In anticipation of their presentation at Building Business Capability in Las Vegas, Nov. 2 – 6, 2015, we asked Jack Cox, Managing Director and Paul Wren, Manager at CapTech Consulting, a few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out their interview in relation to their BBC presentation entitled Mobile Analysis.

Q: How is your organization advancing the pursuit of business excellence and how does it impact your business units/departments?

A: Flexibility and collaboration are core values of CapTech. We work as servant leaders to our clients and each other. We put our clients’ needs first and encourage intellectual curiosity to drive innovative and custom solutions. Working together and being able to adapt allows us to focus on the end result and find win-win solutions.

Q: Can you describe the challenges you face or have already overcome in establishing a more cohesive and productive company or organization?

A: Many organizations struggle with an agile approach because their structure and culture do not promote collaboration. These are cultural and organizational hurdles that put an agile transformation at risk. To be successful, organizations need a team approach rather than being siloed by departments.  Fostering a team approach, strong communication and flexibility have helped our company and helped our clients.

Q: What are your near term goals for creating a more agile organization at your business or company?

A: Our near term goals are to implement comprehensive cost and effort tracking for our internal Agile projects. We believe it can make us a more efficient and flexible organization and give more people an opportunity to contribute internally.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned in 2015 thus far? What’s the most important goal/trend for [pick one or two: business analysts, business architects, business process managers and/or business rules managers] to keep in mind?

A: Be wary of single vendor whole solutions. The long term lost opportunity cost of a custom solution can easily outweigh the short-term implementation savings of a monolithic out-of-the-box system. We’ve seen companies adopt monolithic, single vendor, mobile platforms and then quickly exhaust their capabilities. Once adopted these platforms are difficult and expensive to replace.

Q: What’s the latest method/process/tool you have implemented to help your organization or business run more efficiently and effectively?

A: The biggest improvement we have made in the last year is structuring a methodology around how we develop and write client proposals.

Q: If you could give your five-years-ago self-insight and advice about this industry, what would you say?

A: I would tell myself to be thinking about mobility in every system you build. We see today, that any system that has a human user interface must account for how that system is accessed from a mobile device. This causes us to rethink workflows and content to be focused on the task immediately at hand. Designing for a mobile device focuses your thoughts and requirements due to the restrictive yet incredibly capable phone interface.

Q: Sneak preview: Please tell us a take-away that you will provide during your talk at Building Business Capability?

A: Mobile is everywhere and it is important that you are able to understand the ramifications that mobile bring to your business. It is a difficult challenge, but a challenge that you are already equipped to overcome if you correctly apply good analysis processes.

—————————–

Don’t miss Jack and Paul’s presentation, Mobile Analysis, at Building Business Capability on Thursday, November 5, 2015 from 8:00 to 8:50 am. Click here to register for attendance.