We all know the critical role process modeling has in business innovation and transformation, but for it to be successful, it has to include a much wider community and link all interrelated objects.

If you’re not using process analysis and performance monitoring to support your process improvement Initiatives, keep your mallet at the ready - you’ll think you’ve got one inefficiency down, and two more will pop up somewhere else. In order to know which improvements to truly go after, it’s critical to be able to model how processes are being measured (PPIs), and align them to company KPIs that are measuring strategic goals. By then using the simulation and analysis capabilities of your process modeling solution, improvements can be evaluated, applied and monitored to be sure that expectations are met.

Visibility and knowledge are powerful and necessary tools to help an organization be agile, but aren’t always enough. Actually implementing the change can be the sticking point, especially when technology is involved.

In taking a look back at experiences with many of the customers I’ve worked with over the years, one simple concept is often overlooked, especially when it comes to documenting or improving their processes. 

Business architecture can be a broadly used term, and depending on your organization, may have many different connotations.

Our goal at iGrafx for the customer conference is’t training per se, but it is learning - learning from peers about what they are doing that’s working for them.

Process Models, an integral part of an enterprise model, are much more than just maps or diagrams.  They have multiple dimensions - the more complex the model, the more dimensions it has and the more it touches key parts of the business.

Business Process Management isn’t a unique ideology to any organization. But the problems that it can help solve are. With some of the processes that must be managed within the Oil, Gas, and Energy sectors, you can have some special Regulations, Risks, and Controls built into your processes that may seem like roadblocks to your ability to improve or even manage your processes.

Efforts to continuously improve operational efficiencies consistently across an organization isn’t limited by industry. Power companies responsible for generating large amounts of electricity need an effective means with which to organize, manage, and distribute company-wide policies, processes and procedures.

2015 finished with a flurry of activity for iGrafx! We held a very successful Customer Conference this past October.  Our thanks again to our customers who joined us!  And a very special thanks to those that joined us from Cisco, JPMC, Logitech, Mecklenburg County Government, Munich Airport, Nordstrom, Northern Health, Verizon, SAL Heavylift, Smurfit Kappa Paper, Wells Fargo and World Bank Group - all made compelling presentations.  Without them we could not have had such a valuable event.

It’s 6:00 am. Your alarm rings and you rise with the sun on Monday morning. The coffee maker has already started boiling water while you get into your shirt and tie. In the kitchen, your wake-up beverage is already waiting for you. “Alexa, tell me my flash briefing” triggers your personal assistant. While you sip the glorious caffeinated brew, you are told about the 10-minute delay on the freeway, that your first meeting is the daily standup at 9:00 am, and that this evening will hold the perfect BBQ weather. Feeling ready for the day, you get into your car, push the button that opens your garage door and head out to work.

When you look around in today’s world, you can see technology evolving by the day. Within the last decades, calculation speeds have grown far beyond what a human mind can even comprehend. Storage devices dwarf the world’s biggest libraries and manufacturing robots assemble parts or whole appliances faster than the eye can follow.

Now that we are past the dog days of summer, soon to be rushing into fall, and then right into years’ end, I want to make sure to remind you all of an upcoming can’t miss opportunity – the iGrafx Customer Conference.

Going out to bid on any new solution is a grind. There are the upfront hours of internal requirements gathering, then the research to identify the optimal list of potential vendors, then the solicitation of the RFP/RFI, the back and forth questions & answers, the untold hours of response reviews, weighting & scoring – all to get the field narrowed to a short list!

iGrafx has been at this a long time. Since 1991 to be exact. We effectively created the modern market for BPM and Process Modeling and Analysis. Today our breadth and depth in business transformation is unsurpassed, but we still focus on ONE THING. We enable organizations to achieve operational excellence by transforming their businesses through the eyes of process.

To help ease your BPM selection process we’ve tapped into our over 400 years of collective experience and created two easy-to-use tools:

• A simple Vendor Scorecard that provides you with a set of questions to ask, and then ranks vendors based on your requirements. This is your shortcut to a short list.
• An RFP document that ensures you ask the vendors the most important functional and technical questions so that you end up with the best solution for your requirements.

Both of these tools are free and available for you to download straight away with no registration required.

