Overview Of Consultations

CIS can help you to use technology in new ways to streamline your operations and better serve our students. CIS offers Business Process Consultations to discuss your department needs, struggles, hopes, and goals to help you find the best technology solution to fit your business operations.

A Business Process Consultation is an exploratory conversation that can happen very early in the operations change process. You don't need to have a detailed change plan and committed resources before requesting a consultation, just an eagerness to change and a willingness to think creatively and carefully.

Request a Consultation

Email requests for Business Process Consultations to cis-bst@spu.edu

Topics For Consultations

There are several topics related to business operations that are well-suited for a Business Process Consultation. These topics include:

Have a new idea for how to operate but aren't sure how our technology can fit with it? You can share your idea with us during a Business Process Consultation and we will advise you on how to best utilize our current technology on campus to make your idea happen.
Have an existing process that is cumbersome, time-consuming, or frustrating but aren't sure how it can be improved? Share your struggles with us and we will brainstorm ways to use our existing technology to streamline your operations or recommend new technology to get.
Have a process that is dependent on paperwork or in-person labor that you want to move online? We can help you digitally transform your process to make it available for remote work, reduce manual steps, and cut down on opportunities for errors.

Principles For Consultations

In order to ensure we have the best outcomes, we strive to be:

“Thinking before reacting,
Questioning before accepting,
Verifying before assuming,
Understanding before judging,
Viewing the whole process before focusing in on the detail issue,
Analyzing before concluding,
Visualizing before writing.”

- Peter Blais, Thinking Like A Business Analyst

Discussion In Consultations

Here are the types of questions commonly asked during Business Process Consultations. Thinking through these questions ahead of a consultation can help clarify and flesh out the problem to solve and make the consultation discussion more fruitful.

Who: Who is involved in the processes we'll be discussing or will be impacted by changes to them? In your department? Area? Campus? External?

What: What are the processes we're looking at? What are the things we hope to do better or what are the current pain points? Do you have a solution already in mind? If so, what is that? If not, what would be the things you'd look for in a solution? What are alternate solutions (that may have already been ruled out)?

When: When are the current processes used? How frequently? Are there particular times during the year when they are used more, or less? What time constraints are in play?

Where: Where will the data for these processes reside? Where will the processes be conducted (on campus, remote office, on the road, via mobile device, etc.)?

How: How does the current and/or proposed business process run? (We'll dig into all the details so we understand it well and make sure the solution fits the process well.)

Why: Why are the current processes done? Where do they fit in the University's ecosystem? Why are we looking at changing these processes right now? What do you hope to achieve with these changes to the processes?

Interested In Consultations

If you are interested in a Business Process Consultation with CIS, please email your request to the CIS Business Systems Team at cis-bst@spu.edu and we can schedule an appointment together.