Establishing a Business Analysis Centre of Excellence (BA COE) for an Insurance Broker

Background

A leading insurance brokerage firm specializing in customized insurance solutions for businesses and individuals was looking to address challenges in project delivery efficiency and consistency across its agencies. 

Problem statement

The client was facing challenges in its business analysis practices, including fragmented and non-standardized processes, inconsistent resource utilization, and limited knowledge sharing. These challenges hindered the ability to drive project delivery excellence across the organization. 

Solution

Navikenz conceptualized, set-up and implemented a centralized Business Analysis Centre of Excellence (BA COE) for them with the following key components: 

Delivery Workstreams: The COE defined the workstreams that would be driven to deliver value across processes and projects. The COE also defined the type of resources required across the workstreams and the key objectives of each of the workstreams. 

Project Delivery Templates: Created and institutionalized standardized templates, guidelines, and standard operating procedures to be adopted by BAs across agile and non-agile IT projects. 

Skill Development: Designed tailored certification and training programs to upskill BAs, focusing on both foundational and advanced competencies. The certification program acted as a representation of skills the corresponding BA could deliver on any IT project. 

Tool roadmap: Designed a standardized tool inventory and created a roadmap to asset the functionality of tools in use and the potential to migrate to alternatives with better functionality.  

Performance Management and Governance: Defined the key performance metrics to be tracked to assess the performance of both the COE as well as individual resources. In parallel, defined a governance framework to monitor ongoing quality of work. 

Community Building: Fostered a collaborative BA community for ongoing engagement, feedback, and shared learning. 

Outcomes

• Project Delivery: Streamlined project delivery with improvement in the requirements gathering process, in the quality process and in the overall project delivery  

• Enhanced Capability: Established guidelines, standard operating procedures and built a domain knowledge academy to build a pool of skilled BAs equipped to handle complex projects. 

• Quality and Sustainability: Improved project delivery through standardization and implemented governance mechanisms to ensure performance meets expectations.