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Don’t Panic: What You Need to Know about Business Continuity & Resiliency

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Don’t Panic! That’s the maxim of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and sage advice for these extraordinary times. By not panicking, you can keep your wits about you and react to what’s going on now, and also prepare for the next time. It is also important to stay as positive as possible, as recent events have almost undoubtedly rattled everyone, and it’s still critical to understand and treat them well.

It’s important for your enterprise not to panic. Now, more than ever, Business Continuity and Resiliency (BC&R) is critical to the business. It’s easier to not panic if you have a plan—and processes—in place for handling unusual interruptions in your day-to-day business. Even if you cannot plan for every eventuality (and you cannot), you can still have a remediation process to have the organizational resiliency and capability to maintain business continuity during those interruptions.

So how does this translate into something you can do now, or for the next big unexpected thing? You can begin by understanding what’s of strategic importance to the organization, and connect that to execution (to processes; to what you do). You can manage the strategic Capabilities of your organization, and how they relate to Processes, Products, and/or the Business Services that your organization delivers to your customers. You can put in place, or enhance, enterprise Risk, Compliance, Remediation, and Resiliency processes. If you want to compare your processes with industry best-practice standards, the APQC Process Classification Framework (PCF) has defined processes and sub-processes in this area. In fact, they have produced a COVID-19 Organizational Survival Guide for these extraordinary times.

A key focus area in the risk and compliance side of the equation is to identify Risks to your enterprise, and either Controls to mitigate those risks, and/or Opportunities (the potential reward when taking on a risk) to capitalize on. Risk assessments help you understand which processes are at risk, so you can develop contingency plans or solutions. Risk analysis usually focuses on two variables: likelihood and impact. An item that is unlikely to happen or wouldn’t be terribly disruptive may not warrant much process improvement or contingency planning. With your processes defined and analyzed, you can begin to assess whether each risk is significant or negligible. For each risk, it helps to understand its frequency, predictability, onset (can you see it coming, and how quickly will the issue become critical?), duration, etc. Once risks are identified, you can determine how those risks will affect your operations, implement safeguards and procedures to mitigate the risks, test those procedures to ensure they work, and ensure the process is up to date, understood, and used by everyone that must perform that work.

Of course, to identify risk and control on your processes, you must have documented those processes in the first place. Simply documenting your processes (and procedures or policies) helps with continuity and consistency. Process documentation provides step-by-step guidance on how to execute work. This means people can step into roles as needed because they have the information to do the job. Speaking of which, understanding who is in the ‘line of succession’ or is critical to the performance of a process, will help you understand what must be done in unusual circumstances. In addition, if you have documented which processes are critical, it is easier to prioritize the processes needed to deliver value and are essential to focus on during unexpected events. For example, even using process categories such as whether they are strategic, tactical, or operational/transactional can help you understand the frequency of a process and how it contributes to your enterprise. Given the probable resource constraints enterprises are now facing, and the need to change your processes to maintain social distancing, it is likely that you will want to accelerate your digital transformation and automation efforts in the context of understanding which processes are critical. Process documentation helps you accelerate these automation efforts because the current state is already captured.

Understanding, modeling, and reporting on your enterprise doesn’t stop at Process and Risk/Control information, of course. Understanding infrastructure, whether that’s IT Architecture (Applications/Systems), or actual physical locations (from region/country all the way to specific campuses, buildings, rooms or equipment), is important to understand the impacts on your ability to execute the work of the enterprise. Knowing your work products (e.g. process outputs), what produces them, and where they’re produced can help identify critical points in your Supply Chain and the resources needed to produce them. This becomes critical information for events that can disrupt the normal flow of operations.

The iGrafx Platform is ideally suited to address what I’ve mentioned above. You can document, analyze, improve, and manage your processes; knowing they are approved and accessible to your enterprise. You can define your strategies and goals, tie them to business capability and your products/services, and even the customer’s journey and where they interact with you. You can perform risk and opportunity management, ensuring controls and resiliency processes are in place and understood, and ensure you have identified who is responsible or accountable for handling business continuity and resiliency. You can report on the information above, across your enterprise. Armed with information about what you do, what’s critical to keep doing, and who needs to do it, you can avoid panic, and get to the business of treating everyone well now. You will also be ready for the next big thing—positive or negative—that comes along.

