Business Analysis

Implementing data driven decisions from the start

Business Analyst

Supporting Insurance markets

Key Insurance Lines Supported

Supporting key insurance lines:

Lloyd's Market Lines
Reinsurance
Managing General Agent - Terrorism, Cyber, Engineering contract Inspection services

Key Workload Review & Analysis principles

Working with stakeholders from the Business & Technology areas to review key workloads, and then define plans to achieve business improvement outcomes. Workloads are tracked over time and show the development towards business outcomes.

Key Principles

Earlier is better - do reviews earlier in product development life-cycles to ensure ROI (Return on Investment) and business value
What hasn't been considered - sometimes we forget to make key decisions that cause rework
Most workloads can be improved - find the opportunities for improvement

Benefits

Build and deploy faster
Lower and mitigate risks
Help stakeholders make informed decisions
Implement proven industry best practices with reference architecture

Workload Key tools

Business dashboard displaying

Resource utilisation
Key Health Indicators implemented
Milestones of workload reviews
Previous reviews
Assigned priorities against key business deliveries
Improvement plans & product backlogs
PDF reports of Key risks against the security, reliability, performance, operational excellence and cost optimisation pillars

Review & Implement Industry Proven Architecture frameworks

Help Business & Technology stakeholders make informed decisions about Cloud Workload architectural issues in a cloud-native way and help them understand the impact of design decisions. By using the Amazon AWS 'Well-Architected Framework' we can help stakeholders understand the risks in their architecture, and learn ways to mitigate them. Helping to review cloud integration to ensure 'Well Architecture' design principles are implemented and remain consistent. Monitor and benchmark workloads and define recommendations to improve business value.

Architecture Pillars

Security - Protect information, assets & systems while delivering business value via risk assessment and mitigation
Reliability - Implement ability to recover from system or infrastructure failure and meet dynamic demand
Performance efficiency - Use IT resources efficiently, and meet demand requirements
Cost Optimisation - Avoid 'waste' costs with continuous refinement & improvement over product life-cycles
Operational Excellence - Implement continuous improvement processes to deliver business value and well defined outcomes

This will ensure that the Business Value over Costs are maximised.

Application Integration Specialist

The main specialisation is to help companies with Mergers & Acquisitions. Helping to understand, document and integrate between the two companies systems and help manage risk is a key to beginning a transformation into a stable application landscape.

All analysis is completed in conjunction with Project Management function to inform direction of project including CBA's (Cost Benefit Analysis), and developing a Product Portfolio to help inform strategic IT decisions. Every client has a specific set of compliance requirements which need to be adhered to. Further understanding the clients Vertical and Horizontal value chains, helps to understand how they best to configure the applications to operate and how to successfully plan remediation plans and execute a project to integrate the stand alone IT into the Global IT function without causing service interruptions. This e-Discovery is vital to the success of the project, and future ongoing Development & Maintenance of Legacy systems. Experienced in managing cross-functional project teams and high-visibility projects is key to success.

Second, is understanding the Legal Entity Organisation structure required to apply an ITIL framework and begin the integration of IT systems.

Every organisation has an Organisation structure made up of smaller companies with strategic importance. Every legal entity has it's own Leadership and sometime different Legal & Compliance fiduciary requirements. In order to identify the correct alignment of applications & infrastructure this gets allocated accordingly in the Product Catalogue, as well as mapping out the responsible roles for Operating & Maintaining the product.

