WHITE PAPER:

The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It
April 2008

Visualize Your Business

 Executive Summary

W
hen was the last time you were involved with a business application
that was delivered on time, on budget and with all the features needed
to compete successfully in the market? If you answered; “Never” or
“Not lately” you’re not alone. The sad truth is that the majority of these
projects, large and small, spin out of control and often crash. And
the cause is almost always this: business cannot quickly, effectively
communicate their needs to technology teams.

When faced with these identical challenges years ago, other industries transformed themselves
by moving from drafting boards to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and 3D modeling tools to get
products defined and delivered in half the time, with dramatically lower cost and risk. These tools
are now a competitive necessity when you’re designing cars, airplanes, bridges, semiconductors
and buildings.

So why do we continue to define business software with the equivalent of outdated drafting
boards?

The stakes are high. Much of the $500 billion spent every year on software development is at risk
with delays, cost overruns, missing features, cancellations and poor customer experience – all
because text-based requirement specifications are difficult to read and easy to misunderstand.
Global sourcing brings these issues into even sharper focus, as both integrators and their clients
struggle to communicate effectively and deliver expected efficiency gains.

iRise® offers a simple and effective solution to these problems - a collaborative software platform
that enables businesses to quickly visualize and “test market” applications before a single line of
code is written. For the first time, business people can understand for themselves what they need,
and then communicate that knowledge to others using visual models that replicate the exact
look, feel and behavior of the final product, taking the guesswork out of application definition.
Just as CAD tools transformed the automotive, aerospace and semiconductor industries; iRise is
now transforming the global business application market.

With thousands of projects completed successfully, the value of visualization has proven to be
enormous for businesses in highly competitive markets:
• Get to market twice as fast
• Eliminate 30% of project costs
• Ensure success of global sourcing strategies
• Improve customer experience
Using customer scenarios, this white paper presents a compelling business case for investing in
visualization.

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 2
 “50% of project timelines are now spent on rework.”
Standish Group Chaos Report, 2007

“60% of projects fail to meet business objectives.’’

Forrester Research

“40% of defects are missed by QA, but caught by the users.’’

Forrester Research

The Problem with

Business Software
As most business executives and CIOs will tell you; no longer are there IT projects; there are
only business projects. Business and IT must work as partners to deliver innovation and
both organizations will share in the success or failure of the final result. Delivering business
applications to market dramatically faster, with lower cost and better customer experience are
common goals across many industries.
Most people
Yet these goals have proven to be elusive due to the simple fact that business people
don’t read huge, paper-
fundamentally have a hard time understanding text specifications, static screen shots, detailed
use cases and complex business process flow diagrams. based specifications
and those who do,
Business people are routinely asked to review and then “sign off” on huge text specifications rarely get true value
in painful stakeholder review meetings—meetings that may even slow down the process of from them. Given the
understanding and consensus building they are intended to facilitate. Updating these documents
poor communication
may take weeks, and scheduling key stakeholders for follow-on meetings adds even more time.
afforded by text
When was the last time you looked forward to a stakeholder review meeting? documents, flow
diagrams, spreadsheets
At times, businesses have asked their developers to code prototypes or develop mock-ups in
an attempt to solve these issues. But high fidelity coded prototypes are expensive and time and static screen mock-
consuming to produce, while low fidelity wireframes usually don’t elicit meaningful feedback ups, it’s no wonder that
from stakeholders. Plus, you have to take a developer offline to build them. two thirds of all projects
fail, are delivered late,
Not surprisingly, it’s common for business people to sign off on specification documents without
serious review. You may even hear them say, “I’ll know it when I see it,” which guarantees that, are over budget or are
months later, after the developers deliver the application, you will also hear them say, “That’s missing key features
not what I wanted at all!” IT is told to do it over and over again, until it’s right. Talk about frayed needed by the business.
nerves and strained relationships.

Sound familiar?