And finally, I’d like to invite you to join iGrafx CTO, Ed Maddock, tomorrow April 14th at 11 am ET for a free webinar where he will discuss effective business continuity and resiliency. Ed will explain why process-centric business modeling is needed now more than ever, and give specific use cases around providing visibility into strategy, supply chain and people planning. Hope to see you there!

Register Now

The post Don’t Panic: What You Need to Know about Business Continuity & Resiliency appeared first on iGrafx.


The Emperor’s Fresh Coat of Paint: Why Digital Transformation Efforts Miss the Mark

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Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

– From The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen

Everyone knows Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary tale. Yet, no one wants to think of themselves as the emperor. I fear, however, that when it comes to the much-buzzed-about topic of digital transformation, too many enterprise leaders are unwittingly playing the part.

I was recently interviewed on the Process Excellence Networks podcast and dove into this topic using a slightly different metaphor. I explained, “My frustration with the way people talk about digital transformation…, [is that] they talk about it in this very thin layer that sits on the top, like it’s a coat of paint, you can stick on it. And that’s not it. You cannot deliver a winning customer experience…by doing that.”

My point was that digital transformation is not a project or a one-time effort. That it wasn’t some magic elixir you could buy and implement. It’s so much more than that — and that’s why most current digital transformation efforts are actually missing the mark and achieving very little.

The problem is that too many enterprise leaders are acting like the emperor, parading around in their new digital transformation suit, hoping that it’s real, but fearing that it’s not.

Why ‘Digital’ is the Problem

The foundation of this problem is actually in the name itself. The fact that we call it digital transformation has led too many organizations to approach it primarily as a technology-driven effort.

An effective digital transformation initiative unquestionably involves the application of ‘digital,’ but it’s a question of sequence. The technology is the how, not the what.

Whether it’s because the technology focus is more comfortable, because it represents a more manageable scope, or if it’s because that’s what the vendors are pushing (and what’s easiest to buy), the fact that most digital transformation efforts revolve around the technology is unmistakable.

But this technology-centricity is where things go off-the-rails.

Real digital transformation has always been about business transformation. More specifically, it’s about transforming the business to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.

The digital part of the equation has always been the how of accomplishing such a transformation.

Ask most enterprise leaders about their digital transformation efforts, however, and what you’ll hear is a litany of technology-based projects and scant talk about the business transformation they are to enable.

The Essence of Digital Transformation: Reinvention

In fairness, many enterprise executives get this — at least at a conceptual level.

The threat of so-called digital disruption and a rapidly changing market has left almost every organization scrambling to respond. They instinctively understand that they must transform their business.

But somewhere between understanding the strategic need to transform and the ability to execute, things go awry.

Organizations lose sight of the fact that the purpose of these efforts is to transform the fundamental business and operating models to overcome disruptive threats and better serve their customers and, instead, become overly focused on the technology. But as I wrote recently in my CIO.com column, “…if your business model does not become almost unrecognizable, there’s a high probability that you’re not transforming anything at all.”

There is, however, a simple way to break this cycle: stop calling it digital transformation and, instead, think of it as cultural and process reinvention.

When you get right down to it, that’s what you’re seeking.

In the face of market threats and changing customer expectations, you need to reinvent yourself at every level. You must transform your business model to meet these demands, and then transform your culture and operating processes and practices to deliver on its promise.

Technology will, of course, be a critical part of how you accomplish this reinvention. But by starting with reinventing your business, culture, and processes — long before you focus on the technology necessary to do so — you will finally have the sequencing correct.

The Intellyx Take: The Missing Link Connecting Strategy and Execution

The reason you must focus on the cultural and process reinvention is that the failure to do so is one of the most likely inhibitors to the successful deployment and adoption of your technology efforts.

If the goal is transformation, the starting point is understanding the current cultural norms and current-state operating practices. After all, every transformation must have a known starting point.

