Business Requirements Analysis for System and Vendor Selection

Well executed business requirements analysis adds value to your business by ensuring that your applications and systems meet your users’ requirements and make the most of your investment dollars.

In a business environment that is increasingly dependent upon fast access to actionable information, the supporting business systems and applications that process and deliver that data are strategic assets and key drivers of optimal business performance.  With lifecycles of 10+ years and costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars, these systems and applications purchasing decisions must be carefully considered.

Regardless of the actual numbers cited in their various studies, technology analysts agree that the vast majority of IT and system selection projects fail.  The reasons for failure can vary, but typically include incomplete or changing requirements, improper planning, lack of clear vision and objectives, and inadequate user involvement. 

The rigorous, disciplined gathering of business requirements is a vital part of any successful vendor/system selection process. The ability to capture, analyse and prioritise users’ requirements, to produce a high quality specification, and to deliver an objective and measurable analysis of vendor responses for the application or system under consideration will result in useable, robust and sustainable systems that give your organization a competitive edge.

Cartesian takes a highly structured and disciplined approach to the process of gathering and prioritizing our clients' business requirements, producing RFI/RFPs and assessing and scoring vendor responses. 

Our automated toolset, eLexicon™ and our structured methodology have been continually refined and updated to ensure relevance and completeness.  Addressing every functional area typically found in enterprises in all industries, the eLexicon™ framework now includes more than 5,000 requirements in 46 categories. 

Recently converted from an Excel-based tool to a web-based application, eLexicon™ is also invaluable to a disciplined and efficient  assessment of operational effectiveness and efficiency.

eLexicon™ is a living repository of knowledge that captures the work product and lessons learned from our real-world experiences, gathered and refined over the past 13 years. It represents user requirements gathered from numerous client engagements involving over 250 carriers, both domestic and international and provides our project teams with ready access to a baseline of relevant vendors and product information.

Representing a substantial investment by Cartesian and parent company TMNG Global, eLexicon™ is often considered the crown jewel of the company’s intellectual property. Unique in the industry, eLexicon provides greater efficiency, lower costs, and improved quality for both

Why Cartesian:

• Reduced ramp-up time for project teams due to the existing knowledge base, providing a roadmap to the right questions
• Reduced cycle time to generate output of vendor analysis results in shorter delivery timeframes
• Fewer project resources are needed to deliver the project, lowering the investment during initial feasibility/estimation
• Focused investments of limited development dollars including prioritisation of future enhancements
• Effective, neutral evaluations of vendors/products based on our standardised scoring method

Cartesian's eLexicon™ enables us to save our clients time and money as we work with their teams to develop their business requirements, develop and distribute RFI/RFPs, rate and select vendors and/or assess their current systems.