Given the increasing pressure that modern scientific organizations are facing to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, enhance innovation and reduce compliance risk, it is critical for companies to ensure that laboratory informatics projects help to fulfill these important business goals.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when starting an informatics project is to not do the strategic planning necessary to ensure success. Many organizations try to select and implement a system without first performing the due diligence required to align laboratory functional needs with the strategic needs of the business—an error that is magnified if more than one site is involved. Towards this end, the first step in any laboratory informatics project should always be a thorough workflow and business analysis.
Why Business Process Analysis (BPA) matters
- Saves project dollars
- Focuses requirements on business needs
- Engages users and leadership in the use of new systems
- Serves as the underpinning for project design and planning
Saves Project Dollars
Elkforce professionals have successfully applied best practices in the evaluation of work processes, functional and technical requirements, laboratory processes and informatics solution options for hundreds of clients and tens of thousands of scientists in a wide range of industries.
Elkforce Business Analysts work to align business processes, business goals, and technology to ensure your project maximizes business value for your organization.
Our Business Analysts begin the process by first meeting with your management team to discuss the project at a high level and understand the goals, aspirations and objectives of the desired future state (i.e., strategic needs). This is followed up with interviews of bench-level analysts in different laboratory groups (e.g., incoming materials, in-process testing, final release, QC/QA, etc.) to produce current state (AS-IS) Visio workflow diagrams.
Focuses Requirements on Business Needs
Next, the Elkforce Team creates a model of the optimized future state (To-Be) workflows based on our experience with some of the most progressive scientific enterprises on Earth. By drawing on our internal expertise, and a comprehensive understanding of how today’s complex software systems have been deployed to great success, Elkforce Team members will focus the future state model for your company based on agreed-upon business needs. This helps our customers avoid having to change their work processes to fit a specific software system’s workflow.
Finally, a detailed future state Requirements Matrix with prioritized opportunities is created in a collaborative fashion. The final result of an effective business process analysis is a set of optimized future state requirements that will be used to guide laboratory IT architecture, technology selection, project planning and task prioritization, and system development and implementation.
Engages Users and Leadership in the Use of New Systems
A major source of project failures is the lack of utilization of new systems in favor of reverting to pre-deployment systems and methodologies. Elkforce Team members engage our customer resources to vet and affirm future state workflow models so that system requirements reflect a viable design that solves the problems identified by our customer experts. Gone are the days when vendors deployed a system and expected a customer to conform to it. With Elkforce’s unique methodology, only functionality with proven business benefits for you company is implemented.
Serves as the Underpinning for Project Design and Planning
With an approved future state model in hand, project plan development time is greatly reduced, and prioritization of functionality rollout is laser-targeted. The continuum from initial As-Is analysis through system design is an approach unique to Elkforce, and is designed to enhance the success of our customers.
Put Elkforce Business Analysts to work for you to reduce the cost of your project, optimize project design, and align project outcomes with business goals.