However, if you would like any assistance, from a simple overview of the tools, to a detailed explanation of any best practices, let us know and an iGrafx BPM Professional will arrange a time to discuss your questions and requirements.
Contact iGrafx

Best of luck on your journey!

Written by Guest Blogger, Mathy Sales, President of MS Biz Solutions, Inc.

The latest buzz in the corporate world has been around the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Are you ready for the regulation to become enforceable from May 25, 2018?  If you are not, it could cost you.

This new regulation is intended to protect the personal data of individuals and citizens of the European Union (EU). So why are we talking about it in the US? Because it also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU and applies to organizations based outside the European Union if they collect or process personal data of EU residents. Additionally, whether or not a company does business in the EU and/or directly collects and processes the personal data of EU residents, it may very well support vendors who do, and those vendors will require their suppliers to be compliant. That means just about everyone will be impacted.

In order to be able to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR, the data controller should implement measures where data protection is designed into the development of business processes for products and services. Failure to be in compliance could have serious consequences to your organization’s bottom line, customer relationships, and brand image.

To meet the requirements, organizations will need to do more than simply lock down systems. It will require them to review and map business processes and the associated data and information flows to determine privacy risks. The lifecycle of the data needs to be identified to ensure the control and purpose of its use. This effort will impact most departments of the organization. Why not take this opportunity to continue OR start your journey towards effective business process management?

There are myriad vendors who’ve recently leapt to offer GDPR tools, content and objects that claim to deliver compliance, but miss entirely the crucial aspect of identifying where subject data touches internal processes.  Throughout my career I’ve had great success working with iGrafx, because it allows users to document business processes, standardize data flows, formats and dependencies and establish processes owners and required approval work flows.  Most importantly, it provides a platform to report on and identify gaps between regulatory risks and your processes to continuously maintain and sustain your business processes going forward.

“80% of US Firms may be effected by GDPR fines” – Computer Weekly.

“50% or more of companies impacted by GDPR will not be prepared” – Gartner

With stats like that, it is no wonder the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation is all the buzz in many organizations. Companies are asking themselves questions like “what does this mean for our business?” or “how will we be impacted by this new regulation?”

Since GDPR will soon be going into effect, we decided to conduct some primary research to understand how organizations are preparing. We surveyed individuals across several different industries to find out. Below are some of the most intriguing findings from the answers we received from 60 business leaders.

How many companies will GDPR impact?

Similar to Gartner’s research, a staggering 80% of our respondents will need to comply with GDPR by the deadline, May 25, 2018. The flip side is even more concerning, since the remaining 20% are unsure as to whether their organization even needs to be in compliance.

On the bright side, of those companies that recognize they must comply, their organizations are already about 75% of the way there. And 60% of the responders felt their company had an attainable plan to achieve compliance. This indicates companies are being proactive in their approach to meet the deadline and avoid hefty fines.

Which functional group ultimately owns ensuring your organization achieves and maintains GDPR compliance?

In our respondent’s organizations, the responsibility of GDPR compliance seems to be spread evenly across the board. The corporate legal group, data and security team, and finance department are responsible 60% of the time, with the IT department a close second. This is interesting, because we know that for the best preparation and ongoing compliance each business process owner must be included, and that all must be coordinated and guided by overall business process.

What resources are you using to better understand GDPR compliance and how it relates to your organization?

Not surprisingly a lot of folks, 80% of our respondents, are turning to online content to learn more. To help companies better understand GDPR, we’ve recently published some helpful content such as:

• GDPR Webinar: Get Complaint & Stay Compliant – you can download the recording here.
• GDPR White paper: Business Process Management for company-wide Compliance – download the white paper here.
• GDPR Infographic: Understanding the Impact, Penalties, and Solutions - get the infographic here.

What outside resources, if any are organizations considering using?

About 60% of the companies we surveyed are partnering with outside organizations to help achieve GDPR compliance. To break it down further, 40% of respondents think half of the work will be conducted using in-house resources, while another 40% think at least three fourths of the work will be done in house.

Most companies (60%) also respond that the auditing for GDPR compliance will be handled in house. And about 40% report they will purchase a third-party software tool to help achieve and maintain compliance as well.

