Date: 8 Nov 2017
Where: Bournemouth

Business Leaders Know us and Trust Us: The Old Mutual BAs Journey to Being Seen as Strategic Partners with Senior Leaders

 

Many BAs complain that their business doesn’t know what they are capable of. In stark contrast, at Old Mutual, the Business Analysis practice is building up credibility from the board down. Senior leaders in the business know the names of key BAs and what they can do. In this presentation, we share how these BAs offer support at a strategic level, helping department heads and their teams to articulate strategy. Through this involvement, Old Mutual BAs find out about potential projects early, meaning that they can help the business to consider strategic fit, and to explore options and ensure the business case is clear before projects start. Facilitation skills are key to this involvement and have helped the BAs to build credibility. You will leave understanding:

  • The strategic work taken on, and the skills required;
  • How Old Mutual got this started (which involved Finance)…
  • What is working well, and what hasn’t;
  • Progress on widening the core group of BA facilitators.

 

Liz CarterVanessa Adamson is a Principal Business Analyst at Old Mutual Wealth and has 20 years’ experience of analysis, projects and business change in the financial services industry.   In that time, Vanessa has earned a reputation as an engaging and effective professional who delivers results. Vanessa is motivated by working closely with the business with a focus on providing a facilitation service and supporting them to define strategic initiatives. Facilitation is critical to her role and she is currently working on developing skills within the Business Change team to promote this as a discrete service offering to the wider organisation. For the last 4 years Vanessa has also been leading the analysis on a huge business transformation project and shaping the future target operating model of the organisation with particular focus on end to end processes and customer journeys.

 

 

 

Why effective collaboration and healthy conflict leads to successful design.

 

Paul Cooper talks about the importance of working with your UX designer as early as possible in a project and how UX can help Business Analysis shape business requirements. Paul believes that UX is about helping brands to build long lasting relationships with their customers. He’s very comfortable upsetting web developers to make sure that happens, and does so on a regular basis. Paul didn’t really want to be a UX designer, but at the age of 15 his school’s career adviser didn’t have any guidance on becoming a park ranger in the Serengeti or being a shark conservationist so he settled on graphic design. 

 

Paul Cooper has worked at digital agencies in the north of England, the West Midlands, London and the South Coast. A big chunk of his career was spent working for magazine publishers, and more recently for a large energy supplier. He’s worked on marketing, e-commerce, editorial, gaming and educational digital products. Last year he joined Vitality as the UX Lead in their new DevOps team. As Vitality’s first in-house UX designer he’s worked hard to embed a test/learn culture and user centred design approach which has led the company to success with their new consumer website and iOS app for members. He’s currently responsible for the UX of 14 digital products including websites and mobile apps for customers and advisers, including a multi-million pound flagship web application for advisers.  His career highlights include winning Apple Newsstand App of the Year in 2013 for the Evo magazine app (as judged by Apple), sharing a stage with Steve Wozniak at Apps World in Earls Court, and knocking Angry Birds off the iTunes top spot with his app Split Decision (whilst working at Dennis Publishing), and judging the UKUX Awards in 2017. 



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