Business software & operational workflows

In construction, operations run on a chain of documents: quotes, site follow-up, invoicing, reporting. At SYSOPS, I work on the software and tools that carry this chain, notably Sage Batigest and Excel.

When a tool is poorly configured or a process relies on manual steps, the cost is operational: re-keying, errors, information that's hard to find, reporting that takes too long to produce.

The problem is rarely purely technical. It sits at the boundary between the tool and the way people work.

• –Existing tools at the heart of the business: improve without interrupting.
• –Users whose job isn't IT.
• –Sensitive data (quotes, financial information): discretion and rigour.

• –Configuring and troubleshooting business tools, including Sage Batigest.
• –Data handling and reporting in Excel.
• –Understanding quotes, documents and construction-related workflows.
• –Analysing stated needs and translating them into configuration, process or technical changes.
• –Identifying ways to improve internal processes.

I start by mapping the real flow: who produces which document, when, with which tool, and where information gets lost.

Only then do I pick the simplest lever: a setting, a document template, a tracking sheet, or a request for a technical change.

This is the core of an IT & Business Analyst role: understand an operation, see where technology can lighten it, and propose the simplest answer that works.

It also feeds my interest in business development: knowing a client's tools means understanding their priorities.

• –Well-configured software can make development unnecessary.
• –The most concrete gains often sit in the manual steps between two tools.
• –Speaking the business's language — quotes, sites, invoicing — is what makes you useful.