As you can see from our findings, GDPR is a critical topic that is top of mind for many organizations. The deadline is fast approaching, and companies are scrambling to make sure they aren’t caught unaware. If you have questions, or want to learn more about GDPR, sign up to speak with one of our GDPR experts. We’ll walk you through everything you need to know to be, and stay, compliant.

There’s a lot of talk these days about blockchain. What is it? Hype? FUD? The future? Can it be used for BPM? What does it have to do with Bitcoin? Is it only for digital currency? Despite all of the uncertainty about Blockchain technology, at a very high level it’s not too hard to understand. I will explain it without going into technical details and by taking some large liberties in order to get the general concepts across.

A blockchain starts with the very first block, known as the Genesis Block and other blocks are “stacked” onto preceding blocks. Take a look at this image:

Conceptually, a “Block” in the blockchain is a set of transactions and something akin to a puzzle that is created by encrypting the data. To add a new block to the blockchain, you must essentially have the right piece to fit into the puzzle of the top block in the blockchain. Finding a piece that fits the puzzle is where what’s known as the “proof of work” happens. It takes a lot of CPU power – and luck – to be the first person in the blockchain network to find the puzzle piece that fits so that you can fit your block to the chain. This is where “Bitcoin Miners” make their money. Whoever adds a block of transactions to the blockchain gets paid in Bitcoin and transaction fees. The blockchain is just all of the blocks fit/stacked together. Currently there are over 500,000 blocks in Bitcoin’s blockchain.

That’s an admittedly very high-level description, but it conveys the crux of the technology. Now, what’s so cool about Blockchain and why is everybody talking about it? I don’t have room to discuss all of the neat things, so let me just talk about some of the more important ones:

• Distributed Ledger” – everybody who’s mining or running a node essentially has a copy of the blockchain. There is no single source of truth. The truth is decided by quorum of control. Whatever chain is longest that the most machines agree on is the truth (explaining this is left for a different blog post!). The only way to commit fraud would be to try to stack on a bogus block and try to convince all the other nodes that your copy is the right copy. Many companies are offering to provide a Blockchain service. This essentially breaks one of the most important features of the blockchain: nobody controls it. It’s neutral. One company trying to provide a blockchain service does not a true blockchain make.
• People are willing to run Bitcoin nodes because they have the chance of “finding gold” i.e. getting a block added to the blockchain. The size of the Bitcoin network and its total distributed CPU power is what sets it apart from others. A blockchain’s relevance in some ways is directly related to the number of independent nodes working together on it.
• Immutability – you cannot change a block on the Blockchain without re-doing all of the work for that block and all blocks after it. This quickly becomes algorithmically impossible.
• Transparency – all blocks in the blockchain are open to inspection and auditing. One is able to see every transaction: who paid whom and how much. The trick is that the “who” and the “whom” are essentially long, random numbers – and a person can have as many of these numbers as they like. Knowing the right number allows one to spend their Bitcoin. Since the ledger is transparent and everybody has access, the system knows whether that number has the Bitcoin to spend or not. Because a node knows all of the transactions and blocks, it can also ensure somebody doesn’t “double spend” their Bitcoin. Play around at https://blockchain.info/blocks to see some transparency!
• There is no “middle man” in the transactions. Transactions typically consist of a transfer from one entity to another and the transfer of Bitcoin happens in near real-time. The goal for transactions to clear is approximately 10 minutes. Compare that with banks, which can take 24 hours or more to clear a transaction.
• The specification for Bitcoin and blockchain allow for a simplified programming language that, among other things, allows for “smart” contracts. The transaction in the blockchain controls when and if Bitcoin is transferred from one account to another based on rules set up in the transaction. A simple rule might be “transfer the money on this date.”

It’s that last point about smart contracts that is most interesting to BPM. In my next blog article, I’ll explain how Blockchain and BPM might play together.

In the business process management landscape, the saying “garbage in, garbage out” is as true today as ever. With the preponderance of data flowing through large organizations, the challenges of using that data in a productive way have only increased. And the more ways a business serves its customers (ecommerce, brick and mortar, apps, direct mail, etc.), the harder this challenge becomes.

I just completed my first year as the CEO of iGrafx. As an ex-management consultant who spent 7 years helping over 200 software companies, there is a universal truth I’ve found that applies to all companies: Bad process leads to bad results.

