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Rules Before Tools! And Other Key Takeaways from OPEX Financial Services in Austin

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I’m a 28-year sales and marketing vet, but have only been in the operational excellence space since July of last year when I became the Chief Marketing Officer at iGrafx. It’s been quite a journey up the learning curve, because for every three letter acronym I knew from all my years in sales, marketing, telecommunications and business process outsourcing, I think I’ve learned five or six incremental ones for this industry alone! Heck, the analysts can’t even decide if we’re in the BPM, BPMS, EA, DPA, GRC or RPA business. And don’t get me started on the AQPC PCF, BPMN and Digital Twins!

Seven months into my process excellence journey (last week), I got to attend IQPC’s OPEX Financial Services show in Austin and it was truly excellent to see and hear the latest & greatest industry wisdom in context. The vendors in the exhibit hall slotted nicely into logical areas in the “BPM ecosystem” – from process mining and discovery on one end of the continuum, to robotic process automation on the other. And the power users and thought leaders in the financial industry had great insights about their industry and about the evolution of process management overall.

Here are some of the thoughts and perspectives that resonated most:

  • Rules before tools! This was a sentiment shared by Eric Fleisher, iTeam Managing Director at TD Ameritrade. He was on a panel with Sarah Snyder, Head of Methodologies, Training and Sustainability at Zurich North America, and Jacqueline Parks, Chief Administration Officer, Enterprise Operations at Northern Trust. Sarah had just made the point that if you don’t have a process that works, no amount of technology will fix it.
  • Simplification is imperative! Bao Do, Business Architecture Manager at Wells Fargo Advisors shared data that showed that consumers are willing to spend 64% more for simpler experiences. “Easy to buy, easy to sell” has always been one of my mantras, so this one clearly struck a chord ;)
  • Don’t rust on your laurels… Is an awesome play on words that iGrafx Director of Product Marketing, Robert Thacker, came up with as we were commiserating with another show attendee. That person was complaining about how some “industry leading providers” expect what has worked for their customers in the past will just continue working in the future. Seems they missed the concept of “don’t get disrupted” that was discussed almost ad nauseum at OPEXFS.
  • $321 billion. Aboubacar Cissokho, Head of Discover Networks Lean Center of Excellence shared this interesting data point at the start of his presentation. If you didn’t know, this is the amount of fines that the biggest global banks have paid since 2008 for a variety of regulatory failures. With the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation right around the corner on May 25th, I suspect this number could going to start growing rapidly every bank that touches EU citizen’s data doesn’t get compliant.
  • Democratize the processes! This was another gem from Aboubacar who made the point that everyone in an organization needs the ability to collaborate on key business processes. Without input and iteration, the processes will never be adopted and improved upon as effectively and consistently as they should be.

There was lots more great insight, so if you haven’t ever attended an OPEX event, I suggest you consider it. Overall, for me, it was most satisfying and encouraging to glean the top 5 pearls of wisdom and know that iGrafx is executing passionately on every single one. From our GDPR Suite launch that took place the first day of the show, to our ongoing drive to encourage collaborative process management, to constant simplification of our solutions, we’re all over each of these.

If you took away other important insights or perspectives from the show, please share them here!


GDPR is Coming: The 5 Most Important Compliance Challenges

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In a study on Risk Management and BPM that we conducted in July 2017, 50% of companies surveyed said their processes and systems differed across departments. Because of this, they find it difficult to get a complete view of the possible risks. Half a year later, not much has changed!

These and other survey results, as well as the corresponding risk management challenges, are very much in line with the customer feedback that we have received here at iGrafx in recent years. Therefore, it did not really surprise me that more than half of the surveyed companies find it difficult to gain complete transparency about their risks.

Furthermore, more than 60% of companies do not trust that they will be able to meet their obligations under the coming GDPR. But they should, because the new regulation is rocketing towards us - so if you do not yet have structured and transparent processes in the company, and cannot ensure consistent compliance, NOW is the time to do something about it. Make GDPR compliance a competitive advantage.

Why is it so difficult for companies to meet these challenges? And once they’ve mastered them, how can they arm themselves for future challenges, such as regulations that change over and over again?

The five challenges in compliance and risk management

The following are the five most important challenges companies face in relation to GDPR, and to regulation and risk management in general:

  • Governance: Think about what measurements should be in place and how to integrate and continually improve them in your activities, standards, and values.
  • People: You and your employees should understand the potential risks and repercussions of using data inappropriately. Be aware of the importance and requirements of upcoming regulations.
  • Process: What influence do regulations have?  How can changes be made?  And, can you ignore the complex effects of such regulations?
  • Data: Understand how you interact with customers and third parties, and secure the exchange of data with them. Create transparency and trust.
  • Security: This is the basis for privacy rights. From protecting the security and confidentiality of personal information to appropriate use and access.

To address these challenges, we recommend companies to make processes transparent, and then link them to requirements and controls. Equally important is the standardization of operational processes. This allows companies to identify owners and responsibilities, and in turn associate their processes with risks and controls. Doing so allows businesses to get an overview of the relationships in the company. This provides better reporting on risks and gap analysis.

Make sure you are compliant and prepared for upcoming audits by identifying and minimizing process risks. This risk minimization, high transparency, and timely reporting are major benefits and make your business competitive. Get started with it NOW!

If you like web modelling in the iGrafx Platform, then you will LOVE the latest iGrafx 17.3 release!

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This past week iGrafx released the latest updates in release 17.3 that enhanced web modelling and reporting.  Here are a few of the highlights:

All Licenses:

  • When scrolling large diagrams, pool and phase headers remain visible and pools automatically expand to fit shapes.

  • The text-based links now support multiple links and the ability to download or view the file directly from the link.

  • Many times when diagramming, not everyone understands the meaning of the shapes being used. You now have the ability to display a shape legend so everyone understands your diagram.
  • Notes and Comments can be published with the diagram, improving the ability to provide users with off-line documentation.

  • Reports can now be exported!!!!

Designers / Architects:

  • Diagramming has been enhanced with auto line healing, and when adding a new shape, you will now be presented with a dialog box so you can decide what shape you need

  • You no longer must delete a shape to replace it. Now you can simply right click on your shape to be presented with the same dialog box to choose your shape.

At iGrafx, we take our user experience and requests seriously. We would like to thank all our customers for their valuable feedback which has enabled us to make your user experience even better. As our product evolves in the future, you can be sure that more and more of your ideas will be incorporated into our solution to better support your Business Process Management objectives. 

As always, the complete release notes are available in our on-line documentation. If you would like to see these and other new functionality in action, you can also check out video below.

GDPR – You Need More Than Just Talk

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There has been a lot of talk recently all over the internet, and here at iGrafx lately, about GDPR. Unfortunately, many of the sites seem to take a bit of a scare tactic approach, focusing on how much non-compliance may cost you.  We would like to offer a real solution.

As you may have seen a few weeks ago, iGrafx recently released the iGrafx GDPR Suite. Why is that important? Because while others are providing you with a Guide to Compliance, iGrafx is providing you with the ability to address it. A Suite capable of helping organizations Obtain & Maintain GDPR Compliance. 

Here is what you get: 

If you would like to see the GDPR Suite in action, watch our video demonstration below. Watch Now

Also, be sure to visit our website where you will find more information on GDPR, the GDPR Suite, and the ability to request a more in-depth demo showing how iGrafx Automation can enhance your ability to maintain compliance.