Moreover, knowing your current cultural and operating state is the surest way to successfully connect the dots between your digital transformation strategy and your ability to execute against it.

Admittedly, it is easier to undertake a big, splashy technology project and call it digital transformation. Envisioning and executing a business transformation is much more involved and demands cross-functional visibility and coordination. It requires that you articulate a business-centric strategy, and then effectively connect it to an execution capability.

The results of this approach, however, speak — and pay — for themselves.

To that end, we are working with iGrafx, an industry leader helping organizations connect strategy to execution, to conduct qualitative research that will explore how leading enterprises are taking a process-centric approach to business and digital transformation. We will share their stories and the results they’re realizing with this approach.

The initial findings of this research will be presented at the company’s upcoming virtual event, Innovate 2020, taking place May 4th through the 8th.

As these stories will show, those organizations that get beyond the hyperbolic talk of transformation and hyper-focus on technology and, instead, focus on the strategy-to-execution connection are those that, ironically, will see the greatest transformation.

And it will be the leaders of these organizations that will be able to walk down the street unafraid that a child will point out that they are wearing no clothes.

The post The Emperor’s Fresh Coat of Paint: Why Digital Transformation Efforts Miss the Mark appeared first on iGrafx.

A Business Transformation Maturity Model

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As everyone around the world knows all-too-well, we truly do live in interesting times.  In fact, I’m typing this article at a homemade stand-up-desk that’s set up in what was once a storage room on the second story of my house.  Like so many (lucky) people, I’m about 4 weeks into the work from home stage of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.  Interesting times, indeed.

Despite the strange new reality, I consider myself incredibly fortunate.  First – I still have a job.  Second – I have the ability to do my work with relatively little interruption from the comfort of my home.  Third – I work for a company that delivers products and services that are genuinely helping businesses around the world cope with the today’s unprecedented changes.  Not many people are as lucky.

Recently, iGrafx has delivered quite a bit of content in the form of blog articles, webinars and other tailored tools aimed at assisting with business continuity and resiliency.  Three decades of laser focus on process-centric business modeling provides a unique and informed perspective.  And it is all right in line with what we had been talking about six months ago, before most of us had any clue about Corona Viruses, or the fact that a “novel” one was about to make an unwelcomed appearance.

Prior to our current situation, we talked primarily about business transformation, which is a superset of what’s involved with the overly hyped goal of “digital transformation.”  As I’ve mentioned before, “transformation” means “change.”  Simple as that.  And in the context of business transformation, it means all kinds of change; both planning for the kind you desire, as well as reacting to the kind you don’t.  In order to effectively execute any kind of business strategy that creates a new operational reality, there are a series of steps that best-in-class organizations go through, starting with operational excellence, moving to business modeling and ideally arriving at strategic transformation.

In other words, enterprises start by working on how to do things better/faster/cheaper, then progress to monitoring and measuring the impact of operational change, and finally graduate to legitimate digital transformation initiatives involving customer experience and detailed workflow automation.

In the short video below, iGrafx head of product marketing, Robert Thacker, explains the six key use cases that businesses need to solve for as they mature along the continuum: 1) Operational Excellence; 2) Quality Management; 3) Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) & Data/Privacy Management; 4) Performance Management; 5) Digital Transformation/Automation; and 6) Customer Journey & Experience.  Whether already a major corporate initiative with a dedicated Center of Excellence, or a new priority spurred by the need to mitigate new, previously unforeseen risks, now is always the right time to optimize and transform your business.

Life interesting.  Things change.  Companies disrupt one another.  Be ready.  Survive and thrive.

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Webinar: Driving Effective Business Continuity & Resiliency thru a Process-Centric Approach

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Over the last few weeks the entire globe has been thrown into a bit of chaos and uncertainty. And it really doesn’t matter what industry you work in.  Many organizations are encountering the real threat of production delays, supply chain failures, having to realign their workforces, missing revenue projections and overall mass business disruption. This also means that business leaders are starting to think more deeply about their core business processes.  They are realizing how difficult it is to make changes to their operations when processes that aren’t documented, and they are struggling to accurately predict the full, enterprise-wide impacts of changes.

