Case Studies
Construction (access equipment, marketing information)
Situation Producing the monthly sales and marketing statistics had become a very time consuming activity.
Action Using BVMF®, software functionality was designed that comprehensively and accurately supported the business need (this included graphical representations of the statistical output). The software was written, tested and deployed.
Result The business need was comprehensively fulfilled and the deputy managing director highly commended the project for having met the need with speed and accuracy. The monthly statistics were now quicker to produce, more accurate and easier to upgrade in terms of their method of production.
FMCG (merchandising)
Situation A progressive new merchandising system had been written and needed presenting to the user community. The company's senior management were unable to effectively portray and communicate the elision of system and business use to the user merchandisers.
Action Business-IT communication and value layering concepts from BVMF® were used to investigate the problem and design effective and creative training sessions. The ensuing training was given to the user community who fully understood and bought into use of the system to support their roles and obligations as merchandisers.
Result The user merchandisers found the system was easy to use and they and the company benefited from up to date information being fed back to head office on a regular basis.
Telecoms (billing)
Situation A major world class telco had a number of upgrades needed to bring its billing system up to date. The company's IT environment was extremely challenging with many fixes and upgrades being made almost simultaneously. In addition, the billing manager was disillusioned with the past performance of her IT department.
Action BVMF® was used to design and implement the required upgraded functions in a highly vigilant way. Comprehensive checks were made on each work item being deployed to ensure no conflict with the billing project.
Result The new functionality was deployed with no technical problems reported by the IT management and the billing manager, delighted, became an advocate of the BVMF® approach.
Higher Education (electronic services deployment)
Situation A university's corporate IT department had fallen out with the Registry over agreement on the business rules for the electronic services system that deployed email accounts, etc to new staff and students.
Action BVMF® was used to facilitate between these two parties and provide a collaborative structure around which to resolve the disagreement. A key artefact produced was an accurate business process model depicting the staff and student journey. From this, all the key decision points and business rules were derived which were then transmitted to the IT development team in the form of functional requirements.
Result The new functionality was written, tested and implemented and the ensuing upgrade of the system was comprehensively improved, in fact fully up to requirements. Both departments involved were able to use the business process model for future upgrades and maintenance. The two parties became happier working together.
Payroll Outsourcing (European banking processes and procedures)
Situation A large payroll outsourcing supplier required a review of its European banking processes which had become out of date.
Action Using our business value based approach we reviewed the existing process documentation against the reality working closely with the banking manager and his team.
Result After several rounds of review and update the team were happy the processes now reflected current practice. The banking manager, his team and the audit department were very happy the processes they now had were accurate. The banking manager mentioned that he and his team had learnt a lot about their effectiveness and efficiency. Although there was almost no IT component in this work BVMF® showed its power in engendering business effectiveness arising from its holistic, value-vigilant approach.
Organisations we have helped using BVMF®
Organisations we have helped include BPP Professional Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, ADP Employer Services, University of Westminster, Woking and Sam Beare Hospices (WSBH)
Postscript on BVMF®
Further case studies using BVMF® are in progress including those that employ its systematic business value improvement programme to boost the measure of Information Systems Business Value (ISBV) we have devised by a significant, even dramatic, amount. The use of BVMF® has been shown to help boost business productivity over a 2 to 3 year period by up to 25%, dependent on sector and circumstances.
BVMF® is proving its effectiveness because it supplies fundamental principles of IT business value maximisation being free and independent of the constraints of waterfall, agile, and other methods, practices and approaches. Most of these methods, practices and approaches are software (and business process) delivery methods rather than being specifically for IT business value maximisation. Even benefit realisation management in collusion with such other methods is not as integrated and as powerful as BVMF® is when used in combination with other methods because it's specifically designed from conception and birth as a complete, holistic approach to maximising value from IT enabled business/organisational productivity. Its most effective use is invariably when combined with other methods and approaches such as waterfall, agile, wagile, etc as it does not reinvent the wheel where the wheel is of an acceptable/operable quality but supplies the missing 'elephant in the room' value focused ingredients that the other methods miss.