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 3
 The Impact
All this bad communication and confusion has led to persistent project delays, cost over-runs
and missing features in business-critical applications.
What impact does this have on business plans, customer experience and brand loyalty? Some
real world examples may help illustrate the devastating effects.
A retail bank acquires a smaller competitor with one million customers. The business wants
to launch a merged online banking portal quickly to stave off customer defections (churn).
Unfortunately, poor communication and collaboration between business stakeholders and the
technology team leads to a 6 month delay in going live with the new site. Because of the time
crunch, the bank treats customer experience testing as an afterthought. The result? Even after
spending $1.5 million more than they planned, the bank retains only 78% of its new customers,
versus the 90% targeted by the business; in other words, 120,000 customers just left the bank.
And contact center call rates skyrocket due to the poor online experience.
An insurance company currently does business with a community of 35,000 independent agents
with an antiquated set of 8 different client/server and Web applications. A single, merged agent
portal will solve the problem, but no one can understand the text-based specifications. Screen
mock-ups are created with MS PowerPoint, but that only delays the project further. The result?
The new portal is launched 9 months late to almost universal confusion by the agent community,
which now inundates the contact center with questions. Costs climb and broker initiated
business drops by 10%; a multi-million dollar loss of revenue to the company.

“In the last year, 70% of projects failed to meet deadlines, and 50% of projects fail
to meet the needs of the business. 80% of the issues stem from poor requirements.”
Standish Group Chaos Report, 2007

A financial services company launches a new capability for customers to complete their mortgage
applications online. Business and IT have wrangled for months about what to build. Wireframe
prototypes were built to augment the text specifications and flow diagrams. Yet, almost no
usability testing was done with consumers prior to the launch. The result? Mortgage application
dropout rates exceed 80%. Not only does the company fail to meet its business goals, but brand
loyalty erodes as consumers defect to competitors who offer a better customer experience.
A telecom company handles in-store returns with a paper-based system today. They plan to
release an online return system, which would streamline the process and save the company
$10 million a month. But business stakeholders and IT struggle to understand the text-based
specifications and new business process diagrams. The portal is 9 months late. The delay costs
the company $90 million.
A retail company is building its online presence steadily. However, as the business grows and a
host of new product categories are added to the site, the company does little advance planning
to keep customer experience high. Conversion rates drop by 15% and average ticket size starts
to decline, costing the company millions in lost revenue.
These are just some of the ways that poor communication between business and IT can cost
companies dearly. What would it mean to your business to get critical applications to market
months earlier, with fantastic customer experience?
Fortunately, there’s now a way to make this happen.

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 4
 The Solution
iRise has an amazingly simple but effective solution to these issues: visualize before you build.

iRise is the market leading supplier of visualization software for business applications. Across
a variety of industries, visualization is now a proven strategy for enabling business and IT
stakeholders to effectively communicate their needs and for giving everyone involved a chance
to “test drive” applications before development. Companies of all sizes use iRise to visualize
before building, which accelerates time to revenue, improves customer experience, drives down
cost, and reduces global sourcing risk.

Thousands of business analysts and user experience professionals use iRise to quickly visualize
business applications, often making them virtually indistinguishable from the final product.
They use iRise to visualize all kinds of applications; Web-based banking portals, electronic
medical systems, packaged application implementations (e.g. SAP, Oracle), and even mobile
applications.

With the proper attention to process, iRise leverages your business goals with predictable,
reliable results. Tens of thousands of people across a broad range of industries have experienced
iRise on thousands of projects. They tell us that iRise drives the following value:
• Gets applications to market twice as fast
• Cuts an average of 30% out of project costs
• Ensures the success of global sourcing strategies
• Drives better business decisions about which initiatives to fund
• Stops bad projects from starting in the first place
• Improves customer experience by driving usability testing earlier

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 5
 General Motors has to succeed through innovation. That’s where iRise leads and that’s the whole
philosophy of the company right now.”
Dr. Richard Frost, Global Director, Information Systems & Services, General Motors

Assessing the Value of

Software Visualization
iRise offers valuable benefits over traditional text-based methods for defining and delivering
business applications. Benefits can be measured directly, such as accelerated time to market,
reduced requirements cycle time and improved brand loyalty by delivering quality application
products.