Transformation is a Four Letter Word

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(And other pearls of wisdom from the 2018 OPEX Exchange in Austin, Texas)

Despite working with IQPC in a variety of capacities for at least a decade, this was the first “OPEX Exchange” event that iGrafx has participated in. And I’ll admit, I was skeptical. I’ve managed demand generation budgets for a long time, and especially in recent years I’ve been inundated with requests to sponsor events where vendors are guaranteed meetings with “pre-screened” attendees.  I’ve listened to hours of pitches from aggressive event sales people, but for a variety of reasons never pulled the trigger. I’m glad that I did this time.

The attendees in the audience were, by and large, very enthusiastic about the event and the format, and as a result, many great interactions took place. Some were scheduled meetings, some were ad hoc, and others were during the solid thought leadership sessions that were led by some terrific customer practitioners as well as a handful of vendors and a keynote by Ken Goldman (former Yahoo CFO). From the sum-total of these interactions I walked away with a slew of meaningful takeaways, a few of which I’ve highlighted below.

  • Change perception – not culture. Dr. Charles Brandon,Director Process Improvement Program Office, Office of the Under Secretary of the Army, Office of Business Transformation (whew, what a title!), had many sage words to share – both during his closing keynote and in a long conversation over fajitas at the end of day one. Chuck is a guy with two PhDs, three master’s degrees, and a lifetime of incredible experience. And today the US Army has more employees than Target and McDonalds; more people in training than Ohio State, The University of Texas, Texas A&M, UCF and my alma mater, Penn State; a bigger operating budget than Exon, Amazon, GM and Apple; and a bigger vehicle fleet than UPS and FedEx. They do 10,000,000 ERP transactions per day! So when Chuck talks, you pay attention. Many times he iterated that OPEX professionals need to articulate the so what and the who cares in the vernacular of the person they’re reporting to. Change the boss’s perception of what you can deliver, deliver it, and culture changes will follow.
  • Solve and Evolve! When you’ve solved a problem in your company you’ve created knowledge that can (and should) be repurposed so it doesn’t have to be created again! Cheryl Tulkoff at National Instruments explained in detail how the company captures and reuses information to more quickly ramp-up newly hired engineers and then more effectively solve customer challenges. She iterated, “get the info out of people’s heads and share it across teams and boundaries.” Cheryl also explained how she regularly runs 50-100 mile ultra-distance races, so it’s pretty obvious that when she sets her mind to something it gets accomplished.
  • The 5 P’s of driving change to support Operational Excellence and Digital Transformation, according to Veradej Thongintra,  VP and Head of Corporate Strategy & Digital Transformation at Hyundai Capital, are Persuasion, Persistence, Perspective, Patience & Passion. Based on what he illustrated in his presentation, these 5 P’s should be universally applicable to garnering support and driving change in any business or industry. Veradej is clearly getting stuff done across the CoE for consumer strategy, planning & analytics, as he works to implement the corporate strategies he’s creating.
  • If you want really bad automation design, don’t think about process. Gregory North quipped this in a conversation with Don Kuk and Mollie Bell, chief transformation officers at Mednax and CUNA, respectively. Automation is top of mind for many, but it must be planned and developed from a solid process. Another automation-related gem from Gregory was, “RPA is like dusting… Artificial Intelligence is like completely redecorating the house!” Excellent perspective in a rapidly evolving digital transformation landscape. Robotic process automation is undoubtedly cool and can alleviate up to 75% of the repetitive/monotonous work done by humans, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to the changes and opportunities that AI will bring.
  • Transformation is a Four Letter Word! Both Mollie Bell and Don Kuk emphatically agreed on this point. They explained that only with authentic engagement from the C-suite downward will real transformation be truly possible. Get past the over-used and loaded “T-word,” and demonstrate the end-goal in the language of the people you’re teaming with. Both Don and Mollie had great advice on leading by example to achieve transformation, emphasizing that “life is a team sport,” and that if you “give away everything you have, you’ll receive even more in return.”  Mollie summed it up by saying: “Own it… Earn it…  Give it…”
  • It’s all about revenue per employee! And Michael Lim, Worldwide Director of Digital Process Automation Sales at IBM brought up some compelling examples of how the best companies automate the repetitive work to create “better work” for employees, and ultimately more revenue per employee. He used Netflix as a case in point, who generated $1.88M per employee in 2016!  Net/net, Michael explained that in 60% of jobs worldwide, up to 30% of work can be automated, and he cited a McKinsey study to back it up.
  • ACPR is the secret to Ken Goldman’s transformation success. The acronym stands for “Attitude, Cash, Profit & Revenue,” and Ken illustrated very clearly how he used this methodology to drive the success at Yahoo that finally led to a significant acquisition by Verizon.  Ken is certainly a “best-in-class” CFO, and he reviewed examples of his ACPR formula in many of the other businesses he’s worked in, or owned, such as payments company, Zuora, NXP semiconductors, GoPro (the video camera company), and the Golden State Warriors.  At the end of his presentation, Ken shared his number one career rule: “Integrity is rule #1 – your most valuable asset.”

The next OPEX Exchange event is going to be held in Atlanta in July of this year, and if you’re on the fence like I was, I suggest you give it a try. In the meantime, if you have any questions or other insights, please share here or reach out to me directly.

Travel Planning Made Easy with iGrafx Automation of Human Workflow

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In my role as Pre-Sales Team Lead for EMEA, one of my main responsibilities is to introduce both existing and potential customers to our iGrafx BPM solutions. Because of this, traveling is also a part of my everyday life and it has taken me to some very diverse places. From Manchester to Slovenia in one day with a stopover in Munich, then on to Dresden and back to Munich is not an unusual week.  Not to mention all the trade-shows and fairs in Europe that are also part of my daily work.  Four times a year to London? No problem!

Traveling can have both positive and negative sides.  One positive thing for sure is that as a frequent traveler you can enjoy the advantages of the airport Business Lounge.  However, the immense loss of time and the constant repackaging of suitcase A into suitcase B (not to mention bagging in resealable plastic bags) is definitely a negative.  Therefore, you want to spend as little time as possible with the travel planning.  That’s why at iGrafx, we use our own iGrafx Process Automation to save time with the travel request process.

Travel Application Process as Human Workflow - Fully Automated

The automation of Human Workflow Management offers many advantages.  As an applicant, I get a web-based form in which I can directly enter the most important data, (i.e. travel reason, duration, hotel, etc.) so I have all important information at a glance in one central location.  Certain mandatory fields will also ensure that I do not forget any information.  Before I send the application, everything is checked again, and I can also select a colleague who will accompany me to the appointment, saving the need for a second application.


Figure 1: The iGrafx travel request process in BPMN 2.0

As the process is based on the BPMN 2.0 modeling language, the full range of BPMN symbols can be used. This includes an automated e-mail sending activity. Thus, an email containing the important facts is generated from the process and automatically sent to the Office Manager. They can then review and book the travel request, and confirmations and notifications are sent to out.  This is very helpful, especially on the road, because it works quickly, easily and flexibly.


Figure 2: Extract from the PDF document for the travel request

But best of all, there’s universal availability, because with iGrafx Cloud, I can plan my next trip to Switzerland while I’m in London, without having to go through complicated logins and VPN accesses.  I can also monitor the status and see exactly where my request is in the process.  As a process owner, you can also monitor the status and intervene in the process if necessary.  And of course, inquiries and ad hoc tasks can be created, assigned, and solved directly via the Workflow Engine, saving significant manual effort and time spent on queries via e-mail or office chat.

