Use our business process maturity model to measure progress Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Business Process Management focuses on how the enterprise operates and delivers the results, i.e., products and services to external and internal customers.

A business process maturity model is a structured framework to assess your organization’s level of maturity in managing and optimizing business processes. It helps you to understand the current state of BPM maturity and defines a roadmap for progression. To improve your BPM practice in a controlled way, Bizzdesign has developed an out-of-the-box business process maturity model that provides a roadmap to evaluate your current BPM practices, identify areas for improvement, and guide your journey towards higher maturity levels.

There are many different maturity models available for use today. The Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) from the Object Management Group (www.omg.org) is a maturity model often used within the BPM community. Although this is a useful and rich framework, many organizations choose not to use it due to its richness, complexity and appraisal methodology.

Based on customer input and our heritage spanning over 23 years in enterprise architecture and business process management, Bizzdesign has created an easy-to-use business process maturity model to help mature your business processes.

Why do you need to leverage our process maturity model?

1. Evaluation of current state: Use our maturity model to identify current BPM practices and identify strengths and weaknesses. Our model provides a structured approach to evaluate process maturity across various dimensions, such as process documentation, process measurement, process improvement, and process governance.
2. Process improvement focus: The maturity model emphasizes process improvement by providing guidelines and best practices for process optimization, standardization, and automation.
3. Resource allocation and prioritization: The model provides a structured way to identify critical areas that need immediate attention and investment. You can prioritize initiatives and allocate resources effectively by aligning your BPM efforts with the maturity model.

READ: 5 Steps to optimize business process models

Bizzdesign’s business process maturity model: start here

You can access our maturity model in Bizzdesign Horizzon. We’ve defined easy-to-use templates and easily accessible web-based assessments to score processes on the criteria in the maturity model. The model is designed to fit custom needs and can be easily tweaked for your purposes.

DOWNLOAD Score your organization’s processes against our defined criteria 

Preview: What can you expect from our maturity process model?

Important to note about our maturity model is that you can’t progress to a higher level if you’re still not compliant with the criteria from the underlying levels (e.g. if a process is on level 3 but the RACI of the process is missing, then it is considered to be at level 1). See the image below.

After assessing the processes, the results can be used to create heatmaps on process architecture overviews. Heatmaps provide business leaders with insights into the maturity of the different processes. They help you answer the following: Are we spending our improvement efforts on our key capabilities or optimizing the capabilities that don’t give us a competitive edge?

Alternatively, leverage the data from the assessed criteria in one of the predefined dashboards Bizzdesign ships with our out-of-the-box Business Process Management solution. The dashboard helps in gaining a detailed insight into the overall status of the process maturity effort of an enterprise, as well as on what actions to take to mature individual processes are given with this dashboard.

So if you are looking for an easy way to start maturing your business process management efforts, using a maturity model can be a good tool to support this. The maturity model presented here is simple and easy to implement but still detailed enough to provide concrete actions. So start maturing those processes today!

About the author:

Joost Niehof

Product Manager and BPM expert at Bizzdesign

Joost is both a seasoned enterprise and a process architect. He’s worked as a trainer and consultant and is currently Bizzdesign’s Product Manager for business process management solutions. He’s passionate about bringing enterprise architecture and business process management together and supporting enterprise architecture management teams to create a holistic approach to both disciplines.

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5 Process models examples (and benefits!) Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Topic: Business process management focuses on how the enterprise operates and delivers the results i.e. products and services to external and internal customers.

Process models represent an abstract view of a business process and serve as a blueprint for implementing or improving it. A process model describes how the process works, what steps are involved, and how those steps are performed. Process models can be designed in business process management software or enterprise architecture platforms.

We advise and promote designing business processes on an enterprise architecture platform, such as Bizzdesign Horizzon, because it helps you to design and execute transformations effectively. The benefits of this are described below.

Benefits of business process models (and examples)

1. Transparency
   Process models help everyone to understand which processes exist in an organization and to show who is responsible and accountable for which activities. It also helps employees to understand the bigger picture better and how their work influences the outcomes and the work of others.

   (figure 1) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

2. Standardization
   In large organizations, multiple teams may be doing the same work. Process models can play a big role in the discovery of duplicate work. They can help facilitate discussions to standardize the processes across these teams – resulting in global standardized processes (see figure 3 below).