In our latest webinar, Ed Maddock, iGrafx CTO, addresses this and discusses why having a process centric approach is a fundamental requirement of business continuity and resiliency. Download the entire webinar to hear Ed discuss:

  • Specific use cases around providing visibility into strategy, supply chain and people planning
  • How to apply technology such as process mining and automation
  • What to be prepared for after COVID 19 to continue to build confidence in your business

At iGrafx we do believe that process is the center of everything you do and that if properly managed, an organization’s processes can be a portfolio of valuable assets. Download the entire presentation to learn more!

Download Now

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Customer Experience for Continuity and Resiliency

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There are lots of ideas about journey mapping floating around. The customer experience is driving many businesses strategies and decisions, as well it should. If you want a template, a search of Google will return a couple hundred pages of “the best” customer journey examples. The problem is that most customer journey exercises are narrow in focus. They consist of lots of sticky notes and various color face emojis that supposedly represent the customers engagement or feelings at that moment in time. They do in many cases however have a large disconnect between the customers journey and what it takes to allow you as a company to provide the service that journey promises.

Let’s back up just a moment and really discuss what a Journey Map is. A Journey Map is the process your customer goes through to acquire goods and services from your company, and it is documented from the customer’s (external or internal) point of view. Did you catch that? It was subtle…the Customer Journey is a process.  To the customer that process may be largely linear. They may call the same number or access the same website for sales or service. However, when a company thinks about the Customer Journey as a process, a lot of other things become abundantly clear.

For example, when considering a global pandemic, understanding your customer’s journey as a process makes identifying your company’s business-critical processes much clearer. Business Critical processes can typically be lumped into 3 categories:

  1. This process is required to deliver goods and services to your customer
  2. This process is required to ensure the safety of your employees
  3. This process is required to for legal or regulatory compliance

Looking at your Customer Journey as a process also allows you to relate the underlying dependencies to the internal people, processes and technologies that permit that journey to be completed successfully and with the best possible experience. Because let’s face it, we have all taken a journey where we arrived at our intended destination, but the experience was less than desirable. However, to achieve true value we need more than just pretty boxes with some free form text, sticky notes, and smiley faces. We need an actual business architecture supported by a platform that will allow for the interrelation of all the capabilities and components necessary to make that journey successful.

Understand to, some aspects of the processes that support the journey are there because they are legally required. We need to identify those requirements and risks. Only then we can implement controls or identify opportunities to ensure a smoother journey while maintaining legal compliance. Please note that you may not be able to improve every aspect of the customers experience. Sometimes it’s ok to “just not suck.”  As John Maeda, Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient once stated, “Without friction in an experience, it’s not possible to “feel” it. So, a frictionless experience is by definition unmemorable.”

Bottom line, you cannot improve customer experience or their journey without changing internal processes or systems. You cannot change processes or systems without impacting the business groups that use them. An improvement that may appear to benefit the customer, that makes life harder for the people that must provide the service, will hinder, or negate the any perceived value you hoped to achieve. Finally, when your world erupts into chaos, only journeys that are related to their corresponding internal processes and systems will help you identify which are the most business critical so you can provide some semblance of continuity and resiliency.

If you’d like to hear more on this topic, register for iGrafx iNNOVATE, our virtual webinar series on Business Transformation, Continuity & Resiliency. Andrew Pfeiffer, Manager of the BPM Center of Excellence at Cox Communication will discuss working cross-functionally to achieve unparalleled customer experiences and longevity in your digital transformation projects. Sign up now!

Register Now

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Levels of Perspective: The Customer Journey Map

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Hello everyone!!! I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. It is now time for Part 3 of Perspective 2 – The Customer.

In this post we will focus on one technique I leverage to determine the desired customer experience. Up to this point we have discussed what customer experience is, why a focus on the customer is critical for success and how to approach the customer experience desired. Now that we have discussed the fundamentals it is time to move forward with putting it all together. Also remember, at the end of the month I will be posting Episode 2 of Dojo Talk where I will have a special guest who is an expert in this topic speak to us about what they have learned working within different organizations.