Fast Turnaround Through Human Workflow Management

With iGrafx “Low Code / No code” automation, the process model can be transferred directly from the iGrafx platform to the workflow engine.  There is no BPMN export required. Any changes to processes can also be made directly in the modeling tool then simply redeployed.  From my own experience, I am responsible for modeling and deploying this process, and I know how fast it works.  Changes to both the process-accompanying form and the model itself are implemented within minutes. This allows us a quick turnaround and ensures that all participants use the current and released process version, keeping everyone aligned and happy.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I can also receive process feedback directly from my colleagues and update it directly in the model.  As a result, we are steadily developing ourselves as an organization and continuously increasing our process maturity.  Of course, as always in life, this is a learning process and it requires commitment at all levels, especially from management.  It is only when there is a connection to your overall executive strategy that you will be able to succeed with your Digital Transformation initiatives.  In our example, after six months of production, all our process participants agree that Human Workflow Management has made this process simpler and more intuitive, and it is now clear to everyone which task needs to be done when and how.

While every process may not be a candidate, in principle, many processes are suitable for automation.  Especially those in which there is a high demand for coordination.  At iGrafx, we have many other implementation ideas internally. 

If you are also interested in Automation, we look forward to hearing from you.  Feel free to contact us and request a demo to see iGrafx Process Automation in action.  And whether that demo is done remotely or even at your site, the journey to you will certainly be well planned!

The Top 5 Business Process Management Blogs You Should be Reading

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What to Read to Stay Up to Date on the Latest BPM Trends

Blogs are a dime a dozen these days. BPM blogs are no different. The number of resources available can be overwhelming. Luckily, we’ve made it easy for you and have compiled a list of what we consider to be the best BPM blogs out there. In no particular order, read below to see which blogs you should follow to stay up to date on the latest business process management trends.

Column 2 Blog

This blog covers a wide variety of topics, from artificial intelligence and process-based applications, to RPA Enablement. It’s written by Sandy Kemsley, an independent analyst and systems architect. She has over 20 years’ experience and specializes in business process management (BPM), digital process automation (DPA), the social enterprise, and enterprise architecture and business intelligence. Her experience allows her to share the latest and greatest BPM findings with her readers.

bpm.com Blog

bpm.com is one of the leading destinations for articles, news, and research on business process management, process modeling, business rules and case management. Their in-depth blog focuses on topics such as automation and the customer experience, and how AI is revolutionizing the next era of business process management. This blog is a great overall resource for BPM professionals.

BP3 Blog

The BP3 blog contains key insights into business process management. They have several expert writers, who educate their audience on issues like getting started with digital operations transformation, and the rate of change and change management. The organization itself delivers transformative solutions that help organizations improve overall performance by connecting people, processes and technologies.

The Forrester Business & IT Alignment Blog

Forrester is a large, well known market research company that provides advice on the impact of technology. They have a blog category dedicated to Business and IT alignment with different analyst authors writing about things like driving digital culture into your organization or what pitfalls to avoid in the next era of digital service engagements. There is much value to be gained by checking in with the Forrester blog every now and again.

Thinking Matters Blog

This blog is written by Keith Swenson, who has spent the last 30 years finding the keys to technology that will help people collaborate more effectively. He is also the VP of R&D at Fujitsu America. He tackles subjects such as agile best practices, and goal-oriented business process management. His blog helps readers become more efficient, adaptive, and effective.

So, there you have it, our top 5 BPM blogs. Do you have one you would like to add to the list? Comment below, and we will check it out. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the iGrafx blog, so that you never miss a new piece of our BPM content.

Data Security is Everyone’s Responsibility

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For many years, software companies have trudged down a path of making updates and releasing enhancements to their applications, in hopes that their customers will find value in what they produce. In today’s world of customer journey mapping to enhance and understand the customer experience, that thinking no longer works.

Personally, as the Head of Product Management for iGrafx, I try to get out of the office as often as possible to hear exactly what the market and our customers are saying. To that end, a few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Enterprise Risk Management Symposium in Portland. Here are a few of the highlights I picked up.

  • IT Security is a matter of culture not technology. That means that the whole organization needs to be included in understanding and implementing the required behavior.
  • While everything in IT needs a process, documentation, and the metrics to monitor the behavior, they also need to understand the other processes that they support, and the systems used. Additionally, it is imperative that they understand the risks of a process or system failure and ensure there are mitigating controls in place to nullify or, at the very least, minimize the disruption. Processes for dealing with incidents should not be taken lightly. It is not a matter of “IF” there will be an incident, only “WHEN”.
  • You should have an inventory of “Capabilities” which can identify relationships to not only other capabilities, but also to the processes that support them, as well as identifying the risks for failure. It is also important that groups can identify gaps in their capabilities so that they can address them before they became real issues.

The biggest shock to me, and also the biggest takeaway, was how impressed the group as a whole was with GDPR. While the new regulation at present is a bit of headache, as everyone rushes to be compliant by May 25th, they were very much impressed. It was also clear that this group was already moving in a direction to work with US law makers to enact a similar regulation here, using GDPR as a template. If you have not heard about GDPR you can find out more about it, who it impacts, and what you can do to be ready here.

Overall, I enjoyed this show. It provided a lot of good insights into the challenges and ideas of those who are tasked with handling Risk Management. But most importantly for me, the ERM Symposium really helped build confidence and validation in the direction of iGrafx, as we continue to develop and evolve with the market.


Essential Blockchain Part Deux – The Vending Machine of the Future

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In my previous blog article, I explained Blockchain technology and several of its pros. I also promised to talk about how BPM and Blockchain could play together using “Smart Contracts.” Before getting into smart contracts, let me talk about an everyday item you’re familiar with that uses contracts that aren’t smart: a vending machine. You put in your money, you select what you want, and you get the item you wanted and maybe some change…except take a look at this process:

Have you ever had a machine “eat” your money? It turns out your contract with the vending machine isn’t really enforceable. That’s an example of a contract that isn’t smart.

People are willing to take a chance with a vending machine because the stakes are small. The vending machine process doesn’t work if you can’t afford to lose your investment. Nobody wants to put a large sum of money into a vending machine, press a button and get a car or a house, for example. This is why there are car dealers, stockbrokers, escrow services, etc. that operate in the middle of large transactions. When people purchase a high value item they expect to pay a trusted intermediate 3rd party to make the transaction work. This increases the cost and friction of the transaction and technically should be unnecessary.

This is where smart contracts come in. A smart contract is an automated program that runs in the Blockchain. Using a simple programming language (ethereum is one major implementer) one creates a “state machine.  The state machine, very simply, represents the contract. Here’s how the vending machine process might look with a smart contract:

If you’re paying attention, you’ll see that there’s a small fly in the ointment. The customer can take the candy and never send the “candy received” event and the money won’t be transferred. In this case the human can finally “eat” the machine’s candy instead of the machine eating the human’s money. This is one of the drawbacks of smart contracts with physical goods. To work with physical goods, one has to think more along the lines of real contracts and car titles, etc. If I can encode a car title into a smart contract such that the evidence of car ownership is embedded in the transaction, then the delivery of the title in the transaction would cause the money to transfer automatically. Both parties would agree that the transaction was valid and it would complete. If either party was unsatisfied, the contract would not complete.

