Going to the Top: The Enterprise

Level
When we talk about the enterprise level, we don’t mean a deck on the
spaceship from Star Trek; we’re referring to the level at which strategic
company decisions happen and then trickle down through the company,
impacting policies and procedures at all levels. The enterprise level is the
collective whole of a company viewed from the highest perspective — such
as a parent organization — and contains more than one organizational level.
For example, think of a company like Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. It
has
organizational levels that include news networks such as CNN and
entertainment networks such as TNT and Cartoon Network. Even smaller
independent companies, such as a law firm or a department of the local or
federal government, make decisions on an enterprise level.
This level of analysis is often the starting point for a brand-new project and
provides context for your requirements analysis and solution development
(more on this topic in Chapter 5). When you analyze at this level, you can
reveal to companies where they have a gap or are operating ineffectively.
Enterprise-level analysis also enables you and the company to determine
whether the company should go into a new business area or expand an
existing area farther (like how Apple grew from just selling computers to
offering MP3 players and tablets) and whether the company should purchase
or sell to another company (such as when Google purchased YouTube).
Performing enterprise analysis involves big-picture thinking to positively and
strategically impact the entire company.
When doing analysis at this level, you most often work with the senior
leaders of the company, such as the chief executive officer (CEO), chief
information officer (CIO), chief financial officer (CFO), and chief operating
officer (COO). This level of leadership is referred to as the C level. Most
organizations have departments that focus primarily on enterprise strategic
planning and development that consist of executives and marketing, research,
and financial analysts. Depending on the strategic initiative, individuals from
other levels, such as organizational or operational, may also be involved.
BAs don’t often work at this level until much later in their careers, so
your main task until then is to make sure your work on the lower levels
always supports this level.
Doing business analysis activities at the enterprise
level
Enterprise-level analysis focuses on optimizing interactions across multiple
organizations within a company to benefit the whole. Business analysis
activities that take place at this level include the following:
Defining the business needs — the rules that govern the company (see
Chapters 5 and 8)
Eliciting goals and competitive product analysis (Chapter 7)
Mapping as is (current) state and to be (future) state company processes
and process reengineering (Chapter 13)
Defining the business case, or the reasons you’re going forward with a
project (Chapter 9)
Defining solution scope — what the boundaries of your project are
(Chapter 10)
Determining solution approach, or the way to solve the problem at hand
(Chapter 12)
Overcoming challenges at the enterprise level
Working with senior leaders in any size company comes with challenges. For
starters, you typically can get only a limited amount of time with these folks;
in large organizations, they may be spread across different offices, which
makes getting the group together when necessary extra difficult.
For this reason, you need to have clear goals regarding what you want to
accomplish in every meeting with senior leaders. You need to be very
confident in your techniques and have a plan for how you’ll approach each
interaction. Know each leader’s preferred communication style and use it
during meetings with them, while providing them with updates, and in
presentations related to the initiative. See Chapter 11 for more on creating a
stakeholder communication plan.
Another obstacle at this level is access. You may need access to market and
competitive information or financial information (including salaries) that is
typically confidential and not shared openly with everyone in the
organization. If you aren’t authorized to receive info you need, you have to
get creative. Find someone who does have access and have her provide the
answer in a format that doesn’t give detailed confidential information but
provides enough to perform your analysis.
For example, Kupe worked on a strategic initiative analyzing a core
process that spanned multiple business areas of a company. One of the
pieces of information he was analyzing was the cost of doing the
process. including salary information he didn’t have access to. To get
what he needed, Kupe just asked individuals who had access to provide
him with a total salary number for groups of individuals across the
business areas.