A clear business case for software visualization has emerged from the results of thousands of
iRise customer projects. The table below summarizes the benefits iRise customers have seen;
companies can evaluate how these potential benefits match their circumstances.

Cost Revenue
Benefit Measurable
Savings Enhancing

Bring innovation to market faster • • •

Improve customer experience
Cut application rework
Reduce risk surrounding global sourcing models
Improve the quality of business applications
Stop bad projects from starting in the first place
Promote collaboration between IT & business
• • •
• •
• •
• •
• •
• •

Realizing Cost Savings with iRise Visualization

Business and IT both have strong incentives to ensure that software initiatives are done once,
on time, on budget, and with the features needed for success. But only iRise visualization can
bring business and IT together early in the definition cycle to quickly iterate on a working model
so they can get to the right answer faster, and with confidence. That contribution to efficiency
usually translates into substantial cost savings. Of course, the savings will vary depending on
project size, time frame, resources and quality goals, but there is no question that application
visualization multiplies the cost benefit of collaborative requirements definition.

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 6
 “iRise let us get business and IT aligned much faster than ever before.”
COO, Global Wealth Organization

Cost Savings Scenario 1: Visualizing First Cuts $2.5M and 50,000 Hours Annually for
Global Wealth Organization
A leading global wealth management company with $35 billion of annual revenue needed a
new application system to streamline their account opening processes. Using iRise, stakeholders
and developers quickly came to an understanding of the requirements and outcomes, enabling
the project to proceed ahead of schedule. The development life cycle of the new account system
was cut in half to 45 weeks, finishing nine months earlier than comparable projects using older
requirements methods. The accelerated time to market reduced development costs by $2.5
million and is now saving 50,000 person-hours of wealth manager and associate time annually.

Development Step Historical With iRise

Requirements Cycle 18 Weeks 3 Weeks

Business/Technology Requirement Elaboration 9 Weeks 2 Weeks
Coding (Initial Code Drop) 22 Weeks 18 Weeks
Coding Error Corrections 18 Weeks 9 Weeks
Training/Rollout 22 Weeks 13 Weeks
TOTAL 89 Weeks 45 Weeks

Cost Savings Scenario 2: Eliminating Rework Cuts Costs and Accelerates Delivery for
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is a leader in the fight to eradicate cancer. With its unique
teaching, research and clinical environment, they must invest in a custom electronic medical
record (EMR) system. Static specifications were just not effective with clinicians, who could
only afford short bursts of time to review and give feedback on proposed systems. Using iRise
to quickly visualize an order entry set application, the business analyst group at MD Anderson
involved more than 15 stakeholders in the review process. Together, they were able to roll out
the new application, training and documentation to hundreds of users up to 50% faster, with no
down time and no rework, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“ M.D. Anderson’s goal is to eradicate cancer, and we see technology as a way to get us there faster.
To achieve that goal, we need to move at a faster pace and grow the organization. Our center
requires a more efficient way for our business analysts, often clinicians, to talk to the users of these
systems. iRise’s simulation gives us the mechanism to communicate the desired application clearly,
and therefore, speed the delivery of new, critical care systems. Now we have more time to spend on
improving patient outcomes and make cancer history.”
Dr. Lynn Vogel, Ph.D., Vice President and CIO of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 7
 “Using iRise is mission-critical for us – it brings the threshold for usability testing way down,
translating to Web sites that our customers have found to be really intuitive.”
Carter Hansen, SVP of User Centered Design, eCommerce Division, Wachovia Corporation

Cost Savings Scenario 3: Taking A Customer-Centric Approach Cuts Contact Center Traffic
By 58% for Wachovia Bank
Wachovia was tasked with defining and developing a new online product suite that would
enhance customer experience and improve retention rates. Using iRise to visualize the new
product suite, the project team was able to rapidly iterate new interfaces directly with bank
customers prior to development, leading to a dramatic improvement in customer experience.
By taking a user-centric design approach, which moved usability testing to the front of the
development process, Wachovia saw its contact center dial-in rate related to usability cut by 58%,
saving millions, enhancing brand loyalty, and allowing redeployment of resources to revenue
generating activity.