Here are some issues for using smart contracts:

  • As mentioned earlier, it’s not easy to work with physical items. It takes work to verify an expensive painting and its ownership was truly delivered unless the two parties of the contract are in the same room.
  • All involved parties must be using the Blockchain in question. In the case of an automobile, this could be the government, the buyer, the seller, a lender and an insurance company.
  • Typically, a contract would involve cryptocurrency. Right now there’s a limited adoption of cryptocurrencies and there are many competing options.
  • One needs a distributed ledger. As mentioned in part one of this blog series, if one entity owns the Blockchain, they have the ability to tamper with it. To work, there needs to be a Blockchain that everybody is using and trusting.
  • A good and bad feature of Blockchain is that by nature it’s public, so all participants in the Blockchain would be able to see the transactions.

In short, moving to smart contracts in the Blockchain for big ticket items isn’t going to be here soon, but it’s probably a bad bet to say it’ll never get here.  Be advised and stay tuned for Essential Blockchain, part III.

To Automate or Not to Automate

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There is no doubt that we would all love to grow our business. The question, however, is have you taken the time to consider if your business can handle that growth? It is imperative, especially as your business begins to expand, that you have an understanding of your business processes. They must be efficient and streamlined with clear visibility of ownership and potential risks. At some point, you will come to a realization that you probably should have implemented a BPM or workflow solution.  Unfortunately, in many cases this realization comes only after a loss of revenue or customers. When you make the leap to automation, be sure to look first…

The first step in automation is knowing which processes are candidates. Below are some ideas or traits to look for:

1. Resource Misallocation

For any business, regardless of size, resource allocation is very important. The mis-assignment or misallocation of resources can lead to losses in both time and money. If your processes constantly need more resources than you budgeted for, something in your process is off.

By having automated workflows, you can accurately forecast what resources are needed for a task, then monitor progress in real time.

2. Miscommunication issues

What am I supposed to be doing? When is it due? Where does it go now? Miscommunication can appear in many forms, and emails don’t always solve the problem. If you recognize this in your process, it’s time to consider automation. We are all bombarded with communications everyday. Missing or overlooking an important notification amidst all the acknowledgments and other junk or spam email is bound to happen. Let’s consider this example. Suppose your project manager sends an email containing new requirements for an application to the development team, but it gets missed under a pile of other emails. The outcome will be a significant delay in the project or application’s completion. Internally this may not be much of a problem, but what if that update is for a customer?

Automating the process removes this potential issue by providing instant notification for each task. All the information needed to complete the task reaches the right person at the right time, making the entire process more efficient.

3. What’s the status.

One issue with manual processes is that they are dependent on manually generated reports to provide updates on the progress of tasks. These reports do not provide real time information about status and make it impossible to make timely business decisions, as the information may be several hours or even days old. To improve customer satisfaction and meet deadlines, you need to be aware of task progress in real time. 

By automating processes, you will gain real time updates on task progress, individual & team performance, and be able to review the processes key performance indicators.

4. Who is Responsible or Accountability

None of us are perfect so mistakes are bound to happen. However, in business, those mistakes have the potential to be costly. When you manage your process manually, ensuring someone is accountable for every step of the process really slows things down. If you spend time assigning ownership and/or searching for responsible parties in a process, you have another reason to consider automation.

When you automate your process, you can clearly define and assign tasks to the correct individual or team and view their progress real time. You’ll have the ability to assign accountability to each step in the workflow, without adding to the workload of employees.

Did you recognize any of these issues in the way you’re running your business? If so, it is time to consider automation as a solution. These of course are not all the signs that identify a process as a candidate for automation, but you have enough to get started. 

If you are still not sure, iGrafx can help. We have over 400 years of combined BPM experience and would love to put it to work for you. Click here to learn more about iGrafx Process Automation. We would be happy to provide a free demo of what can be achieved with automation, or to answer to any other questions you might have.

Effective Change Management: Why Audits Don't Have to Be Scary

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Greek Philosopher Heraclitus once said “The only thing that is constant is change.” Regardless of your industry or its size, you can likely relate to this quote. The changes can be as simple as the name of your department, hiring a new team member or losing an employee who decides to pursue other opportunities outside of the organization. There are also times where the very way that you conduct business changes – maybe due to external reasons like regulatory changes or to internal reasons like executional efficiencies.

Regardless of your industry or company size, how you manage process changes will affect whether you meet your business objectives and maintain internal and external compliance. To manage change effectively, you need a way to understand and view the history of how a given element of your business has been modified over time. You also need a way to efficiently communicate change and update relevant documentation.

For example, auditors typically want to know how a process has evolved over time and why. If changes were made since their last visit, what were those changes, who made them, when, and were the updates approved by the process owner? If the owner has changed, when and how were those changes made? Auditors may even request evidence that changes were communicated and socialized, particularly when process changes were introduced based on their recommendations. Having a platform in place that will capture and communicate these requirements will ensure you are prepared when auditors arrive.

Let’s discuss a few ways the iGrafx platform addresses these challenges. 

  • Process Changes - Many tools on the market will provide the person making the change an ability to provide comments, but comments can be vague and not clearly communicate what has been updated. On many diagrams, finding the addition or deletion of a single shape, or a wording change can be very difficult. With a diagram compare feature this challenge is eliminated. Even if a user only updates the position of a shape or a single word on a diagram, iGrafx will capture and highlight this change, allowing you to quickly locate the modifications and do a side by side comparison. With a subscription capability, you can voluntarily elect to be notified via e-mail anytime there are changes to any process or document in the platform you have permission to view.  If you manage people, you may also decide to make those notifications mandatory for those in a specific group.
  • Ownership Changes – Changes that are made to the ownership of your processes and documentation represent an important area of the business. For example, suppose your organization has a new VP of Marketing and this information needs to be updated on all processes where the VP of Marketing plays a role. Can you make that update in one location and automatically have all process references updated? With the iGrafx Platform that is possible. Even something as simple as a department name change can be updated once and all diagrams affected will reflect the new name. On each of these objects, you will also find a detailed history of all the changes that have occurred, who made them and when. This saves significant resource time, cost, and helps identify possible gaps or risks in coverage. 
  • Documentation Approvals -  When updates are made to your documentation, auditors will require the ability see if that change was approved by the party(ies) accountable. By utilizing the Cycle Management capabilities within the iGrafx Platform, you will be able to request that project team members review, owners approve, or workers endorse (acknowledge) any documentation. The platform will capture their vote or acknowledgement and timestamp it so that it is available as part of the document’s history.

It is true that change is inevitable. This is a challenge as many managers are held accountable for ensuring their departments follow current regulations and company policies. Because of this, audits can be stressful and scary times for all on the team. They don’t have to be. The capabilities we have discussed here can go a long way to helping you maintain compliance despite increasing levels of complexity in the marketplace.

If you would like to see for yourself how iGrafx can help you manage the changes in your business more effectively, contact us for a free demonstration.

Why Your Company Needs a Digital Transformation Engine

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Face it, as a business leader you can’t go a day without someone espousing the virtues of digital transformation. And the funny thing is, you probably don’t know exactly what they’re suggesting you do, because the definition of “digital transformation” varies based on whether it’s from Wikipedia or Forrester or Gartner or KPMG or from the guy down the hall. I work in this space every day, and it’s difficult even for me to distill the ocean of promises and FUD into a reasonable common denominator.