Based on my experience here is my approach to creating a customer journey map. I am sure there are many ways to approach creating a customer journey map, but I am going to share the way I approach doing this work.

Step 1: Scope – it is important to understand what exactly will be focused on from a customer experience perspective. When I speak of scope I speak of the following:

  1. Who are you customers?
  2. Market segments
  3. What is the product/service under analysis?
  4. What are the business goals?
  5. How do your customers interact with the product/service?

Step 2: Persona – now it is time to create your persona. A persona represents the customer. The customer has direct interaction with your product or service. There could be 1 or multiple product groups represented in a persona. The personal represents many different attributes of the customer or customer group such as: location, gender, age, educational background, interests, hobbies, job titles, and more.

Step 3: Stages – now it is time to determine the different stages a customer encounters in the journey. As you move through the stages you want to identify the customer experiences that could be positive, negative, and somewhere in the middle, as well as what the customer expects should occur during the process. The stages are the main areas the customer travels through the journey.

For example, many individuals order items online through different stores. If, your product/service was the platform to allow online ordering the stages you may be consider would be as follows:

  • Stage 1: Motivation – customer has a need to order an item online.
    • Customer Experience – customer has a need and is excited to get this need fulfilled through the platform.
    • Customer Expectation – ease of accessing the online platform to review and order a product.
  • Stage 2: Browses Online Webpage – customer decides to browse the online product list.
    • Customer Experience – Customer has a great experience browsing and finding products to meet their needs; however, the return of results of searches can be slow intermittently. This has resulted in customer frustration.
    • Customer Expectation – can easily, and quickly, find products that match their needs. In addition, search results are returned quickly.
  • Stage 3: Analyze Products – customer reviews the product details.
    • Customer Experience – customer is able to review some products with detail product information to make an informed decision, while there are some products that do not have sufficient detail. This experience has resulted in some frustrations, and online abandonment to the site.
    • Customer Expectation – customer has enough information to make an informed decision on the best product to purchase.
  • Stage 4: Pays for Product – customer can pay for the product.
    • Customer Experience – customer can pay for products easily.
    • Customer Expectation – customer has different options to make payments with ease. However, there is no option to pay by certain credit cards, nor is there any online help available.

Here is a customer journey map sample of the online order example above.

Step 4: Analyze the Data – Now that you have created your customer journey map it’s time to analyze the data captured. Where there are negative feelings by the customer, those should be reviewed and addressed as soon as possible. The areas occurring well should continue, but you may want to see if there are options to optimize them if possible.

It is important to understand that this is not an exercise done once and never reviewed again. The customer journey should be revisited at a set frequency as well. As new products/services are added the customer experience may change.

Internal Team Experience

I do want to take a moment to discuss the internal team member experience as well. Let us not forget that based on the business model there are internal team members who drive the engine to deliver product/services to customers. A positive customer experience is needed, however, there needs to be a balance on how the processes internally work to deliver that customer experience. If the internal processes are too cumbersome, the quality of delivery can diminish; and quickly depending on the process. It is imperative to talk to team members to obtain their feedback on the process. If the processes are 100% automated, ensure the processes are as streamlined, and efficient. I have had the opportunity to be part of many projects in my career where I have this balance being off. The result is a great customer experience turned horrible over time, due to unstable internal processes. Don’t forsake one for the other but find balance between the two.

BONUS:

I have a friend, and dear colleague by the name of Robert Thacker who approaches Customer Journey Mapping a little bit differently. I wanted to take a moment to share this deeper perspective.

Robert explains that it is important to understand the internal business processes that deliver the customer experience. Below is a sample journey map created in iGrafx. You will notice that more than just a diagram, on the left you find the journeys relationship information to specific moments, touch points, internal processes, capabilities, and other parts of our business architecture.

