Well its all dependant on the clients requirements and the budget, if the client wishes to automate the entire business process, depending on the magnitude of the clients business operation, you together with the team need to take a decision as to whether it would be easier to break it down into segments or approach it in its entirety.
I cant give u specific tailored advice just by the information youve provided, all i can do is provide some high level guidance and pointers
Maybe initially it would be good to list all the business processes/ sub-processes to get an idea of what you dealing with and then perform a walkthrough of each business process/sub-process
Ive been involved in IT auditing and consulting for 13 years and through my experience, there is definitely a methodology that can be utilised or tailored to suite the clients environment, here are just a few high level pointers
1) Its important to initially gain an understanding of the business so yes as youve stated that would be a good starting point, document the entire business process so itl provide a clear picture of the business operations.
- Arrange a workshop with key client representatives, together with the client decide on the business processes/sub-processes that the client would like to have automated and the ones that will remain manual - Your professional judgement and advise would be key here
- Once decided on the automated processes, put together a functional specification which will detail the system requirements or what will be required from the potential software system to be implemented.
- If you know of suitable Off-the-shelf software options to suite the requirements of the func spec then highlight them to the client as suitable options or you could put out a tender inviting potential software companies to market their software product to the client, motivating how their system will meet the requirements detailed in the func spec.
That would be a good starting point
2) You could either charge a rate per hour or divide the solution as a phased approach and charge a fee per phase