Ultimately, when you get to the bottom of it, in 2018 every company is a digital company, and every company must assess and optimize their business models and end-to-end processes from the perspective of their customers. Failure to do so will result in some combination of the following – typically all four:

  • Risk of disruption by legacy competitors and/or digital native upstarts
  • Risk of non-compliance with emerging regulations like GDPR, which carry huge financial and reputational penalties
  • Sub-optimal customer satisfaction at one of the myriad touchpoints where your internal processes intersect with your customer’s engagement
  • Risk of waste in materials, time, dollars and the best use of employee’s focus

Your customers have embraced digital devices, social networks and a new buyer’s journey, and governments have mandated that the resulting mountains of data generated be treated very carefully.  Vendors promise to automate all of your business processes quickly and easily to increase throughput, and your peers in executive leadership are tasked with looking into the future to determine how to spend finite resources and return the greatest amount of profit.  Despite the limitless list of software and tools at your disposal, it’s not an easy time.

To survive and thrive today, businesses must have the ability to leverage all data from customers and internal processes and then prioritize the greatest risks and/or opportunities for execution.  Options must be assessed and simulated so the right projects are addressed at the right times, and automation must be employed where it makes the most sense. Be clear, digital transformation is much more than just the automation of menial or repetitive tasks so that employees are freed up to do more meaningful and valuable work. However, automation is a very important tool in the digital transformation toolbox.

Today’s enterprises need a platform that sits at the center of their operations, driving GRC systems, regulatory compliance initiatives, RPA tools and KPI management. They need to prove ROI before investments are made. And they need to engage every employee in the organization to collaborate on living business processes, ensuring that customers always come first, regardless of the channel they come through. This is what a digital transformation engine will do for your business. The results will not be quick hit, “one and done,” but will grow seamlessly with your enterprise to ensure a virtuous cycle of evolution.

iGrafx is a digital transformation engine that facilitates business performance in the context of traditional operational excellence, as well as in the emerging sense of optimized customer journeys, all while ensuring compliance with internal policies and external regulations. I’d be happy to discuss how we can help power your business

What Did You Miss at the Bohemian Grove of BPM?

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Seriously, this is how the BPMNext show organizers have described the event. And as free-flowing as the information and ideas were at the latest iteration of the show last month, I find it difficult to call any gathering that takes place at a luxury hotel in Santa Barbara particularly Bohemian. The rooms, views and conversations were fantastic, however.

As the product leader at iGrafx, with almost a dozen years at the company, I take opportunities to assess market needs from *outside* the walls of my office extremely seriously. BPMNext is an interesting environment because it assembles thought leaders from a variety of service and software providers, as well as industry analysts, into a sort of think tank for a couple of days a year. Presentations are delivered (with strict rules on slides and timing), debates are fueled and votes are tallied for leaders in a variety of BPM related areas.

This year, the primary themes were around decision management as a service (DaaS), and automation as a service, and there were numerous interesting, albeit, predictable discussions on the topics.  Decision management (DMN) platforms and automation (including the ubiquitous RPA) are the current darlings of events, blog posts, white papers and, possibly most importantly, customer’s purchase lists. Still, it occurred to me that “the industry’s most influential insiders,” might have stepped back occasionally to discuss the bigger picture into which automation and DMN fall. Everyone talked about small, stateless independent applications or process automation, but nothing on starting with *strategic goals* and charting the most effective/efficient execution path. There as also very little to be heard about consequences that automated processes and decisions might have on a customer’s business model, including how to assess the impact the projects might have on risk management and compliance with all manner of regulations. Even further, and perhaps most important, there was very little conversation around how to prioritize automation projects in the context of a business model and then give customers clear guidelines on what projects should take place next.

Jim Sinur, VP and Research Fellow at Aragon Research, delivered a compelling presentation that asked the question: “Where is Process in Digital Businesses?” His short answer is “everywhere,” but that process isn’t as centrally controlled as it once was. With the race towards digital transformation, the focus has shifted to customer journeys. Customer, employee or partner journeys take over company’s’ high-level communication and business improvement efforts, while lower-level processes become commodities and are used much less frequently as a way to see what is going on in the business. BPMN stays important, just at a more in-depth level. You no longer present process maps to upper management – that’s TMI – keep it to what matters - the Journey. Jim made the point that BPM is different nowadays, not dead. Data is the new oil, or “better Intelligence” is the new oil.  People need to get unstructured work done every day, and unstructured and creative work simply can’t always fit in the strict confines of a BPMN map.

Another great takeaway was from Neil Ward, MWD Advisors’ co-founder and Research Director, who explained in no uncertain terms that vendors need to rearchitect their products to shift away from “one-size-fits-all,” to collections of “independent, self sufficient runtime services.” He made the point that there is “no single big thing” anymore, no one way to meet customers needs. Instead customers work on multiple different initiatives with distinct installation plans, all at the same time. And with regard to the kinds of topics customers are working on, he shared a personal anecdote, explaining that he “grew up worrying about disk space, speed, etc., and now it doesn’t matter anymore.” “Today companies need to worry about governance, policy and resource usage.”  Wise words.

Some other wise words that I choose to live by are “your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant.” (Remember that from your Pragmatic Marketing training?) I spend quite a large percentage of my time conducting win/loss calls, reviewing NPS data and visiting customers all over the world, so an event like BPMNext fits perfectly in my regimen of outside-in thinking. And, in all, the collaborative environment, mix of strong experience, positive atmosphere and stellar accommodations made for an event I’m sure I’ll attend again.

Are You Adding Value?

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Written by Guest Blogger, Paula Bell, CEO at Paula A Bell Consulting.

In martial arts it’s very important to not waste energy. It’s a key point reiterated over, and over, and over again. Make EVERY movement count. You only make movements valuable to your protection. When you think about it, this concept is critical. The situation could be life or death.

This is one principle I leverage in everything I do. I tend to ask myself, “Are the activities I’m performing adding value to my life, my family and the communities I serve?” “Are the meetings, or work I’m producing, adding value to the organization?” This helps to ensure I’m not wasting my energy, time and talents in areas that will not reap the harvest I’m sowing. I have found in organizations documentation is created, or tasks conducted, that add no value whatsoever to the consumers of the information from the work. What’s the point of producing an artifact no one is going to use? Is it just to say you have produced it and can check a box off of a task list? If that is the case the “value add” is zero.

Unfortunately, I have been in many situations where I have been mandated to produce documentation I know no one is going to read. In these situations, I work hard to influence a cultural change. I have also been on the other side as a leader in an organization where I have asked for documentation to be produced, in a certain way, because I know the specific needs of the audience needing to consume the information. In some of those instances I have received quite a bit of push back because it’s not the way it should be done according to what is stated in a book or in compliance with a theory. My question posed back to these types of situations is if it’s not going to produce any value the way it’s currently documented why are we producing it? Why are we wasting our energy? 

You see, we all learn different techniques and methodologies we put in our tool box throughout our careers. The application of those techniques is the critical component. I am not saying break rules or methodologies, or as some people say “GO ROGUE!!!!” What I am saying is you have to take time to understand the audiences in which you serve. Do not waste precious energy on work that does not add value.

In this article I will share some tips I’ve learned over the years in the areas of business analysis/project management.

THE BA KENMEI (Knowledge) CORNER

1. Understand your Organization

A lot of individuals don’t take time to understand the organizational structure because they are too busy completing work assigned. However, the more you understand the organization, the more strategic you can be in how you approach situations, produce documentation, and influence decisions.