This allows you to not only capture the customer experience but have a fuller sense of what is driving that experience, either for good or bad. So, the process and all its components are considered into the customer journey to understand what is currently driving the experience. From here you can determine what may need to change to get to the desired customer experience outcome. This is quite brilliant to me. 😊

Robert works for iGrafx which specializes in helping provide more business-critical data and understanding to your processes. The capability of the software allows you to get a deeper understanding of the customer journey. Please know this not a sales pitch for iGrafx, but more an appreciation on how a tool can help you in a deeper way of thinking based on the capabilities provided. As you can see above, this journey is aligned to specific corporate or departmental strategies and goals, is being measured for performance, has key stakeholders, and specific capabilities that are required to make it successful.

The below picture represents that same customer journey as laid out in a storyboard. This level of visibility overlays the customer journey with the phases of the customer will pass through as they interact with our company. It also clearly defines the internal processes they intersect with and the relationships to other components of our business model.

Thank you, Robert, for sharing your expertise and experience and allowing me to look at customer journey from a different perspective.

So, as you can see understanding the customer, the desired customer experience, and the current customer journey is very critical. It helps to determine how services should be delivered based on the customer needs. It also gives insight into a process that may need to be tweaked to ensure the desired customer experience is executed.

I hope you have learned different approaches to creating a customer journey. Thank you again, Robert Thacker, for providing the information and graphics to demonstrate a different way to approach the customer journey.

Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel “Paula Bell, BA Martial Artist” for the next episode of Dojo Talk.

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What Can Businesses Do to Disrupt their Industry?

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A staggering 87% of companies think digital will disrupt their industry, but only 44% are prepared for this potential disruption. That’s quite a discrepancy. So, what can companies do about disruption?

Charles Araujo, Principal Analyst at Intellyx, and Ed Maddock, iGrafx CTO, recently sat down to discuss this very topic, and asked specifically what businesses can do to disrupt their industry.

Charles began the conversation be explaining why organizations must focus on the customer. The trick though, is understanding how to do this, and what it means. It is not about what the customer tells you necessarily, but instead companies must be able to put themselves in their customer’s shoes and decide how to transform their world to give them what they are missing. He goes on to explain that this shift is disruptive innovation and uses two kinds of thinking: systems thinking, or seeing how everything is connected and why process is important, and design ability, which is seeing the world from your customer’s perspective. If organizations master these two things, they can drive disruption and prevent being disrupted.

Ed expanded on the topic and explained that the key from his perspective is being able to effectively change and being nimble in today’s environment. Whether it’s protecting your company from disruption or taking advantage of the opportunity to be a disrupter, if an organization can’t execute quickly, they will not be successful. He explains that this is why you must have the structure and framework in place to be able to not only change, but to also understand the impact of the change.

You can hear the entire conversation below!

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Why Transformation Requires a Process-First Mentality

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Last week we wrapped up this year’s iNNOVATE conference. It was a great success and we thank everyone that attended! This year we did things a little differently and hosted a weeklong virtual event to discuss the future of transformation. And we had transformation leaders from around the globe share their insights and best practices that they have gleaned from decades of hands-on experience.

One of the highlights was our opening keynote session, given by Charles Araujo, Principal Analyst at Intellyx. Charles discussed with our audience why transformation requires a process first mentality. He explained that many organizations are drawn to putting a fresh coat of paint over existing processes and calling it transformation – which leads them down the wrong path. The session was very highly attended and praised. Luckily if you missed out, you can still see Charles’ presentation here. Download the recording to hear Charles answer key questions such as:

  • Is there a relationship between process management and digital transformation?
  • What are the current states of process management and digital transformation?
  • What is the impact of transformation and process management integration?
  • What are the drivers of positive impact and the essential enablers to an effective integration?

Download the entire webinar now to see why a process-first mentality is a must for successful transformation!

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A Complete Guide to Business Continuity & Resiliency

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It is hard enough to deal with the very personal challenges presented the global pandemic…  How do I stay safe and healthy so I can continue to care for my family?  Summer’s here, school’s out, so what are my small children going to do while I’m on Zoom calls all day?  Will my company lay me off or furlough me?  The list of personal worries is endless.

