Share this
Business analyst techniques for uncovering customer needs
by Kirsten Eriksen on 03 August 2016
Image: Service blueprint for Service Design panel by Brandon Schauer, used under CC BY-SA 2.0.
In my last article The future of IT business analysis – moving from ‘what the business needs’ to ‘what the customer needs I positioned that the business analyst role needs to evolve for digital transformation projects where the focus is on ‘customer systems’ rather than ‘business systems’.
In that article I mentioned a number of techniques (some from other disciplines) that could be used by business analysts to gain insights into customer needs. I explain a few of these techniques in more detail here to help you transition to becoming a better business analyst for today’s customer focused change projects.
The 3 G’s
This is a lean manufacturing technique, that is also very useful for gaining a genuine understanding your customer’s need. Often a customer can’t articulate what it is they want or need. This technique, is about observing the customer in their own environment doing the ‘thing’ that you want to have an impact upon or the topic you are considering for change.
The 3 G’s are:
- Gemba – The actual place. This is where the activity takes place and ‘value’ is created for the customers. Value in this context can be identified as the reason the person is doing the activity. Normally there will be a goal in mind.
- Gembutsu - The thing. This could be a piece of equipment, a product, a process, etc. It is the activity that you are wanting to impact or that you are analysing.
- Genjitsu - The facts. What is happening. Both in terms of the physical, and the non-physical, so the outcomes, difficulties they experience, product produced, etc
A key underlying mindset for this technique is "genchi gembutsu" or "Go Observe" (or as Steve Blank would say “Get out of the building”). This means that you would go observe an area of opportunity or where a problem might be occurring. By doing this, you gain first-hand knowledge, which can be translated in to insight rather than anecdotal or second hand information that might have been filtered.
Heuristic Evaluation
A heuristic is a technique that humans automatically fall back on when they are faced with a problem, using strategies derived from experience with similar problems. The most fundamental of these is trial and error and other examples include rules of thumb and educated guesses.
You might use heuristics in various parts of your analysis. One useful area would be in creating a user interface that is intuitive and easily useable by customers and other users. In 1990, Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich came up with 10 heuristics (which were then refined by Nielsen in 1994) that could be applied to ensure a usable interface is produced. Heuristic Evaluation is the objective consideration of each of the identified heuristics to assess whether the interface developed is genuinely usable.
Examples include providing feedback on customer actions, use of consistent words and actions, and expressing error messages in plain language. The point of this is to make the product or service easy for your customer to use. Find out more in Jakob Nielsen’s article 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
Service Blueprints
A Service Blueprint is a map that displays all the touchpoints (ways a customer has direct interaction) with a service or product, as well as the key internal processes involved. Service Blueprints help you both visualise the path customers follow across multiple channels and identify how you can improve the flow, or change their experience for the better. Service Blueprints are often used in conjunction with Customer Journey / Experience Maps, but they can also stand on their own.
An example Service Blueprint, prepared by Brandon Schauer, is included at the top of this post.
You can see other example case studies of Service Blueprints being used on the Service Design Tools website, which is also a great resource for other Service Design tools and techniques.
Situational Analysis
This one is actually a marketing technique, but, like the 3 G’s above, techniques from other disciplines can be used to understand your customer and their needs. Techniques such as this provide intelligence that can be analysed to create insight.
Situational Analysis refers to a collection of methods that managers use to analyse an organisation's internal and external environment to understand the organisation's capabilities, customers, and business environment. For example, changes in consumer and social technology may help you understand how customers will expect to interact and transact with you.
Situational Analysis consists of several methods of analysis: The 3C’s (sometimes called the 5C’s), SWOT, PESTLE and Porter five forces are all Situational Analysis Techniques. Find out more about Situational Analysis.
Applying the techniques to uncover customer needs
Transforming to be more customer centric is a great direction for any organisation. As a business analyst you have an important role to play in this transformation. There are many techniques out there to better understand customer needs and I have only covered a handful in this article.
It is also highly likely that your organisation already has a wealth of intelligence that you can tap into to understand your customers better. In addition to the findings that you gather yourself make sure you utilise existing information available about your customers.
Use the insight you gain through these and other techniques to make changes that satisfy your customer need. This can only be a good thing for an organisation.