2. Understand your Stakeholders

It’s important to conduct a stakeholder analysis of those you work with. Take time to understand:

  • The chain of command
  • The individual’s role
  • Their influence level
  • What they expect of you
  • What you expect of them
  • The individual’s perspective on the organization
  • The work being done
  • The value the organization you work in adds to the overall strategic goals

You may ask, “Why do I need to know all of this?” Knowledge is power. The more you understand about your stakeholders the more you understand what value means to them.

For example, one company I work with was asked by Senior Leadership to provide process documentation.  It sounds like an easy enough request, however, the first pass of creating the process documentation did not produce the value the Senior Leaders wanted. The reason it didn’t add the value expected is, it did not clearly and visually show the process at a level that allowed management to trace known issues to the portions of the process where they occur. The team was more focused on creating the documentation per standard, than understanding the needs of the audience consuming the information. A different group was engaged and there was conversation to ensure the documentation created would add value to the audience consuming it. We did not want a repeat of the first wave.  Even during the second pass there was debate on what should be produced; however, there has been consensus made where we need to focus on producing the documentation that will add value.  In some aspects this is a cultural and mind shift from what was done in the past, which clearly did not work.

3. Understand your role and expectations

It amazes me how many individuals in organizations have no clue what their role and expectations are. Some of this occurs because the information is not clearly articulated, you interpret it differently than others, or you just aren’t told.  When you aren’t clear on your role and expectations you could inadvertently produce non-value add work. For example, if you routinely perform a task and you ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”, you may be performing a non-value add task. Sit down and have a conversation with your manager, project manager, and teams you work with.  This will help you, and everyone else, truly understand the role and expectations of those on the team and how everyone fits together to complete work.

4. Conduct crucial conversations

Provide examples of where waste is occurring and how the waste is hindering organizational growth, and execution of initiatives. Having these crucial conversations without examples will not be as effective so be sure to have solid examples.

5. Don’t give up

Cultural changes in organizations are extremely hard. However, we are change agents, correct? With change there may be some resistance so don’t let the resistance stop you. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.  Ensure you are not wasting energy, and adding value is worth fighting for.

Keep in mind that depending on where the direction is coming from in the organization you may have to do what you don’t necessarily agree with because you don’t have a choice.  Some organizational cultures are not ready for change. In these situations, work hard to help influence change as much as you can.

In my next article we will discuss tips for those in Leadership. 

The Usual Sus-PEX

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Written by Guest Blogger, Ian Hawkins, Editor at PEX Network

How bank processes opened the door to cyber crime

PEX is used by organisations large and small to make their operations run more efficiently. This is as true of organised crime as it is of legitimate business, and PEX has directly affected the way crime has changed in a relatively brief period.

‘Police 5’ was a British TV programme that publicised crimes: my memory is of black-and-white photofits, reenacted robberies and host Shaw Taylor ending each episode with an avuncular ‘Keep ‘em peeled!’

But it isn’t just the haircuts and petrol prices that date this episode of the show.

The crimes themselves are from another age. Show this to a young police officer today and they will ask: where’s the CCTV? The mobile phone log? The number plate recognition?

One of the most popular TV sitcoms of its time, Birds of a Feather, first aired in 1989. The show followed two sisters whose husbands were jailed for armed robbery. The sisters lived in a luxurious house, paid for by this criminal enterprise, in Chigwell, just outside London.

Today, the average armed bank robbery nets a paltry 20,000, out of which come costs (getaway car, disposal of evidence, lawyers’ fees) – and that’s before you split the proceeds.

Meanwhile, a three bed house in Chigwell is on zoopla.co.uk priced at £1,200,000. Good luck paying the mortgage on that in cash (and it’s a brave criminal mastermind who deposits the loot straight back into the vault from which it was just stolen). A robbery or two per month should just about cover it, but at the rate branches are closing, you’ll be looking to factor in a hefty travel budget before your home is paid for.

Crime does not pay, not because some caped crusader has foiled your dastardly plan: the numbers just don’t add up. Your chances of getting caught are so high and the rewards are footling, you might as well get a paper round.

What, you might ask, does all this have to do with PEX?

Data is the raw material we work, and while there are lies, damned lies and statistics, criminal statistics are the trickiest of all.

Crime is like a water balloon; you squeeze it here and it bulges there, and often a crime reduced by one measure can increase elsewhere. The disparity between the number of crimes reported to the police and the actual crimes committed is just one example of where data can mislead.

We worry that crime rates are rising over all but the nature of those crimes is shifting too. Robbery is down by nearly 60,000 cases a year since 2002 in the UK. In the USA the number of bank heists, according to the FBI quoted in the Chicago Tribune, have dropped by 60% in 25 years. As the reformed bank robber quoted in the Tribune says, ‘There’s a lot of easier ways to make the same amount of money.’

So what’s replaced it? Crime has gone online. Internet security company Kaspersky Lab reported in 2015 that a single hacker collective was able to steal $1 billion from banks around the world. This isn’t just shifting figures around on a spreadsheet: they ordered ATMs to dispense hard cash at set times to be collected by the gang.

The idea of masked men bursting into the local bank branch is almost laughable today, even as cyber security is a regular topic of discussion at tech conferences. PEX - including training for bank tellers, security processes, fitting physical security measures and all - has all but eradicated the problem of bank robbery, but the desire of people to get money without working for it has not gone away. Crimes against the person have gone up, fraud has gone up, cyber crime is offering opportunities and rewards to socially isolated hackers that legitimate employers can’t match.

So we ask ourselves the question: what sort of crime can PEX tackle? And what can we do to avoid simply shifting the problem elsewhere?

Really serious crimes have gone under the radar in a way that may be a thing of the past: human errors in large enquiries have left more than one killer to remain at liberty for too long – but these are precisely the manual mistakes that automation and bots could iron out. Currently the only appetite for the technology seems to be limited to technology crimes.

This would be timely, but not far reaching enough.

When Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg gave testimony to Congress, it demonstrated the woeful lack of knowledge of politicians. Governments need to educate themselves, take the threat seriously and legislate for the online world – as recent news stories have exposed the exploitation of unpoliced data collection, we have seen how vulnerable we are to attack. At present, the fort is being held by private businesses who understandably don’t want to be robbed of money, data or productive time – but without legislation, it’s a pretty wild frontier, and the line between legitimate business and organized criminals is fuzzy because current laws lag behind reality. Our leaders are tending towards the easy path of ‘business as usual’, and it has to change. As TechCrunch says, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is a ‘pivotal juncture in history where tech companies, regulators and lawmakers are actively reviewing the acceptability of evolved social norms’; democracy has a sawn-off shotgun poking it in the ribs, and yet it seems too few of our leaders have noticed.


The Many Sides of Digital Transformation and a Need for an RPA Reboot – a TEXWeek Recap

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Key Takeaways from TEX Week 2018

Last week I was invited to attend TEXWeek in Nashville TN., hosted by our friends at the PEX Network. The intent of the show was to answer the question: “how do you deliver process and operational transformation to your business through digital and technology excellence?” That sounds like a big question to ask and a lot to deliver.


Here are a few of my highlights and take-aways:

  • On day one, Brenton Harder of BNY-Mellon delivered the keynote speaking on the influence of technology to the speed of change. He spoke on the importance of leadership not getting in the way of innovation by enforcing the status quo. Change is uncomfortable. In fact, you would not even notice change except for the disruption in your comfort zone. Change may even initially feel like you are stepping backwards, but this is necessary to move forward. This was illustrated with this Growth / Value chart. He also spoke on the importance not getting bogged down too much data. “Infobesity,” in Brenton’s words, is a real issue, and to make real change the right data must be considered in parallel with process.  He challenged the audience to open their windows and look outside their own group, organization, and even company.  Failure to do so may result in you not seeing or addressing the next disruption in your space.
  • When speaking on Business Intelligence, Dave Castellani of NY Life, talked about the challenges of “Big Data”.  Having too much data will prevent you from seeing what is meaningful.  Another challenge is that many companies are pushing forward with new technology and are ignoring legacy systems.  Legacy is real and must be considered when implementing new technology.  It cannot simply be wished away, and it will not go away overnight. 

