Business Analysis & Digital Transformation Case Studies
Question 1
You have been appointed as the business analyst for a mid-sized South African retail chain that wants to modernise its in-store customer loyalty programme, currently a paper-stamp card system, into a digital solution.
In essay format, critically discuss how you would move this organisation from its current state to a viable digital loyalty solution. Your essay must be a continuous, well-structured piece of writing (with a brief introduction and conclusion) rather than a list of short answers, and should integrate the following, without treating them as separate questions:
- An explanation of the current state, the desired future state, and the nature of the gap between them, applying the GAP process to this organisation specifically;
- Independent research into at least two real digital loyalty programmes used by retailers (local or international), used to inform and justify three realistic, distinct solution options for this organisation;
- An evaluation of the feasibility of each option (business, technical, and financial), leading to a reasoned recommendation of which option should be shortlisted for business case development, and why the others should not.
Question 2 (20 Marks)
Case Study: Meridian Assurance
Meridian Assurance is a national insurer offering motor, home, and personal liability cover, with roughly 850,000 active policyholders. Its claims-processing system, known internally as “ClaimCore,” was built in-house in the early 2000s and runs on an ageing mainframe architecture. ClaimCore handles the full claims lifecycle: first notification of loss, document capture, assessor allocation, fraud screening, payment authorisation, and reporting to the regulator.
Over the past five years, ClaimCore has become a significant liability. The original development team has largely left the organisation, and the handful of remaining engineers who understand the legacy codebase are approaching retirement. Every enhancement now takes substantially longer and costs more than it once did: a recent minor change to accommodate updated regulatory reporting requirements took four months and cost close to R2.8 million, compared to an estimated few weeks for a similar change on a modern platform. System downtime during month-end processing has become a recurring operational risk, with two major outages in the past year each lasting over six hours during peak claims-submission periods, drawing complaints from brokers and negative coverage in an industry trade publication.
The Executive: Claims has commissioned a full replacement of ClaimCore, with an initial budget allocation of R42 million over an 18–24 month horizon. The project carries substantial complexity: it must integrate with Meridian’s policy administration system, its finance and general ledger platform, third-party assessor and repairer networks, an external fraud-analytics service, and regulatory reporting infrastructure overseen by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority. Data migration is a particular concern — ClaimCore holds over two decades of historical claims data, some of it inconsistently structured, which must be migrated accurately to avoid disputes with policyholders or regulatory non-compliance. Any period of instability in claims processing carries direct reputational and financial risk, since claims payment turnaround time is one of the most heavily weighted factors in Meridian’s customer satisfaction and broker-loyalty scores.
Within the steering committee, opinion is divided. The Chief Technology Officer, drawing on experience at a previous employer, favours an Agile/Scrum approach, arguing that it would allow the claims and IT teams to see working functionality early, adapt as integration issues emerge, and reduce the risk of a “big bang” failure. The Chief Risk Officer strongly prefers a traditional waterfall approach, arguing that a system underpinning regulatory compliance and large cash payments needs the discipline of clearly defined, signed-off requirements and formal stage-gate approvals before any code is written, given the regulatory and audit scrutiny the project will attract. The Chief Financial Officer has asked for a recommendation, along with a clear articulation of what the business analyst function will be responsible for throughout the project, from initial concept through to the system going live and beyond.
You have been asked, as lead business analyst on the ClaimCore replacement programme, to prepare a recommendation and explanation for the steering committee.
Tasks:
- Compare the waterfall, “V” model, and iterative/Agile lifecycles, and recommend which is most appropriate for this project, justifying your answer with reference to the risk profile and complexity of legacy system replacement. (8 Marks)
- Research a real case (news article, case study, or annual report) of an insurance or financial services company that has undergone a similar legacy system replacement and summarise one lesson from that case that is relevant to this project. (7 Marks)
- Explain the role of the business analyst across the business change lifecycle for this project, from initial idea through to post-implementation review. (5 Marks)
Question 3 (20 Marks)
You are the analyst assigned to gather requirements for a university’s new online student registration portal. Stakeholders include registrar staff, students, IT support, and faculty administrators, many of whom disagree on priorities.
