Discovery
The assessment interview needs to be held in a highly structured way, first defining Use cases which would reveal who are the actors (user roles), and what are their activities, which can range from the real world, and crossing into the IS. Both are important to get the big picture which is necessary to be able to design a comprehensive, holistic and extensible system.
Modeling (UML, Entities, Class diagrams)
UML diagrams of use cases can then be expanded into activity or sequence diagrams to get a better understanding of what should be happening in the Information system. That would at the end lead us to realize which information needs to be stored in which groups - identifying entities - and what should be the relations between those entities. This is best described by a Class diagram which is often used in database modeling. The whole process greatly optimizes your internal procedures.
Normalization
The model is then transformed to one of the Normal Forms, and is ready for implementation.
Tools integration
By integrating other tools you are using, we can discover more useful information. For example:
- importing customer emails lets us build a customer profile, predefine response templates combined with product or service information
- connecting your file folders or Google Drive the system can analyse your documents and use that information down the pipeline
- parsing bank statements you can have the most up to date financial graphs in your system
to name a few