Four reasons why to start with analysis before implementing a new information management system

The problems of the current situation are often felt in many departments and through different roles. To map them accurately, collecting subjective input from the organization's members is necessary.

At the same time, it is crucial that a person feels relaxed and safe when sharing their thoughts.

By communicating the purpose of the activity, it is possible to create a pleasant atmosphere - the idea is not to point fingers but to find potential areas for improvement and to act more effectively in the future.

There are many ways to conduct a problem-mapping stage, and the most optimal methodology depends on the specific project and the company's size.

We have observed that a workshop led by a specialist (service designer, analyst, or both) helps to create an unbiased and free working environment.

The involvement of an external partner frees the client from the obligation to find a person from within the company to map the problems. It ensures a systematic, impartial, and experiential approach.

Defining short- and long-term goals helps frame expectations for the to-be solution and guides us to create such a solution that supports the company's processes in the most efficient way.

The right problem (in the case of our customer, incomplete digitalization of communication) in turn helps to formulate the goal of the project:
"Create an intranet customized for our company using Confluence to digitize internal communication and document management."

But to fulfil the goal, we need to distinguish user roles who will use the solution.

In our customer example, typical users were warehouse workers, customer service specialists, IT specialists, unit managers, a CEO, and potential employees.

In addition to standard activities – e.g. getting to know the company's values, searching for contacts, quickly finding, and sharing current information, viewing the calendar of events – each user type also performs activities specific to their role in the intranet.

Linking activities to user roles requires prior description and categorization of activity mapping and categorization. For example, submitting a leave request may be classified under the leave management category.

An activity category can have multiple user roles associated, but the specific activity and user role determine the exact relationships. Let's take, for example, the "occupational safety" category and activities related to filling out a related document:

The activities above are described broadly and from the "best case scenario" perspective. However, such a list of stages does not give us an overview of other possible scenarios, for example, if:

A process model helps to understand complex processes involving multiple parties.

Classically - the bigger the organization, the more different processes are involved.

Creating a process model helps to see the process as a whole and minimizes the chance that a variable with a significant impact is overlooked.

Depicting a process as a model helps us to identify functional requirements that didn't become apparent beforehand and therefore allows us to identify desired functionalities and think about technical solutions.

Possible limitations must be considered if the intranet is implemented on top of an existing product (Confluence in this example).

Specific requirements - for example, automatic actions or certain restrictions (e.g. restriction to open the document before the test is completed) - can only be implemented with the help of additional applications.

Thinking about potential technical solutions in parallel with process mapping facilitates managing expectations and helps evaluate the balance of cost and reward.

Rapidly growing organization is like an extreme sport in today's agile world. To stay competitive and achieve results, we need intelligent and innovative solutions.

The analysis phase helps to identify the right problem, set a goal, think about the user and create a detailed overview of the processes and possible technical solutions.

Unlike the initial vision, implementing specific processes and automations may require more custom developments than initially thought.