The Pain of Poor Process Execution

Consider the consequences of poor process implementation through a few simple examples:

• A bad hiring process will likely lead to hiring lower quality employees
• A bad General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) process will result in non-compliance, and fines up to €20M
• A bad digital transformation process will lead to unhappy customers and lost revenues

Pick any two processes inside your company today; one that works well and one that does not. It doesn’t take much insight to see how these have impacted your results positively or negatively. And I’d be willing to hazard a guess the successful ones didn’t come easily.

Why is Process Excellence So Difficult?

Let’s explore the challenges of process excellence via a heavy process-dependent initiative: Digital Transformation. I read a great Harvard Business Review article recently written by Thomas Davenport and George Westerman titled Why So Many High Profile Digital Transformations Fail. Davenport is a professor at Babson College and a research fellow with MIT. Westerman is a research scientist at MIT.

The authors cite four reasons why transformations fail. The second caught my attention:

Second, digital is not just a thing that you can you can buy and plug into the organization. It is multi-faceted and diffuse and doesn’t just involve technology. Digital transformation is an ongoing process of changing the way you do business. It requires foundational investments in skills, projects, infrastructure, and, often, in cleaning up IT systems. It requires mixing people, machines, and business processes, with all of the messiness that entails. It also requires continuous monitoring and intervention, from the top, to ensure that both digital leaders and non-digital leaders are making good decisions about their transformation efforts.

If we look at this more closely, the authors touch on a few key points I found insightful:

It’s on ongoing process. Translation: This must be strategic. The only initiatives that survive ups and downs are strategic. If your organization is treating process improvement projects as tactical one-offs, you are in trouble. You will lose visibility, buy-in, momentum, and ultimately, funding. “Getting there” and “staying there” are very different. To remain excellent, you’ve got to keep focus.

• Tip: If you’re leading an initiative, require your executive sponsors to keep a regular meeting cadence with you. Your role in those meetings is to ensure they’re updated on progress, key wins, challenges and insights to ensure they remain engaged. Don’t let them off the hook. Task delegation is not the same as strategic execution.

It changes the way you do business. If you’re in a well-established company that’s been around a long time, how easy has it been to change how you do business? As someone who runs a relatively small organization that’s been around 27 years, I know how hard change management can be. I’ve seen large companies try to change their spots. It’s a grind.

• Tip: Start with the end in mind. What results do you want to achieve, and when? We’ve got a process we use with our customers you might find useful.

It requires foundational investments and mixing people, machines and business processes. Change management, anyone? Spending money without enabling real change can often cause initiatives to fail. We used to have a saying at my old consulting firm that “software companies love to buy software.” But software is just an enablement vehicle. If users can’t use the software effectively, it won’t enable results. This may sound odd coming from the CEO of a software company, but the authors here have it right. The right tools poorly implemented, or the wrong tools can do more harm than good. The proper “mixing” is where the magic happens.

• Tip: If investing in outside help, make sure you get more than tools. Business transformation and process excellence are hard. Often, companies want to focus on features and functionality vs. enabling success. Don’t discount someone’s ability to help you be successful.

It requires continuous monitoring and intervention, from the top. Again, strategic visibility and focus from executive sponsors is key. The other key here is the “continuous” part. It’s one thing to successfully get compliant or complete an initiative. It’s another thing entirely to ensure that initiative drives business results for the long term.

• Tip: Get your arms around how you will continue to execute your vision beyond the event of an implementation or “go live.” We wrote an article to help define what KPIs are most valuable to monitor your progress. Set up a cadence to manage your performance with key executives and enable them to make decisions that allow you

Achieving transformational business results requires a lot of hard work. It requires focus from executive leadership, and it requires a blend of people, money, time and technology.

At the core of transformational initiatives is process. Taking the time to focus on what processes you use, how you use them and how improving these will enable success is the lynchpin of generating results.

We’d like to help you. iGrafx has over 4 centuries of business process excellence under our belts. It’s our goal to help our customers be successful with transformational initiatives. I’d like to offer you a free 30 minute maturity assessment with one of our experts. We will ask you a few questions about your current state and provide you with some ideas on how you might improve or make changes. You can sign up for one here.