Business Model Generation

Working with business leaders to:

Develop new Business models
Optimise existing Business models
Help innovate new products / production processes

Key Responsibilities

Summary of functions performed

Application Integration

e-Discovery of 6000+ desktop applications to be consolidated into a standard Desktop image following Global desktop support
Migrating 500+ Applications onto IT Strategic platforms Windows 7 & Windows 10 with full end to end project technical leadership
Migrating Infrastructure & Application systems to the MS Azure Private Cloud
Consolidating disparate Document Management systems into a strategic Document Management system
Migrating Data-centre to address DR fail over audits
Implementation of TOM (Target Operating Models) - Either Centralise or Decentralise supported
Mapping requirements
Implementing Project tractability matrices to delivery planned outcomes
Implementing Document Production roll-out and change over of all Document templates to strategic systems

Lead and facilitate meetings with project stakeholders from all levels

Implementing Lean methodology to reduce process friction on current and planned workflows

Level 1 Senior Management - to identify Product Owners
Level 2 Mid Management - to identify Escalation chain
Level 3 Operational Management & Day to day resources to identify Product Experts
Level 4 Product Expert workflow capture

Manage vendors and team members in a matrix organisation

Create & Document 'As Is' and 'To Be' Operational processes to follow
Monitor & ensure Processes are adhered to

Align with PMO

Understanding of project management methodologies including Waterfall (PMI standard) and Agile
Project Scope Management
Dependency Management
Risk Management
Issue Management
Stakeholder Management
Cost/Financial Management
Preparing project status reporting (Monthly RAG Reports, Bi-Weekly Stakeholder Reports, etc.)
conducting project team meetings, project status meetings, and stakeholder meetings as required; managing/interfacing with all IT/Business functions required for execution
Develop and manage project schedules using MS Project

Reporting effort as well as progress communication

Agree Dashboard with Senior IT Leadership on status of the project(s)/work streams that are currently in flight
Setup project space for project team to operate and communicate
Managing expectations and conflicts/obstacles and unexpected difficulties
Identify, track and resolve project risks/issues using best practice problem-solving techniques

Manage the entire Project Management Life Cycle

Define & agree test plans if not existing
Setup & manage multiple products in environments
Complete UAT (User Acceptance Testing), Staging (Integration) testing, and sign-off for Production deployment

UK Windows 7 Desktop Refresh - Manchester / London

Duration: 12 Months (Dec 2014 - October 2015)

Role: Project Analyst to support migration of HSB EIL Engineer Surveyors

High level outcome: Migrated business from standalone internal IT to a Global Service Delivery framework, and migrated from desktops to WYSE Terminal (VDI) infrastructure in Germany. Roll-out team was comprised of external contractors to implement project. Rolled out Windows 7 to 250+ remote Engineer Surveyors & ensure, without service interruption as they worked at remote sites to perform contractual Engineering Inspections. Travel between Manchester & London.

The Desktop Organisation prior to the migration had over +1500 applications that needed review. At the end of the migration their portfolio of applications was reduced to ~70 applications & ~30 dedicated infrastructure systems. The first phase integrated their Desktop into the Global Image managed in SCCM. The second phase was to migrate their Data-centre into the MS Dedicated Cloud to remove onsite dependencies.

The company is now benefiting from Enterprise Architecture that allows reuse of Global applications and infrastructure systems reducing the run infrastructure costs.

Document Management

Document Repositories

OpenText / Documentum
SharePoint
Kofax

Document Production Systems

xPression

e-Discovery

Implementing e-Discovery systems into Operations support teams that ensure the e-Discovery data provided meets legal requirements and is inline with IT auditing.

3rd Party Policy Administration Systems

GuideWire - UW, and Finance modules

MAGIC

Project Support Analysis

Working with both structured and unstructured data to complete a full picture of the landscape before implementing any changes.

Understanding the 'As Is' environment - Documenting workflows of Key application systems to ensure complete understanding of operations, and workflows.

Testing Analysis

Defining testing frameworks, and test procedures for application acceptance testing changes into production.

Positive Path - Used in BCP & DR testing
Detailed critical business flows test cases

Methodologies

Lean
DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Change)
SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats)
Top down, bottom Up

Tools Used

Applications used to apply Business Analysis

MS Visio / Adonis
MS PowerShell
MS Word
MS Project
MS Excel
MS PowerPoint
MS PowerBI

Production Support

Warranty support phase

Once the project is live the project team will provide Production Support for the changes within the agreed Project Warranty period. At conclusion of the time-frame the system will be handed over to production support team to continue to support.

R2P

Release to Production

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