reflects on their overall work efficiency.

Decreased personal health

Employees undergoing persistent work pressure are likely to experience deterioration in physical health. It manifests in symptoms like panic attacks, migraines, chest pain, loss of appetite, etc.

Increased workplace conflicts

Symptoms like irritability and sensitivity in employees are a clear indication of burnout. Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted can cause high emotional sensitivity and lead to conflicts between coworkers.

Knowing some of the main symptoms of employee burnout, let’s understand the ways to tackle it in an organization.

Five Ways to Prevent Employee Burnout

If left unaddressed, employee burnout can adversely impact organizational growth and financial stability. Therefore, companies must implement effective strategies to minimize burnout and improve employee engagement.

Listed below are the ways to eliminate burnout.

1. Set realistic deadlines considering employees’ leaves

Before initiating a project, managers must prepare a work breakdown structure (WBS) that includes tasks and sub-tasks. It will enable them to assess the skills, timelines, and number of resources required to complete the project’s activities. This will help managers establish realistic deadlines and deploy resources based on the criticality of tasks.

Additionally, managers must review the resource schedules and consider their leaves before allocating them to ongoing or future projects. This will ensure the projects are happening smoothly and help employees take time off to rejuvenate themselves, thereby minimizing burnout.

2. Allocate resources based on skills & availability

Before allocating resources to projects, managers must assess their attributes like skills, capacity, availability, competencies, experience, etc. This will ensure competent resource allocation, preventing under/over-skilled employees from being assigned to specific project tasks.

Moreover, when resources are deployed to projects based on their available capacity, it will prevent under/overallocation and maintain a balanced workload. This will reduce employees’ stress levels and enhance engagement, thereby reducing the risk of burnout and ensuring successful project delivery.

3. Monitor resource utilization levels regularly

Managers must constantly track employees’ utilization levels to prevent workload imbalances. When resources are persistently overutilized, it will lead to burnout. This will directly result in productivity and performance issues, reduced deliverable quality, and unplanned attrition.

Identifying over/underutilization in advance will enable managers to take corrective measures to optimize the workloads. Additionally, it will help managers mobilize resources working on non-billable tasks to billable/ strategic activities. This way, organizations can prevent burnout and improve billable utilization rates.

4. Apply appropriate optimization techniques

When resources are allocated to projects or tasks beyond their capacity, it increases stress levels and leads to burnout. Therefore, managers must implement appropriate optimization techniques such as resource leveling and smoothing to ensure that the employees are neither under/overloaded with work.

Managers can implement resource leveling for projects with flexible timelines where they can adjust start and end dates per the employee’s availability and schedule. Contrarily, they can apply resource smoothing for time-sensitive projects through which the work of overloaded resources can be redistributed, or additional employees can be added. This will ensure uniform workload distribution and lower the risk of burnout.

5. Build the right mix of contingent & permanent staff

Most organizations struggle to complete projects with the available resources during demand peaks. Hence, they over-allocate their existing employees to meet the project deadlines. However, constantly overloading the staff will affect their productivity, thereby leading to burnout.

Therefore, organizations can hire contingent workforce or outsource the work to global employees to reduce unwanted stress and enable employees to focus better on high-value tasks or projects. Thus, organizations can minimize project resource costs, maintain the workflow, and prevent burnout.

These are some of the best techniques to prevent burnout in an organization. Let’s learn how a resource management tool can help address burnout.

How Does Advanced Resource Management Software Help Overcome Employee Burnout?

A next-gen resource management solution like Saviom, with its advanced capabilities, will help employees work more productively. It enables organizations to optimize their resources and tackle burnout effectively.

The tool’s 360-degree visibility into resource attributes like availability, skills, capacity, etc., helps managers identify and allocate competent resources to projects at the right time and cost. This will help prevent under/over-allocation of skilled resources to projects/tasks.

Moreover, the forecasting and capacity planning features enable managers to foresee and plan for pipeline project demand. Based on that, they can create the right mix of permanent and on-demand resources to meet seasonal fluctuations effectively.

In addition, the system offers real-time reports like forecast vs. actuals, utilization heat maps, availability, etc. These enable managers to forecast and track availability, monitor utilization levels, compare them against actuals, identify variances, and take remedial measures in case of over/underutilization.