Others spoke of Digital Transformation in the context of integrating technology into the workforce or their daily lives.  Nicole Raimundo, CIO The Town of Cary, NC was a great example of this showing us what the city of tomorrow may look like.  They have removed the walls both literally and figuratively in their offices to create a more open work space, that is also more in touch with the community.  By integrating systems like Waze, Alexa, Social Media, and their CRM into their environment and workflows, they are to provide immediate and real time services to their residents.  (Alexa, Ask Cary for a new recycle bin. … Sure Robert, a work order has been created and your new bin will be delivered Friday.)

With the increasing cost of labor worldwide, it was important for the fashion industry to identify ways to reduce cost and make the process more efficient. (Fun fact: Did you know that every T-shirt requires 10 people to make?) Pete Santora, CCO Softwear Automation, spoke about how they have learned to automate the sewing process with actual robots. This may sound simple on the surface, but keep in mind that fabric is not rigid but flexible. Every strike with the needle moves and displaces the fabric and it must be adjusted after every stitch to ensure the quality is maintained. Figuring it out took 10 years of research and development. However, with their new robotic process, they can reduce the workforce from 10 workers to 1, double output, cut cost by 50%, reduce lead times and inventory by 90%, and have a 80% smaller carbon foot print which is better for the environment.

While the points were good and the technology cool, when it comes to Digital Transformation as a term, things were far from clear. In fact, during the round table discussions and networking sessions I was able to have conversations with individuals about what this new industry buzz word, “Digital Transformation”, encompasses. In every instance, it became abundantly obvious that there is no clear understanding of what Digital Transformation is or means. Depending on who you talk too, what google page you find, or analyst group you reference, that term will take on different meanings. What is clear is that, regardless of the company you work for, if you can tie your project to Digital Transformation, or at least put that term on one of your slides to executives, you are more likely to get approval and funding. In one example, I spoke to group that had all their procedures in a three-ring binder. Their project spent a quarter scanning and converting them to PDF. Time and resources approved why? You guessed it, because they “digitally transformed” them.

Others struggled with where to begin their Digital Transformation journey. “Do we start with process or with strategy?” (Both will be great blog topics for another time)

This is all unfortunate because at its essence, what Digital Transformation encompasses is incredibly important.  Today every business is digital and touches the Internet of Things in some way.  Every business handles continuously growing mountains of internal and external data.  Every business must strive to create and optimize the best customer experiences possible.  Every business must be able to look at their complete operations through the lens of their holistic processes to ensure ideal business performance as well as ongoing compliance with regulations like the brand new GDPR.  Don’t do all of these and risk disruption.  Sadly, as crucial as it is, the term “Digital Transformation” will be misunderstood, over used and diluted until it gets pushed aside as providing little value. (You may recall when Lean & Six Sigma were all the rage for identifying opportunities for process improvements. Now, sadly, that community and it’s influence are much smaller.)

Another interesting part of some very candid conversations dealt with another buzz word that is currently a hot topic; Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Because it is a cool term that has a lot of attention and gets funding, many companies have been quick to adopt and implement some form of automation. Unfortunately for them, many fell prey to the fancy talk that many BPM and RPA vendors poured on by freely throwing around the term and speaking about how fast they could implement. They are now realizing that RPA, or automation of any kind, requires planning, strategy, and an understanding of your process. As we have stated many times, just because you can automate something does not mean that you should. If you do not understand the process or how it works, you will just do bad things faster and be more efficient at being inefficient. In fact, we spoke to multiple companies that are now backing out their automation implementation to get a handle on understanding the process. There has been a lot of concern about how automation might mean the elimination of jobs. As some have found, doing it wrong most certainly will.

Overall it was a very informative conference. It was also good to have the time to speak open and candidly with those taking the lead in the Digital Business Transformation and RPA space. We look forward to continuing those conversations in the coming month.

If you would like more information on Digital Transformation and Automation, here are a few posts you may be interested in:

How to Tie the Customer Journey to your Process Framework

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Written by Guest Blogger, Kelly Sewczwicz, Process Manager at Cox Communications.

Most BPM experts seem to agree that there is the need to merge together the work of customer experience and process improvement teams.  Last year I had the opportunity to tag along on a customer journey mapping project to understand how they built the journey and related deliverables.  My goal was to figure out how our BPM tool, iGrafx, could be leveraged to tie together customer journeys and processes in our process framework.  Would there be value in adding this information?  How exactly should the details be related together?

The first thing that the team created was a service blueprint which is a process flow from the customer’s perspective.  This tool was first created in 1984 by G. Lynn Shostack.  This diagram describes the front stage or visible actions to the customer and the back stage or invisible actions to the customer, along with the supporting processes and tools for one path through the process.  Think of a service blueprint as the table of contents of the people, process, and technology to achieve a specific customer outcome.  This document was created in one session with subject matter experts from across the organization using colored sticky notes and butcher-block paper.  At the end of the day, we reviewed the document with our executives.  This document highlighted how different well-meaning organizations were negatively impacting our customers.

Next, we created the service blueprint in iGrafx using very simplistic shapes.  We also added a row at the top of the service blueprint to capture existing projects that were addressing certain steps or data that we had collected.  For example, we had NPS scores to explain which parts of the process were the most challenging for customers.  We also added a row at the bottom of the service blueprint to describe the operational processes that supported the steps and extended the box to show how the steps aligned to the blueprint.  This blueprint is very useful because every time a new person was added to the team, we had one place to show them to ground them in our customer journey.

When it came time to develop the desired state customer journey, we created a customer moment architecture.  This diagram attempted to overcome several limitations of the service blueprint.  The service blueprint represented one customer’s path through the process and most processes have multiple channels for how to serve that customer and have multiple ways to fulfill the service to the customer.  We wanted to create one view of the different moments a customer can experience and describe how each channel would support those moments.  In our project, we heard that customers were frustrated because the experience was very different depending on which channel they chose to interact with us.  We wanted to define the moments to be the same regardless how our customers choose to interact with us. 

We also realized that some of the moments we were defining could be reused from one customer journey to another, so we needed to make sure that we could understand all the places a moment could be used.  This is where the power of a tool like iGrafx really helps.  Every customer moment was setup to be an enterprise process object and the swimlanes of the models represent the different channels where a customer can experience the moment.  We created custom shapes for the moments to make it clear that it was not a process map.  Off the moments we added work products to describe the customer interaction that we wanted to take place or mock-ups of what the digital experience might look like.  We had tested some of these mockups and customer interactions with customers to fine tune the ideas. 

Next, we mapped the customer moments to our underlying process framework.  iGrafx provides us the ability to say that for any given moment, these are the processes that support it.  This allows us to talk in two different languages (experience or process) and we don’t have to worry are we talking past each other.  The ability to connect two frameworks together allows us then to walk the relationships.  Now I can understand how a moment is supported by what processes, roles, applications, and policies/rules.  As soon as I saw this, I immediately began thinking all the other things that we could connect together to build an ecosystem to support customer experience, process improvement, technology, and operations.  In the next segment, I will talk about adding on the next set of objects and the added power it brings.

