Business Analyst Assignment Task Has Been Engaged By MDC

Business Analyst Assignmenttaskpt Has Been Engaged By Mdc To Help Revo

Review the provided background information about MDC, including its current business processes and future needs, to develop a simple process model of their current operations. Additionally, plan a requirements gathering workshop with relevant stakeholders to understand the scope and facilitate project initiation. The deliverables include creating a diagram of the current process, highlighting pain points, and preparing an agenda for the stakeholder workshop that specifies attendees, workshop objectives, key questions, and next steps.

Paper For Above instruction

The current business processes at MDC revolve primarily around the scheduling, reservation, and passenger management for helicopter transportation services. Given the company's expansion plans and the need for automation, understanding existing workflows and pain points is crucial. Presently, reservations are made either via phone calls or walk-ins, with Alison manually entering passenger details into a spreadsheet and faxing manifests to each heli-port shortly before flights. Pilots retrieve manifests via fax, verify passenger identities, and communicate any walk-up passengers to Alison for addition. Payment methods are diverse, including cash, credit cards, and prepaid tickets, handled in a manual back-office process.

Developing a process model of the current operations requires mapping out these steps visually, identifying inefficiencies or bottlenecks such as manual data entry, reliance on fax communication, and limited real-time visibility of schedules and passenger manifests. These pain points hinder scalability and responsiveness, especially considering the company's goal to expand to ten heli-ports within the next year.

The current process begins with reservation intake through calls or walk-ins, leading to manual data entry into spreadsheets. The passenger manifest is then faxed to each heli-port 15 minutes before scheduled flights. Pilots retrieve manifests via fax, verify passengers, and communicate any last-minute walk-in passengers. Payment collection is also manual, with passengers paying upon departure, which can create delays and potential errors.

From a process perspective, opportunities for improvement include automating reservations and passenger management, integrating online booking and payment facilities, and enabling real-time data synchronization across multiple locations. Addressing these pain points is essential to support future expansion plans, reduce manual overhead, and enhance customer experience.

Planning the requirements gathering workshop involves identifying key stakeholders, including Chris (business owner), Alison (office manager), pilots, and representatives from the IT or technical staff responsible for implementing the new system. The workshop's intended outcome is to clarify detailed functional and non-functional requirements for the new reservation and scheduling system, understand the pain points from each stakeholder’s perspective, and prioritize features needed to support expansion.

The key questions to be addressed include: How do current reservation and scheduling processes function? What are the main limitations and pain points? What features are essential in the new system (online booking, real-time updates, pilot communication tools)? How should the system support future scalability? What are the technical constraints and integration points?

Next steps involve documenting detailed requirements, assessing potential technology solutions, and developing a project plan with milestones leading up to the opening of new heli-ports. The workshop will serve as a foundation for scope definition, resource allocation, and stakeholder buy-in, ensuring a smooth transition towards a more modern, automated operational environment for MDC.

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