Tasks:
- Apply the RE framework’s core activities to outline your approach for this project. (6 Marks)
- Research two requirements elicitation techniques not covered in depth in your notes (e.g., ethnographic study, card sorting, journey mapping, or a technique used by a real organisation you research) and justify why each would or would not suit this multi-stakeholder environment. (8 Marks)
- Describe how you would identify and engage the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for this project and explain one risk of relying too heavily on a single SME. (6 Marks)
Question 4 (20 Marks)
A logistics company wants to replace its manual delivery-tracking spreadsheet with a mobile app for drivers and a dashboard for dispatch staff.
In essay format, critically discuss how you, as business analyst, would document and model the requirements for this system. Your essay must be a continuous, well-structured piece of writing (with a brief introduction and conclusion) rather than a list of short answers, and should integrate the following, without treating them as separate questions:
- Three user stories (using the standard “As a… I want… so that…” format) for this system, covering at least two different user roles, woven into your discussion of how requirements should be captured;
- Independent research into one functional modelling technique (e.g., use case diagrams, process models) and one data modelling technique from the module, explaining — with a sketched or described example relevant to this scenario — how each would be applied;
- Independent research into how a real logistics or delivery company (e.g., a courier or ride-hailing service) documents or visualises similar requirements, and a critical comment on what this organisation’s approach could learn from it.
Question 5 (20 Marks)
Case Study: Thornbury Health Group
Thornbury Health Group (THG) operates a network of nine private outpatient clinics across three provinces, employing 140 doctors and specialists and serving approximately 4,200 patient appointments per week. For the past twelve years, appointment scheduling at every clinic has been handled manually: patients call a central reception line or walk in, and administrative staff check a shared paper diary or, at the larger clinics, a basic desktop calendar application that is not linked between sites.
Over the last two years, THG’s leadership has become increasingly concerned about the sustainability of this approach. Patient complaints logged with the group’s ombudsman have risen by 34%, with the most common issues being double-bookings, long telephonic hold times (averaging 11 minutes at peak periods), and patients arriving for appointments that were never properly recorded. An internal audit found that receptionists spend an estimated 60% of their working day on scheduling-related phone calls alone, leaving little time for other administrative duties such as insurance pre-authorisation and file management. Three senior specialists have raised concerns in clinical governance meetings that scheduling inefficiencies are contributing to under-utilised consultation slots — estimated at around 18% of available capacity — representing significant lost revenue.
At the same time, two of THG’s private-sector competitors have recently introduced digital, AI-assisted scheduling platforms that allow patients to book, reschedule, and receive appointment reminders via a mobile app or web portal, with the underlying system using predictive algorithms to optimise doctor calendars, reduce no-shows through automated reminders, and flag likely scheduling conflicts before they occur. THG’s marketing team has flagged that patient satisfaction surveys increasingly cite “ease of booking” as a factor in choosing a healthcare provider, and THG risks losing market share to more digitally mature competitors.
The Chief Operating Officer has asked you, as the business analyst on THG’s newly formed Digital Transformation team, to begin developing the business case for an AI-powered patient scheduling system. Initial, informal conversations with an enterprise software vendor suggest an implementation cost in the region of R3.5–R6 million, depending on the level of customisation and integration required with THG’s existing patient records and billing systems, plus an annual licensing and support fee. The Chief Financial Officer has been cautious about committing to a large capital outlay without a rigorous business case, particularly given uncertainty around how quickly staff and patients (many of whom are older and less digitally confident) would adapt to a new system. The Head of Clinical Governance, meanwhile, has emphasised that any new system must not compromise patient data privacy or introduce new clinical risk.
You have been asked to produce the reasoning and key content that would go into the formal business case for this initiative, to be presented to the THG executive committee and board.
Tasks:
- Explain, with justification, whether this business case should be developed following a linear (waterfall) or an Agile approach, referencing the concept of decision gates or iterative review in your answer.
- Conduct brief research into the typical costs, risks, and benefits (financial, operational, and reputational) of AI scheduling systems in healthcare settings and use this research to construct a concise cost–benefit outline for this business case.