Business challenges can be just as difficult and are often just as personal.  As leaders, we have to wrestle with the difficult layoff/furlough questions from the other side.  Untold hours are spent in Excel spreadsheets modeling variables like shifting revenue forecasts, possible PPP loans, supply chain effects on production levels, predicted recovery curves and safety concerns for employees.  And there is no crystal ball.

I consider myself incredibly lucky from a business perspective because I work for a company that can immediately help other businesses survive our current situation and thrive when we emerge.  From the smallest shops to the largest global enterprises.

The platform is like an all-inclusive Excel spreadsheet to model entire business operations – not just abstracted numbers.  It’s what 451 Research calls an STP (strategic transformation platform), and it enables business leaders to capture every single step of every single operational process and then create models to anticipate impacts, design mitigating controls, automate resolution and measure against key performance indicators.  Everyone in the company can see the processes (no more reliance on tribal knowledge), customer touchpoints can be bolstered, and when the time of CV19 has passed, all of this info can be used to move more quickly down the road to the promised land of “digital transformation.”

Over the last two months, we have created and shared a tremendous quantity and variety of resources designed to help business with business continuity and resiliency challenges.

Articles:

Webinars (recorded and available on demand):

A Handbook:

A Free Online Assessment to Gauge Your Preparedness:

A Complete Engagement Including Professional Services and Tailored BC&R Content:

We wish we could provide you with an actual crystal ball for your business, but until we develop it, this is the closest tool available.

Stay safe and healthy,

Jamey

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The Future of Transformation

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It’s been a couple of weeks since this year’s iNNOVATE, our virtual conference discussing the future of transformation with industry leaders from around the world. There was a tremendous amount of insight shared from decades of experience around digital transformation, workflow automation, RPA, operational excellence, and much more. We are happy to present one of the sessions each week for those who missed out!

One of the most informative sessions was presented by Ed Maddock, iGrafx founder and CTO with over 25 years’ experience. He discussed how companies have always been looking for an edge, a leg up on the competition. There are almost limitless variables though, that can be combined into the equation that equals “better than the rest.” During the session, Ed helped viewers get the edge they needed, and discussed:

  • A complete Business Transformation overview, definition, and context
  • What the Business Transformation Platform must-haves are
  • Industry best practices and examples

Luckily, we recorded the session, and you can stream the presentation in its entirety here. We hope it gives you the foresight you need to see the future of business transformation!

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Three Simple Steps for Marketing Flexibility During Disruption

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A guest post from Shawna Boyce, Executive Director, Accounts & Operations at Launch Marketing

As the song says, “the times they are a changing.” Adopting an agile mindset and flexibility in marketing initiatives to adapt to these changes amid the current crisis will be pivotal for companies to emerge in the strongest possible position. All too often though, an assumption is made that teams and their respective members can simply act faster or easily turn things in a wholly new direction to adapt and innovate. But as entrepreneur and engineer Ray Stata notes, innovation typically only happens if an organization is truly built around agility.

“I concluded long ago that limits to innovation have less to do with technology or creativity than organizational agility. Inspired individuals can only do so much.” – Ray Stata

To help streamline your organization’s path to greater marketing flexibility and adaptation, we’ve outlined three simple steps that can get your organization positioned for innovation and growth as people struggle to find a new normal.

For a deep dive into marketing strategies and tactics during turbulent times, download Launch Marketing’s B2B Crisis Marketing Toolkit.

Ensure an Agile-enabled Foundation

The first step an organization should take to support flexible and agile approaches is to demonstrate organizational stability. This may seem like an aspirational and inexact concept, but it is an important one. To move fluidly and adapt to changing situations, team members need to work from a solid foundation that fosters security and confidence; an atmosphere and culture that promotes psychological safety. These are environments where team members can calmly and quickly respond to issues and opportunities with ease as they arise.

A strong sense of focus also supports this direction. While creativity is beneficial, alignment on the primary goals the team should collectively work towards remains critical. Having a shared direction and purpose as conditions rapidly change is necessary to mitigate distractions. Further, each individual should have clarity on their responsibilities and how they contribute to the whole. Regular check-ins to ensure this understanding and alignment will build stronger connections and buy-in.