Good luck with your next initiative. Hope this was a helpful read.

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Recently iGrafx CEO, Ryan Tognazzini, and I sat down to discuss a topic that is top of mind for many organizations: the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation. Here at iGrafx we have been inundated with requests around this topic. So, we decided to create a short video to help our audience understand everything they need to know about this new regulation. We’ll cover 3 very important topics in the video, including:

• What is GDPR?
• What does it mean to be compliant?
• How can you stay compliant?

What is it?

In the first segment, we not only define what GDPR is, but also explain how to know if your company needs to be compliant. You’ll learn why it’s not just organizations that do business in the EU, and why you might need to be compliant by extension. We also cover the risks of non-compliance, and why your changing business will continue to be impacted well past the May 25, 2018 deadline.

What does it mean to be compliant?

In the next segment, we explain why some organizations are struggling to understand GDPR and give step by step instructions on how to get compliant. We discuss who inside the organization is responsible, and which functions need to be the most involved.

How can you stay compliant?

Finally, and probably most importantly, we cover how you can ensure your organization stays in compliance. We talk about the crucial elements, from pulling key information into a business model, creating relationships between the processes and data they touch, understanding the risks and controls, to reporting on necessary data from an auditing perspective. These things (the business model in particular) allow your organization to see the impact of change to allow you to stay in compliance moving forward.

You can watch the entire discussion here to learn everything you need to know about the impact, and necessary preparation for this upcoming regulation. And you can also sign up for our next webinar, GDPR & BPM – An integrated approach with iGrafx here. We hope to see you there!

It’s hard to believe that 55 years ago the Jetson’s debuted on TV.  Their world of video conferencing, flat screen TVs, drones, vacuum robots, and mobile devices has been with us for some time. And, while we may have to wait a little longer for flying cars, the onset of, and rapidly developing technology in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are bringing the Jetson’s fantasy world closer to becoming reality. 

With automation and robots being the hot topics du jour, where does it leave tried-and-true Business Process Modeling (BPM)? I have heard some say that BPM, or the need for it, will be dead within 10 years. They suggest that systems will learn and define for themselves what the process should be and how to be the most efficient. Adding fuel to the fire, even many analyst groups today categorize automation tools as “BPM tools.”  I must heartily disagree. Using “BPM” as a three-letter acronym to define automation tools creates confusion and obviates the very core of what BPM is about… Process! 

Even with what we’ve all been told will eventually happen with Skynet, it’s important to remember that all Robots and AI must start with at least a basic set or parameters or actions.  Even the acronym, RPA, dictates that Process is at the center. Before the first line of code is written, or screen developed, there must first be an understanding of the process. 

• What actions do you wish the system or machine to perform?
• What decisions need to be made? 
• Based on those decisions and parameters, what are the alternatives? 
• Where does that information come from? 
• When does the system escalate for human guidance? 
• Who does it contact? 
• When is the job complete?

The most important questions however, are should this function or process be automated? Will the cost and time associated with automating really return the gains we hope to achieve? And, how does it align with our corporate strategy? These questions (and the previous) are all questions answered by understanding and documenting the process. RPA and AI are developing and becoming more advanced every year.  However, without understanding process, we are simply automating for the sake of automating. If you automate a system to do an inefficient process, you are just more efficient at being inefficient.

There will always be a need for Business Process Modeling, or what I like to call Process-Centric Business Modeling, which involves much more than automation. And, it is also more than just capturing process maps and diagrams of how your process is performed. A true BPM will help you understand the Strategies and Goals associated with your processes and why you perform them. It will show you where your processes may have regulatory, compliance or operational risks.  BPM will identify where those risks have controls to mitigate them and capture how effective those controls are. You will be able to quickly determine who owns a process and the impacts of change.  You will also be able to understand what systems or data your processes interact with. And before deciding to automate, BPM will help you visualize how the process is performing based on actual performance indicators. Then, once you decide to automate, your BPM solution should have the ability to deploy, or provide an output that can be readily integrated with a standards-based RPA engine. 

At iGrafx we have been doing BPM for over 25 years. For more information on Process Automation, and how our over 400 years of combined experience in Business Process Modeling can help you see your business holistically, visit our website.