- Identify three entries you would include in a RAID/CARDI log for this project, and explain the potential impact of each if left unmanaged.
Experts Answer on Above Questions on Business Analysis
Digital loyalty program
GAP process – the current state indicates that the paper based stamp card loyalty program is being practiced that follows manual tracking and limited customer data. However the desired state is a mobile loyalty program that integrates customer accounts, digital rewards and personalised offers. The gap is therefore noted in terms of lack of digital customer data capabilities, automated rewards and real time customer engagement.
Real digital Loyalty program – In respect to Pick n Pay smart shopper, it utilises digital customer identification and personalised rewards. Woolworths makes use of customer purchases with rewards and targeted benefits. This clearly indicates that retailers could move beyond simple stamps towards data driven rewards and personalised promotions.
Three solution options
The first option is to introduce a mobile loyalty app that integrates rewards, digital points and customer profiles. The second option is QR code scanner which allows customers to manage rewards through a mobile friendly website. The third step is to integrate the Loyalty program by connecting POS, customer data and marketing automation.
Meridian Assurance – ClaimCore
Best lifecycle – it is recommended to have agile with formal governance gates. ClaimCore includes difficult integration, legacy data migration and changing requirements, and as a result, the problems can be discovered early through iterative development while formal approval gates protect financial controls.
Waterfall – strong documentation but the risk is also high in case of changes in the requirements.
V-model – strong testing and compliance traceability, but less flexible.
Agile – it is best for early testing but it is also important that regulatory controls remain mandatory.
Relevant real world lesson
The comparative analysis that is most appropriate is the one whereby a legacy claims platform is replaced in stages instead of performing a big bang replacement.
Lesson – Disruption in the operational activities can be reduced along with Legacy data migration risk from performing phased migration and extensive testing.
Business analyst’s role
The initial Idea includes defining business problems and objectives while the analysis includes identification of stakeholders, processes and risks. The design phase includes the translation of requirements into functional specification while the implementation phase needs validation of delivered functionality and user acceptance testing. The go-live phase needs to support readiness, migration and issue resolution while the post implementation needs identification of gaps and recommendations on improvements.
University student registration portal
RE Framework – identifies and understands stakeholders needs, elicit requirements from students, IT and faculty administrators, analyse conflicting requirements, validate requirements with the stakeholders and document requirements clearly.
Two suitable elicitation techniques
These include journey mapping that maps the registration journey of a student and clearly identifies pain points while the second technique is card sorting that helps in identifying how students expect courses, services and registration function to be grouped within the portal.
SMEs – important to identify SMEs from registrar operations, faculty administration and experienced student service staff. Interview and validate requirements with multiple SMEs rather than relying on one person.
Logistic delivery tracking system
The three user stories include the driver wants to update delivery status from mobile phone so as to allow the dispatch staff to see the progress in real time. The dispatcher once monitored active deliveries in order to identify any delays and reassign deliveries. The third one is customer service staff that wants to view the delivery status so as to provide accurate updates to customers.
Functional modelling
The use case diagram indicates the interactions between driver, dispatchers and the deliberate tracking system. The process model maps the process from delivery to acceptance by driver, in transit and delivery confirmation.
Data modelling
The key entities in the data modelling include driver, delivery, customer, vehicle, delivery status and dispatch assignment.
Thornbury Health Group
Waterfall or Agile – Agile is recommended with formal decision gates as it controls privacy, clinical risk, budget and live approval.
Cost benefit outline – with respect to cost, R3.5 to R6 million in implementation, integration, staff training and change management is required. For benefits, it will result in fewer double bookings, reduced workload for receptionists, fewer no shows and better patient satisfaction.
Three RAID/CARDI entries
The patient data privacy breach is a major risk that can result in regulatory penalties, reputation damage and loss of patient trust. The staff/patient resistance to AI scheduling will result in low adoption which could prevent THG from achieving expected efficiency benefits. The integration failure with patient records could result in incorrect booking, billing errors and disruption in clinic operations.
| Disclaimer: This answer is a model for study and reference purposes only. Please do not submit it as your own work. |
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