Kirsten Eriksen is a Senior Consultant specialising in business analysis, based in Equinox IT’s Wellington, New Zealand office.
Share this
- Agile Development (153)
- Software Development (126)
- Agile (76)
- Scrum (66)
- Application Lifecycle Management (50)
- Capability Development (47)
- Business Analysis (46)
- DevOps (43)
- IT Professional (42)
- Equinox IT News (41)
- Agile Transformation (38)
- IT Consulting (38)
- Knowledge Sharing (36)
- Lean Software Development (35)
- Requirements (35)
- Strategic Planning (35)
- Solution Architecture (34)
- Digital Disruption (32)
- IT Project (31)
- International Leaders (31)
- Cloud (26)
- Digital Transformation (26)
- Project Management (26)
- Azure DevOps (23)
- Coaching (23)
- IT Governance (23)
- System Performance (23)
- Innovation (21)
- Change Management (20)
- MIT Sloan CISR (15)
- Client Briefing Events (13)
- Architecture (12)
- Working from Home (12)
- IT Services (10)
- Data Visualisation (9)
- Kanban (9)
- People (9)
- Business Architecture (8)
- Communities of Practice (8)
- Continuous Integration (7)
- Business Case (4)
- Enterprise Analysis (4)
- Angular UIs (3)
- Business Rules (3)
- GitHub (3)
- Java Development (3)
- Lean Startup (3)
- Satir Change Model (3)
- AI (2)
- API (2)
- Automation (2)
- Scaling (2)
- Security (2)
- Toggles (2)
- ✨ (2)
- .Net Core (1)
- Diversity (1)
- Microsoft Azure (1)
- Testing (1)
- December 2024 (1)
- August 2024 (1)
- February 2024 (3)
- January 2024 (1)
- September 2023 (2)
- July 2023 (3)
- August 2022 (4)
- August 2021 (1)
- July 2021 (1)
- June 2021 (1)
- May 2021 (1)
- March 2021 (1)
- February 2021 (2)
- November 2020 (2)
- September 2020 (1)
- July 2020 (1)
- June 2020 (3)
- May 2020 (3)
- April 2020 (2)
- March 2020 (8)
- February 2020 (1)
- November 2019 (1)
- August 2019 (1)
- July 2019 (2)
- June 2019 (2)
- April 2019 (3)
- March 2019 (2)
- February 2019 (1)
- December 2018 (3)
- November 2018 (3)
- October 2018 (3)
- September 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (4)
- July 2018 (5)
- June 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (5)
- March 2018 (3)
- February 2018 (2)
- January 2018 (2)
- December 2017 (2)
- November 2017 (3)
- October 2017 (4)
- September 2017 (5)
- August 2017 (3)
- July 2017 (3)
- June 2017 (1)
- May 2017 (1)
- March 2017 (1)
- February 2017 (3)
- January 2017 (1)
- November 2016 (1)
- October 2016 (6)
- September 2016 (1)
- August 2016 (5)
- July 2016 (3)
- June 2016 (4)
- May 2016 (7)
- April 2016 (13)
- March 2016 (8)
- February 2016 (8)
- January 2016 (7)
- December 2015 (9)
- November 2015 (12)
- October 2015 (4)
- September 2015 (2)
- August 2015 (3)
- July 2015 (8)
- June 2015 (7)
- April 2015 (2)
- March 2015 (3)
- February 2015 (2)
- December 2014 (4)
- September 2014 (2)
- July 2014 (1)
- June 2014 (2)
- May 2014 (9)
- April 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (2)
- February 2014 (2)
- December 2013 (1)
- November 2013 (2)
- October 2013 (3)
- September 2013 (2)
- August 2013 (6)
- July 2013 (2)
- June 2013 (1)
- May 2013 (4)
- April 2013 (5)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (2)
- January 2013 (2)
- December 2012 (1)
- November 2012 (1)
- October 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (3)
- August 2012 (3)
- July 2012 (3)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (1)
- April 2012 (1)
- February 2012 (1)
- December 2011 (4)
- November 2011 (2)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (4)
- August 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (2)
- April 2011 (2)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (4)
- December 2010 (2)
- November 2010 (3)
- October 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (1)
- February 2010 (1)
- July 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (1)
- October 2008 (1)