Revenue Enhancement With iRise Software Visualization

Many companies think of their technology investments as cost centers and miss the opportunity
to see them as strategic revenue producers. Software visualization can result in substantial cost
savings, but it also can help companies improve top line revenue. In fact, the benefits to getting
innovation to market faster often outweigh by orders of magnitude any cost savings that might
be realized.

Software visualization can positively impact a company’s market share, brand loyalty and
earnings by:
• Getting critical innovation to market months sooner than planned
• Improving customer experience
• Establishing a reputation for quality
• Creating competitive differentiation by enabling new business opportunities

“The benefits of compelling online products and services are impressive in terms of impact to
the bottom line, increased loyalty and customer acquisition. As we began the project to deliver
an enhanced online experience for our customers, we knew we needed a more effective way to
validate user requirements. With iRise simulations, we are able to ensure that we are building the
right applications for our customers the first time.”
David Nix, VP of Online Banking, Suntrust

Revenue Enhancement Scenario 1: SunTrust Bank Keeps Customers After Merger By

Visualizing New Banking Portal
Remember the retail bank that acquired a smaller competitor with one million customers? That’s
a real scenario that SunTrust Bank faced in late 2004 when it merged with NCF. But unlike our
scenario outlined above, SunTrust used iRise to visualize the entire merged application, gain
stakeholder sign-off, win steering committee approval and test the new application directly with
customers in just four weeks. The result? SunTrust delivered their merged online banking system
in just 5 months, with no rework at all. Better yet, the bank exceeded its customer retention goal
of 85% in 90 days; the actual results were 92% customer retention in just 30 days. Hundreds of
thousands of bank customers were retained successfully, driving millions in incremental revenue
as part of the merger.

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 8
 “iRise gives us the ability to deliver world-class services to our customers
in a fraction of the time it used to take.”
Director of Product Usability, Digital Insight

Revenue Enhancement Scenario 2: Online Retailer Invests in Customer Experience to Raise

Conversion Rates, Ticket Size
Online retailing is an amazingly competitive business with thin margins. Quickly adding
capabilities and new products to an online shopping site is a competitive necessity. But doing
so without paying attention to customer experience can easily lead to lower conversion rates
and smaller ticket size. Visualizing proposed changes with iRise first can solve this problem.
One online retailer used iRise to rapidly iterate new capabilities in front of trusted customers
long before making the changes to the production site. The feedback received was invaluable
in helping design a fantastic customer experience. After the company rolled out the new site,
they measured a 10% improvement in conversion rate and an increase of 5% in ticket size. This
translated into millions of dollars in incremental business for the firm.

Revenue Enhancement Scenario 3: CitiBank Cuts Online Mortgage Application Drop-out

Rate By 75%
Citigroup’s lending division was recently tasked with overhauling CitiMortgage.com to comply
with new information security and FCC regulations and to address the problem that 80% of
customers that started the online mortgage applications dropped out of the process before
completion due to poor customer experience. The Citibank Lending group traditionally relied
on text-based requirements documents and static screen shots to describe complex systems, but
stakeholders often had difficulty understanding proposed functionality and providing feedback,
which made it impossible to accurately validate requirements prior to coding. Citibank Lending
application developers were left to build user interfaces for new applications without adequate
user data, resulting in delays getting new business systems to market and applications that were
poorly adopted. Ultimately, over 60% of these projects did not meet business goals.

