About
The business analyst is the one who builds it.
I'm Zied Youssfi. For more than a decade I've worked as a business analyst in the place where software meets operations — enterprise asset management, maintenance, supply chain, payroll and finance — mostly in asset-intensive and regulated environments where getting the requirements wrong is expensive, and occasionally unsafe.
That means the habit is trained in, not adopted for marketing. I don't accept a feature list as a requirement. I go and watch how the work is actually done, including the workarounds nobody mentions in a kickoff meeting, because that is where the real specification is hiding.
The craft is formalised too: an MBA, APICS CPIM, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, PROSCI change management, and formal training in designing and managing business requirements. Deep hands-on years in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, alongside Dynamics 365, Workday, Planon, PeopleSoft and Epicor LumberTrack — enough ERP scar tissue to know which integration promises are safe to make.
The engineering isn't a second career bolted on. My first one was technical — networks, servers, databases and infrastructure — and the recent work has been responsible-AI delivery end to end. On ImmiCase I elicited requirements from immigration practice workflows, specified the agents and their guardrails, designed the retrieval pipeline and the deterministic rule engines that keep high-stakes decisions out of the model, authored the functional design, and then drove it through to a working, test-backed system.
That last part is the whole argument for this shop: the person writing your specification is the person who knows what it costs to build — because he builds it.
Where the analysis was learned
In-house and contract business analysis roles before Elarion — career history rather than an Elarion client list, and worth keeping those two things apart.
- Transportation
- TransLink · BC Transit · DDS Wireless (New York paratransit)
- Public sector
- BC Pension Corporation · First Nations Health Authority · BC Liquor Distribution Branch · UBC
- Forestry & manufacturing
- Western Forest Products · Canfor · Cavendish Farms
- Retail
- Lululemon Athletica
What we will always tell you
When it isn't a fit
If the work is outside what we do well, we say so on the first call and point you at someone who does it. That costs us nothing and is worth more than a bad engagement.
When it's a process problem
Plenty of what gets asked for as software is a process that needs changing. Saying so is part of the job, even when the larger invoice is the other answer.
What it will actually take
Estimates come with the assumptions they rest on and the things that would change them. A number without those is a guess wearing a suit.
Start with a conversation
30 minutes, free. Bring a problem or bring a spec.