Seeing these directives through promotes feelings of accomplishment and control in situations that otherwise feel dysfunctional and unpredictable.

Assess and Adjust Messaging and Positioning Consistently

While most plans allow room for small disruptions, none were formed with the current and unprecedented level of disruption in mind. As a result, virtually every business has had to enact swift and sudden changes. Naturally, levels of success have varied as some have replaced swift with hasty.

These are highly fluid times, and business plans and messaging must be monitored and modified as needed to meet them. Revisit company messaging and positioning in a deliberate manner and from multiple perspectives. Get ideas and inputs from team members and, where possible, from customer prospects and customers by exploring questions such as:

  • Can our product or service address challenges borne out of the current circumstances? (e.g., Does our product or service make working remote easier or more secure?)
  • Do the value proposition points we currently emphasize need modification to better reflect current priorities?
  • Is the messaging we have in place relevant and does it carry the right level of compassion?
  • Are there offers, discounts, promotions, or purchase term adjustments that would potentially convert more opportunities?

Again, it is imperative that leaders demonstrate flexibility and ask their team to do the same. Regularly reassess changes to market conditions and customer challenges and adjust messaging, offerings, and tactics accordingly. Formally dedicate time to this ongoing assessment and do not expect that it will simply happen organically.

Embrace Digital Communication in New Ways

The absence of in-person events and shifting availabilities make the ability to connect with audiences via digital channels more important now than ever. If you’ve not yet fully embraced digital engagement, now is the time.

  • Webinars – With the cascade of conference and event cancellations we’ve all seen, brands can still use webinars and virtual events as a way to connect with key audiences. And because webinars can be recorded, they create a mechanism for ongoing lead generation. NOTE: Consider shorter webinars (e.g., 20-30 minutes) to make it easier for attendees to participate.
  • Email – While brands shouldn’t look for ways to simply send more emails, they should assess whether there is information that would be valuable for their audiences to receive in this medium. It is also important to determine whether any automated or already queued emails need adjustments. An eMarketer study found the ROI of B2B email to be 122% and most marketers still cite email as their most effective revenue generation channel.
  • Feedback Loops, FAQs, and Chat – Establish convenient channels or forums where prospects and customers can ask questions and get answers on their own terms. If these channels aren’t in place today, consider implementing them and, at the very least, remind audiences of the information paths currently available. Zoom is an example of one of many brands who are taking meaningful steps during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure their audiences remain informed in a way that is thoughtful while still showcasing their solutions.

Flexibility for the Future

As we’ve shared, most business and marketing strategies were not conceived with disruptors like the coronavirus even remotely in mind. But responding to the business challenges the pandemic has wrought is something that business leaders are well-suited to help address. A deliberate review and reassessment of your organization across these elements, within the context of this temporary new normal, is a helpful construct to ensure your business remains agile throughout this crisis and beyond.

Need more marketing support and resources? Visit the COVID-19 Marketing & Strategy Resources Center for up-to-date marketing blogs, toolkits and more.

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iGrafx Brings Digital Workforce Integration to Blue Prism

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We have some exciting news to share here at iGrafx! We have officially joined the Blue Prism Technology Alliance Program (TAP). This partnership provides the necessary transparency for successful change management and delivers a way to ensure digital workforce compliance and resiliency.

“The combination of iGrafx and Blue Prism provides enterprises a much deeper understanding of how their digital workforce is utilized,” said Mark Bednarski, VP product management at iGrafx.  The integration between Blue Prism’s Robotic Process Automation solution and the iGrafx Business Transformation Platform will give organizations visibility into where RPA bots are being utilized in the context of the enterprise’s business architecture.

There are many unique benefits to this partnership including a virtual “HR Department” for digital workforces, key insights such as the impact of business model changes to your digital workforce, and much more. You can read about all the benefits and the details of the partnership in our latest press release here.

We look forward to partnering with Blue Prism to help companies ensure resiliency and business continuity!

The post iGrafx Brings Digital Workforce Integration to Blue Prism appeared first on iGrafx.





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