“Being able to be collaborative and get to the functional requirements sooner in the process has
allowed us to reduce definition timelines by about 33% across the board.”
Director of User Interface and Experience Design, Citigroup

Citibank Lending created a new division within the IT organization; the User-Centered Design
(UCD) group. The UCD group used iRise to visualize a new version of the online mortgage
application, which enabled them to test and validate proposed new interfaces directly with
customers in the project discovery and research phase. The UCD team presented the visualization
during focus groups, listening labs, usability studies, profiles and surveys to clearly establish and
document user behavior. During these sessions, the UCD group iterated the visualization to
validate requirements and assure customer satisfaction before any coding began.

Leveraging iRise, the UCD group decreased the project’s requirements and functional definition
phase by 33%, realized a 66% reduction in the prototyping and user interface design timeline,
and achieved an 88% time reduction in task analysis and documentation. In sum, the vastly-
improved CitiMortgage.com site, which was estimated to be completed in 1,600 programmer
hours, was delivered in fewer than 650. And best of all, the dropout rate for new mortgage
applications was cut by 75%, resulting in millions of dollars in incremental revenue to the bank,
along with enhanced brand loyalty and reduced contact center call-in rates.

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 9
 Revenue Enhancement Scenario 4: WaMu Drives Competitive Advantage with Instant
Checking
As one of the leading diversified banks in the country, WaMu is always on the lookout for ways
to deliver competitive products with outstanding customer experience. One project focused on
ways to streamline the customer experience when opening a WaMu checking account online;
which used to take an average of 10 days. Although the account opening process was initiated
via the Internet, the bank could not authorize the account without the receipt of a traditional
signature card mailed by the consumer. The challenge was to design and launch an online
account opening application that eliminated the offline processes and was incredibly easy to
use for WaMu customers. Text-based specifications for such a system were difficult to visualize
for business stakeholders and did not provide useful feedback on usability.

“iRise was instrumental in helping us visualize a radical new way to

conduct online banking and get it to market incredibly fast.”
First Vice President, eCommerce, Washington Mutual

WaMu turned to iRise as a way to present a visual mockup of the proposed application and
business processes to stakeholders that had to buy-in to the new approach. iRise visualizations
were then used to quickly iterate new designs and workflow directly with customers in a special
usability lab – all before any development was started. This new process provided developers
with invaluable usability information and opportunities for extensive refinement. Early legal and
compliance reviews of the visualization paved the way for the development of new authentication
technology, eliminating the need for paper signature cards.

Use of iRise accelerated the new online checking account application development by 25%,
with virtually no rework. WaMu launched the paperless account process in April 2006 as the
first online-only “instant checking account” application in the banking industry. Now the average
time to complete an application and open an account is a mere six minutes. The new process
has driven millions of dollars of new revenue to the bank from thousands of new customers.
Currently, the bank accepts over 700 online applications per day, and according to Comscore, it
has the second highest conversion in the industry; the highest conversion when factoring in the
lack of an online signature card process. The WaMu paperless checking account has received
multiple awards, including the Change Sciences 1st place ranking for a new customer process
and registered a jump in the bank’s Keynote rank from 10th to 5th.

Conclusion
Designing and building business software with the equivalent of outdated drafting boards used
in other industries no longer makes sense. The road behind is littered with the wreckage of
failed projects that have been derailed with poor communication, delays, rework and missing
features. Today’s hyper-competitive market pressures are forcing a fundamental change in
how business and technology teams partner to deliver innovation faster, with less cost and risk.
Visualization is the key to that successful partnership. Thousands of business applications have
been successfully visualized using iRise, and soon visualization will become the standard for how
these initiatives are designed and delivered. The stakes are high. Isn’t it time you visualized
before you built?

©2008 iRise. All Rights Reserved. WHITE PAPER: The Problem with Business Software & How Visualization Can Fix It 10
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