Furthermore, the software’s open-seat feature allows employees to choose projects of their interest. Working on projects aligning with their skills will motivate employees, improve engagement, and prevent burnout.

Lastly, the tool’s timesheet feature helps managers to monitor the employee’s leaves and their time spent on various tasks. Based on this, managers can set realistic deadlines to complete the project activities.

Thus, robust resource management software can address employee burnout and boost overall productivity.

Conclusion

Resources are the driving force for the success of an organization. Hence, it’s crucial for firms to take care of their employees’ well-being and recognize their efforts. This will motivate them to work harder and achieve better results. Implementing effective strategies and advanced resource management software will enable organizations to prevent burnout and improve the resource health index.

Information Science, Knowledge Management and the Business Analyst

Written by Nosa Adagbasa on July 6, 2023. Posted in Articles.

In today’s fast changing world, information, and technology are changing the way organizations and nations operate. The quality of information available to an organization, its ease of use and systems of dissemination can make the difference between organizations that thrive and those that get left behind in the archives of history. To understand this better, let’s look at the science of information.

Information science is the discipline that deals with managing information, from creation to final archiving or destruction. It is concerned with the generation of data, the associated technologies, and the transformation of data into information and knowledge. What is information? Let’s begin by defining data.

Data

Data can be described as independent entities, , numbers, letters etc. that on their own do not convey any useful meaning. Consider the following data set: ‘A’, ‘John’, ‘boy’ ‘good’ ‘is’ ‘1’, ‘class’ ‘and’ ‘in’ ‘number’ ‘his’ . Each entity on its own does not really convey any useful meaning. However, when this data is put through a transformation process, with a pattern or structure, it conveys a meaning ‘John is a good boy and number 1 in his class – these entities which has been structured or patterned becomes information within the system.

Information

Information can therefore be described as data with a meaningful pattern to the system receiving it, such that it can change the state of the system. In other words when information is received by an individual, an organization or a system, it must be meaningful to that system: they have been transformed by this information. In some cases, the information received enables them to take an action or make a decision. This change in state might be from a current (as-is) state to a future (to-be) state, or just a change in position from point a to b, or from a less informed state to a more informed state.

Knowledge

Knowledge: When information has been fully understood, digested, and internalized by a system such that the system can reproduce it in various forms and disseminate it easily to others, it has become knowledge to that system. For example, an employee may build up their knowledge of a domain through multiple channels: training, conferences, water cooler conversations etc. and become an expert with a full understanding of the subject area. They can simplify it into various forms and train others: the information they have absorbed has become their knowledge.

This relationship between data, information and knowledge can be represented as shown below in a knowledge circle.

The importance of knowledge to an organization can never be overemphasized. Organizations can thrive or fail depending on the quality of knowledge that exists within them. Knowledge in organizations exists in two forms: explicit and tacit knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is the knowledge that exists in the public domain of an organization. It is in their culture, in their SharePoint systems, books, journals… It is documented and widely available to all.

Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that exists within individuals and SMEs, it is unwritten, can be heuristic, is veritable and often lost when such individuals are no longer with the organization.

Seeing the value of knowledge to the continued existence of organizations, how can businesses best elicit the knowledge within their domain? How can they ensure the quality of their information, and extract valuable tacit knowledge from SMEs? Answers to these questions lies in the domain of business analysis.

Business Analysts

Business Analysts are change agents who often sit between the business and technology arms of an organization. They help the communication between the business and technology, ensuring data from both sides is translated into meaningful information which both parties understand, ultimately causing a change in the state of the organization. Business Analysts help organizations move forward from a current state to a future state.

Business Analysts by nature of their training can elicit tacit knowledge from SMEs, document the knowledge and ensure organizations do not increase their technical debt when valuable employees leave. They are also well placed to investigate and scrutinize the volume of information accessible to an organization by verifying and validating it with SMEs before such information is used in business decisions, thus improving the quality of an organization’s information and knowledge.

Some of the Business Analysts’ skills include the following:

Concluding Remarks

The knowledge circle will continue to be at the heart of an organization’s growth. Organizations which harness their knowledge correctly will continue to outperform their counterparts, and Business Analysts who understand their role in this circle will continue to be great assets and instrumental to the success of their organizations.