Staatsolie coaching business analysts
Written by Ronald Teuthof
Staatsolie started an ambitious improvement program in 2020 to professionalize the IT function and to optimize Business and IT alignment. With the motto ‘business leads, IT drives’ a number of sub-projects have been defined; IT control, redefinition and revaluation IT profiles, IT finance improvement, agile working, IT values are some of them. BR1GHT has been asked to support these projects, whereby this client experience is an elaboration of the redefinition of IT profiles and in particular the ‘Business Analyst’ profile.
The role of Business Analyst is crucial for Staatsolie IT to realize its ambition to become a reliable business partner for Staatsolie management. Before we started this assignment, the business analysts came under the project team within IT. They were mainly operationally involved in analysing processes and suggesting improvements, as well as determining improvement potential with the business and translating it into project plans.
To be valued as an IT function, it is important that the business itself has strong IT capabilities and understanding. That they understand the strategic value of IT and that they can independently define their needs to shape its business function and processes through the right IT support. Within the business there was a strong need for a more strategic and tactical position of information manager and business analyst who would achieve the above objective for the business, together with the business.
BR1GHT was asked to train the existing group of Business Analysts from operational process support to the desired strategic and tactical business support. This with the objective that the group of Business Analysts would eventually be transferred in its entirety to the business.
BR1GHT guided the group and his duties consisted of:
- defining the new position, including the new management model (this in new profile descriptions and placement within the organizational units of Staatsolie),
- identifying bottlenecks for acceptance of the business,
- analysing the current activities and document the necessary changes in activities,
- defining the new relationship with IT (if they were to become part of the business).
- supporting the individually working business analysts to become a close-knit group.
BR1GHT has realized the change together with the business analysts for almost 1 year through individual coaching and team sessions with all parties involved. In the first instance, the guidance was focused on raising awareness of the necessity of the ‘change’ and the preconditions for success. This led to many ‘one-way sessions’ with the group from facilitator to team members. However, this changed very quickly and within a few months a number of people took the lead to independently formulate goals and take the lead in the conversations, so that the role of BR1GHT increasingly shifted to team and individual coach. It was truly wonderful to see reserved, quiet, but incredibly capable and driven professionals blossom into an empowered group that took the initiative to give direction to their position and thus their job satisfaction.
We are proud to work for Staatsolie voor already 17 years. We really enjoyed this engagement providing insight to a group of great people and ambitious professionals. Staatsolie is on the brick of becoming a major oil company which will give the Surinamese economy a major boost. Given inflation en devaluation of the SRD improvement of living standards is a must. We are happy to help the Surinamese people by helping Staatsolie.. Thank you all for having such great discussions about our trade and the relaxed atmosphere we could work in.
We valued BR1GHT’s co-ordination resulting in a motivated team with clear pre-conditions for success. All recommendation are concrete and to the point and we will start implementing them.
