6 things a Business Analyst should know about the client before a project starts

Useful reconnaissance work before you start your journey with the client

A common scenario in the software world: Company A has decided to partner with an IT provider B for implementation of an enterprise software. The Statement of Work (SOW) is signed. The CEO of both the customer and the organization shake hands and now the time approaches for implementation to start.

At this point in time, further refined product demos happen. Fit and Gap analysis process is initiated to understand the customization that the product needs in order to adapt to company A’s ecosystem. The Business Analyst team is at the helm of all discovery phase.

As a business analyst, there are some things you should know about your customer during this discovery phase, which are not often written on a statement of work or business requirement document. Some of them relate to understanding the customer on a deeper level while some are project related but don’t find their way on a piece of paper. Let’s look at some of them:

Culture of a partner organization is a very important parameter that drives a long duration project. Culture gives you a clue about the decision making process, inter-personal interactions and ease of working in the organization. For example, an organization based in Japan would have a very different style of decision making than one in the US. Getting a sense of decision making in the company can give you an edge while closing down important decisions.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to know. Normally a customer would have been working with a vendor for a number of years and then decided to part ways. This vendor would have hosted all the customer data, created a lot of specifications and would have a strong know-how of the issues encountered over the years. As the new vendor, you would have to interface with them. Its good to know the vendor, research about them and generally be better prepared to deal with the baton-passing phase.

Some organizations prefer iron-clad specifications wherein you have clearly defined the in-scope and out of scope activities, while others are more lenient. By initial interactions you would be able to make out their preference.If you have your own well defined style, it is better to have it communicated in the very beginning.

Its important to initially take time to understand your counterparts in the customer organization at a deeper, more personal level. They could be anyone from process managers to account managers to product managers to a territory manager in the customer organization. They will be the ones who you will be having intense requirement gathering, bug review and other timeline related meetings. Understanding their style of working, concerns, motivations at the first phase goes a long way in getting things moving later.

Or in other terms, how is the customer paying for the software. This questions open up a lot of answers highlighting key aspects of customer engagement. Because “How do you buy?” or “What are you willing to pay?” can really tell the business analyst ‘the level of engagement’ of the customer on his/her project. For example — A company buying your next gen airline reservation software as a licensed product for say 10 years would play a really key role in your development lifecycle. They would commit with great caution (so the initial fit and gap analysis stage becomes a significant milestone) but once committed, they would be active participants in your success. A company buying an out of box product with a smaller time frame in mind would be far less patient and not very interested in collaboration.

If you know that a important client is testing your capabilities by first buying a smaller product module from you, you would really make sure to put your best people on the project. You would make sure to deliver all the required functionalities with quality and on time. Because you see an opportunity to cross sell a lot of other related modules if you manage to create a good impression. As business analysts, it makes a lot more sense in this case to create lasting associations with their counterparts to bring in more business.

I have experienced that the more intrinsically you understand the customer in the initial phase, the more you are clear on your strategies to deliver maximum value to the customer.

So, in a new project, after you have understood your own product and SOR (Statement of requirements) of the customer, do this first “Ask your product manager/project manager/sales team/whoever pitched the idea to the customer — all the questions listed above.”

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