Customer Journey Mapping: An Illustrated View

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Written by Guest Blogger, Kelly Sewczwicz, Process Manager at Cox Communications. Part 2 of her latest blog series.

In my last article, part 1 of this series, I spoke about the recent initiatives we are undergoing to understand our process from the lens of the Customer. (You can read more about that here) To do this we have begun creating and defining our Customer Journey.  But this was just the beginning. It was also imperative to understand how our customers journey interacted with our internal processes and systems. I concluded with a desire to relate this to our current iGrafx ecosystem* and our process framework. In this article, we will explore that.

At the center of the ecosystem is a business process framework where we describe our business processes in a common language across the enterprise. Our process framework is called the World on a Page (WoAP) and it was created by combining elements from the eTOM/Frameworx and ITIL frameworks.

Each process we create contains information that may include: resources, external agents, IT architecture, performance indicators, risks (pain points), requirements, work products, and custom properties.  If the process is the center, it would look like this:

Let’s talk about each of these elements in more detail.

  • Resources – A common set of roles that perform the process. We can also use resources to describe the channels where the work is performed or names of journey owners that are accountable for the process.
  • External Agents - Capture our resources that are outside of Cox that include our customers, vendors, suppliers, and competitors that may play roles in our processes. 
  • IT Architecture - Identifies what applications, servers, hardware, equipment and tools that we need to use in a process to get work done.
  • Risk (Pain Point) - Risks are used to track our pain points of a process, along with information like the likelihood/impact of the pain point happening.
  • Requirements - Requirements allow us to add requirements needed to implement proposed process changes.
  • Custom Properties – Fields we have created that allow us to capture needed information that was not part of one of the other elements.  Some examples that we plan on capturing include process maturity and disaster recovery information. 
  • Diagram – A visual representation of the process. 
  • Work Product – Describe physical things, information or data that is exchanged between external agents and steps in the process. For example, a work product is a customer confirmation, a door tag left explaining that maintenance work is needed, or a customer notification sent as a reminder for an upcoming appointment.
  • Performance Indicators – Defined measurements identifying if our process is functioning successfully. 

A process can be decomposed into lower levels of detail and all of these elements can be added at each level of detail. By connecting these elements, we can now create reports on the process and its relationships to those other elements. Additionally, since a process can be linked to other processes, we can also walk the relationships between processes and discover all the elements of each process. 

By having this information, we can connect our process framework to our customer moment architecture framework and easily navigate between the customer moments and the supporting processes that deliver those moments. 

*When we are talking about the iGrafx ecosystem we are talking about the processes in the process framework, the elements we associate to a process, and how a process is linked to the customer moment architecture.

Process Center of Excellence: What is it, and why you need one

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The topic of a Process Center of Excellence (CoE) is one that has resonated quite well with our audience recently. Back in April we held a webinar on the topic, and it was one of our best attended presentations yet. Our audience was engaged, learned all about CoE and asked some great questions. (You can download the full recording here). And in the beginning of the year, Aaron Bozeman, Director of Customer Success for North America at iGrafx, presented 3 sessions at the OPEX Business Transformation World Summit. His speaking slot was immediately filled to capacity, with standing room only. There were more folks interested in learning about CoEs than the room could handle!

So, why is the process center of excellence such a hot topic? We’ve found that many companies are getting ready to start their CoE. And this means they are looking for the best way to begin and crave key insights.

There are often many questions when an organization starts a large initiative, like setting up a CoE. We wanted to help by sharing our knowledge with you. We created our most recent infographic, CoE: Process Center of Excellence. You can download it here.

This illustrated how to guide will help you understand:

  • What is a Process Center of Excellence? 
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Why BPM Matters in Project Delivery

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Written by Guest Blogger, Connie McKissack, Founder of Technology Project Excellence

Often organizations tout their ability to deliver projects in a repeatable, efficient manner. Although some agencies may have figured this out, it’s probably more likely that the actual process or governance in place is often ignored and a project manager will execute despite it. An efficient, successful project Manager has no issues with the execution of a project and considering but ignoring things like governance and process. Most often the organization has developed some checklist or idealized method that a typical technology project may be executed. Add on several years of execution, and you’ve got a thick layer of process obscuring what’s happening in project delivery. No one even knows what happens in a typical project because some poor unfortunate creature has been saddled with the collection of the conventional process and then quietly ignored while projects delivery in spite of it. Thus, the dreaded PMO is created. More on that later.

Two CIO articles posted within three years of one another by senior writer Sharon Florentine, reported, via business surveys, that over half of information technology projects had failed. You can find the 2013 article here and the 2016 article here. The 2013 article says that the survey respondents noted project resources as the cause and notes that the project management role has changed rapidly but that there is no shortage of project manager positions. In the 2016 article, the survey respondents indicated that failure was higher but it didn’t necessarily lack resources, it was an alignment of them. In his 2008 article stored on Project Management Institute (PMI), Vittal Anantatmula posed that knowledge management and information technology needed a bridge and I pose that business process management (BPM) satisfies this.

Cast a wide net around your project managers and see how many tools they might utilize during a workday to execute their project and then take a step back to see what technology you are utilizing to capture all of those executing processes. If there isn’t any integration among them, then you are undermining continuous and rapid improvement in your project organization. While Vittal pushes technology to answer the rapid execution of projects it also points us to our biggest challenge when we recognize how many systems are in play. BPM can set the foundation to support those technologies and provide the project execution playbook that provides the knowledge management component missing. Establishing consistent processes with what is executing is a challenge, but if you get the foundation set correctly, the next steps aren’t as hard.

If your organization has invested in the PMO, then you can’t drive value and continuous improvement without Business Process Management (BPM). Whether PMO stands for Project, Program, or Portfolio, there is zero value in operating any of the three without a proven, measured, and well-documented execution processes. I know what you are thinking: we don’t want to document, we want to execute! I get it, I’ve lived it. You have to channel your PMO or project resources into focusing on what brings value to your organization and in technology; that means harnessing it and delivering those projects that produce the most benefits.

How do you do that? Can you deliver a thought-out project execution process to your organization and still allow your most efficient and dynamic Project and Program leaders the space to provide value to the organization? BPM. It’s central to a project shop’s success. In the last couple years being involved in an Information Technology project centered PMO, I found that magic with the structure of a process-oriented architecture tuned explicitly to delivering projects that were related to information systems and infrastructure related elements. Providing programs and projects every day means that having a sophisticated, well-oiled methodology is critical to success! Your organization can have any myriad of fundamental structures in place to deliver an IT or IS product: like a new system that provides autonomous vehicle location information. When that radical technology changes rapidly and other similar projects are required you have zero value without a repeatable and reusable structure that is dynamic, flexible, and able to provide the process intelligence needed.

That may seem overwhelming at first, but you can take your project delivery teams to the next level by laying out the structure for your next step BPM implementation project. Think about the fundamental value that a repeatable process related to technology improvements can make and demonstrate that by showing multiple projects connected to one another that produce similar deliverables. No matter what tools are used; the final delivery of a project provides intelligence that can be harnessed for future ones; that’s why BPM matters in project delivery.

Footnote: The best book we recommend for starting your journey is The Process Improvement Handbook: A Blueprint for Managing Change and Increasing Organizational Performance. It’s one of the best books to use as a structure for your organization and we found that it could support a PMO or project organization.

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