In anticipation of her presentation at Building Business Capability in Las Vegas, Nov. 2 – 6, 2015, we asked Sonali Kavale, Team Leader – Business Services Solutions at Unitec Institute of Technology, a few questions about pursuing business excellence. Check out her interview in relation to her BBC presentation entitled, Improving Customer Experience – Introducing Effective Business Processes.

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: The IT industry has highly impacted the education industry and has challenged the traditional way of education delivery. As much as the office environment has moved to ‘work anytime and anywhere’, the education industry has been forced to deliver to provide options for ‘study anytime and anywhere’. Business architects will be needed more than ever with a requirement to align business strategy with enterprise architecture. Especially in the education industry because of the fluctuating demand of the courses with the changing trends of various industries that workforce needs to be prepared for.

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

A: Oracle PeopleSoft applications have always had a very traditional approach for upgrades. Whilst Oracle has changed its approach, the organizations are still catching up with the new approach. Traditionally upgrades were delayed and the time and the cost of delivery for each upgrade was quite high. We have adapted an agile approach to reduce the time and costs of the upgrade without impacting the business activities.

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

A: Management in ICT / IT sectors has to move from traditional methodologies to agile methodologies. Trends in various areas like mobile technology and other digital capabilities are changing quite frequently. IT possibly is the largest investment in any company.  To get the true ROI it is challenging for any organization to keep updated and to keep business activities aligned to the latest technological capabilities available. Not to forget that newer technologies bring in resource gaps and technical learning & development has to be planned for, as well

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

A: My presentation covers factors to consider for designing ‘Customer Centric’ business processes. I will also be sharing lessons that I have learned in my various projects.

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Don’t miss Sonali’s presentation, Improving Customer Experience – Introducing Effective Business Processes, at Building Business Capability on Friday, November 6, 2015 from 9:00 to 10:00 am. Click here to register for attendance.