Services › Business analysis
Business analysis that owns the outcome
EliosTech, Inc. helps payments, banking and ERP teams with their systems the way end clients and recruiters already buy senior analysis: a scoped engagement, a stated rate, written estimates and a budget you can track. We open the accounts, find the SMEs, discover the remaining effort and move it forward.
Every engagement follows one path: a free 20-minute call, an Epic kickoff where we walk every feature, story and task, a paid Sprint 0 (down payment first, about 2 weeks to 30 days) that ends in your Sprint 1 plan, and then two-week sprints with consistent payments and a demo every sprint.
Pick an engagement type
Each engagement type opens to the detail of that type of work: what we do, what you get, the tools we bring to your development team, and a configure form preset to that engagement type.
Domain Build / Senior Technical BA
One accountable lead who maps the domain, opens the boards, writes specs and acceptance criteria, and runs estimates through delivery.
Payments modernization BA
Lockbox, cash application, payment APIs, processor onboarding and data maps, done terms-first with written estimates.
Finance ERP / D365 BSA
Procure-to-pay, vendor, T&E and Power Automate workflows on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, through UAT and cutover.
Discovery / Sprint 0 leadership
Open the accounts, find the subject-matter experts, size what effort really remains, and leave you with a Sprint 1 plan and a budget tracker.
QA, UAT, test plans & automation
Test plans, QA, UAT and automated API and regression testing. Hire EliosTech to take over the testing job as scoped sprint stories.
Engagement type sets our scope of authority
- You are the CEO of your world. Every client leader we work for is the CEO of their own world: their company, their department, their program. EliosTech, Inc. never assumes authority you have not given us. The engagement type you choose is how you tell EliosTech where you want us: how far our scope of authority reaches, what we own, and where we stop.
- Vice-president–level ownership takes vice-president–level money. If you want EliosTech to accept vice-president–level status and ownership of an outcome, the engagement is priced at vice-president–level money. A narrow focus, such as one individual contributor or an external consultant on a defined task, can carry significant discounts, because the authority, risk and accountability we carry are smaller.
- Contracts set clear relationship boundaries. Your signed agreement names the engagement type, the scope of authority, who decides what, and where EliosTech’s role ends. The work, methods, tools and services EliosTech offers to your business are proprietary to EliosTech, Inc.
- Service works like a monthly SaaS subscription. Access to EliosTech service continues while your account is paid and current. If payment stops, access to EliosTech service can be cut off until the account is brought current.
Read the terms on authority, ownership, boundaries and access.
Tools we bring to your development team
Over many engagements, EliosTech, Inc. has worked side by side with development teams on the tools they already run. We work inside your licenses, repositories and boards; we do not resell software or lock you into ours. The point is simple: a business analyst who speaks the team's tools turns requirements into working, tested software faster, with fewer surprises at demo time.
Microsoft .NET teams
We have spent years helping teams that build on Microsoft .NET: Web APIs, background services, integrations and the configuration around them. We read a solution well enough to know where a change lands (controller, service, data layer, config), write stories that match how the code is organized, and check each pull-request demo against its acceptance criteria. Your developers write the production code; we keep the requirements and the code honest to each other.
SmartBear / ReadyAPI
Functional and data-driven API tests in ReadyAPI (the SmartBear suite that grew out of SoapUI): REST and SOAP, assertions tied to acceptance criteria, test data sets for the edge cases business users care about, and suites the team can rerun every sprint instead of re-testing by hand.
Postman
Shared Postman collections and environments for every endpoint in scope, so analysts, developers, testers and partners call the same requests with the same examples. Collections double as living documentation and can run in the team's pipeline (for example with Newman) as a quick API smoke test.
Redocly & OpenAPI
API contracts written and reviewed as OpenAPI, linted and published with Redocly so the reference docs stay in step with the spec in version control. Business rules, error codes and examples live next to the endpoint they describe, and partner teams read the same contract your developers build to.
Jira, Confluence & Azure DevOps
The board is where the plan lives. We set it up to match the Epic kickoff (epics, features, stories, tasks), write acceptance criteria, refine and size the backlog, link stories to tests and defects, and keep the dashboards that show progress and budget every sprint. Same discipline in Azure DevOps Boards or similar tools.
See how each tool is used per engagement type: Domain Build / Senior Technical BA · Payments modernization BA · Finance ERP / D365 BSA · Discovery / Sprint 0 leadership · QA, UAT, test plans & automation
From a 20-minute call to Sprint 1: one path, every time
EliosTech, Inc. runs work the Agile way. The free 20-minute intro call is the start of your Epic kickoff, and it is the same path that leads to the down payment, the first meeting and the first sprint. You decide at each step whether the work and the price are right for you.
- 20-minute intro / fit call (free). Is there a fit, and is this a one-time job, a set of sprints or an annual program?
- Epic kickoff. We walk the whole project together: the epic, its features, the stories under them and the tasks under those. Together we decide whether the amount of work and the price are right for you, the owner.
- Accept, then down payment. Once you accept, EliosTech acts on your behalf as an authorized party to the project: we find the right people, collect their estimates and report back to you. Nothing gets committed for you without your written approval.
- Sprint 0: investigation (down payment first). Sprint 0 is the hardest sprint to estimate because it is the longest and needs the most work up front, so it always starts with the down payment. It runs about 2 weeks and up to about 30 days, depending on the project, and it produces your Sprint 1 plan: scope, estimates, people and price.
- Your call: accept or decline Sprint 1. You are free to decline Sprint 1. If you accept it, the Sprint 1 scope is locked, honored as written and demoed to you as its completion. Then the next payment is due, and additional work can be scoped in from what has already been defined.
- Two-week sprints from there. Consistent two-week payments, a demo at the end of every sprint and a written report on progress and changes. You see what you are paying for, and the team stays on the exact tasks that are most valuable to you. That keeps the price clear and avoids disputes.
Physical jobs follow the same path: the paid plan (spec) is Sprint 0, your written estimate is the Sprint 1 plan, and test & handover is the demo. Read the Sprint 0 / Sprint 1 terms.
Add-on engagement types you can hire on any project
During the Epic kickoff you see every feature, story and task, so you also see where EliosTech can take a job off your plate. Any of these can go into a sprint as its own scoped stories:
QA testing
Functional and regression testing of every story before it is demoed to you.
UAT testing
We plan and run user acceptance testing with your people and track sign-off, from the first test to cutover.
Test plan creation
Test strategy, test cases and traceability back to the stories and acceptance criteria.
Automation testing
Automated regression suites so later sprints ship faster without breaking what already works.
Product enhancements
New features and improvements, scoped from the backlog we have already defined together.
Add-ons are priced at the business analysis rate bands ($80–$200/hr) or as sprint stories in your written Sprint plan, and they are never added to a sprint without your written approval.
Rates and how engagements start
| Engagement shape | Typical rate |
|---|---|
| Long-term remote engagement (roughly 1–2 years) | from ~$80/hr (typically $80–$140) |
| Onsite or heavier hybrid, Cook / Lake counties | ~$130/hr |
| Operating domain + crew (EliosTech runs analysts, developers, testers) | $140–$200/hr or an annual program |
| Short C2C surge, rescue or go-live push | ~$200/hr |
| Discovery = Sprint 0 (default start) | $8,000 down payment before Sprint 0 starts, confirmed in written terms |
| Sprint 1 and later sprints | Billed per two-week sprint from your accepted Sprint plan |
Senior bands, stated up front: domain ownership, not commodity staff augmentation. C2C through EliosTech, Inc. preferred. Longer terms and prepaid work move the rate down; short notice and onsite days move it up.
Configure an engagement
- Configure the job below
- Estimate — a rough range, instantly
- Terms — read and accept
- Down payment — we invoice; kickoff goes on the calendar
Hiring for a seat instead?
If you are filling a BSA, Senior Technical BA, Payments BA or D365 role, the recruiter packet on the Domain Build page has what you need.