   (figure 2) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

   

   (figure 3) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

   

   (figure 4) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

3. Improve efficiency
   Process models include explicit business knowledge of how to do a job, and with this information, organizations can start working on improving processes. Improving the quality of the output ultimately improves your bottom line.

   (figure 5) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

4. Grow your key capabilities
   The maturity of your organization’s capabilities is based on people, technology, data and process. Establishing an enterprise-wide business process management practice greatly contributes to developing your key capabilities.

   (figure 6) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

5. Link IT to strategy
   Business processes represent how a business operates. Regardless of the operational strategy (i.e. operational excellence, customer intimacy, or product leadership), an organization’s strategy is always reflected in its business processes. Processes link your organization’s strategic goals and the technology supporting this, and IT inspires and supports the people that make processes work.

   (figure 7) Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

Last word…

We’ve designed a guided process framework solution for process teams, which includes out-of-the-box framework templates and management dashboards. With our solution, process teams design and manage a structured process architecture aligned with the enterprise’s strategic business goals.

So we’re giving process teams the tools for process modeling: to create, edit, and manage process models at various levels of detail, but aligned with enterprise architecture so they can get insights on the complete enterprise model to execute transformation initiatives effectively.

In a nutshell, with our Business Process Management out-of-the-box solution, it’s possible to:

• Execute high-quality process framework deliverables
• Communicate multi-level processes
• Ensure review and approval processes
• Discover and identify new processes
• Raise business process management maturity

If you want to learn more, please contact us for a demo.

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Fundamentals of Business Process Management Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

The fundamentals of business process management often start with business process models. Business process management practitioners face many challenges, among others, managing their process models in a structured way. Some practitioners struggle with process models that are hard to maintain and manage and views that don’t give a transparent view of the enterprise.

Business process models are a powerful means to describe, analyze and communicate processes. Putting effort into the design and how you document and publish your models is key to success.

How can you optimally use business process models?

1. Determine the objective
   Making process models is never an objective in itself. Process models contribute to achieving an objective. For example, process models enable you to compare alternative process flows to shorten the production time of, for example, bikes. What is it that you need to achieve? In this blog, I use the example of the fictitious organization ‘BizzCorp’ which works with numerous long-term projects. The main objective for BizzCorp would be: to use process models to reduce the time it takes to onboard employees. Their secondary objective is facilitating projects by using the right templates and procedures while working.
2. Determine focus groups
   Who should use the process models? Put yourself in the shoes of the people in your focus groups; imagine what type of people they are and in what situations they use your process models. For example, our organization Bizz has several focus groups: project managers, project members, division management, and supporting staff of projects. Besides these groups of end users of the process models, another focus group consists of the process owners responsible for maintaining the models.
3. Describe what information is required per focus group
   Start by breaking down the required information. Creating awareness of responsibilities requires insight into tasks and roles not many in-depth descriptions of how to use an application. Make choices; too much information in one model overwhelms people. Also, check whether your focus groups validate your choices. In the example of BizzCorp, project managers request logical models of the general project processes. For them, a process model should describe what needs to be done and in what order:
       •  Who is involved in what way using RACI standards (a responsibility assignment matrix);
       •  Insight into the involved risks and controls per activity
       •  Easy accessibility of templates and proceduresSource: Bizzdesign Horizzon
4. Discover in what way the information should be presented to the focus groups 
   This can make or break your success. Focus groups have different experiences concerning ‘logical’ entrances to information or convenient publishing styles. Ask focus groups for suggestions instead of relying on your assumptions. The project managers of BizzCorp prefer using the one-stop shop in Bizzdesign Horizzon that allows them to work on their mobile devices and access process information directly and suggested templates. Adding visual analyses to the model makes checking RACI, risk and controls easy without being overwhelmed with information.Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon
5. Build landing pages 
   Now that you have established what is needed for process models to be used and how to expose them, the next step is to make it attractive for people to access the publications. Every organization has its own corporate identity. Using the company colors, heading, fonts and visualizations ensures that people ‘feel at home’, are not distracted and focus on the content. Besides using corporate identity, landing pages are another instrument to support people navigating a huge amount of information.When you use Horizzon, build a general landing page with shortcuts that lead to your focus groups’ specific landing pages. The landing pages only show the models and process information for a specific focus group. Reserve a place on the landing page for new information or models to put in the spotlight. And again, do not assume what you made is logical. Ask your focus group to review your landing pages. Brilliant ideas are more often than not a result of joint effort!Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

Making the most of process models

A well-designed structure and layout of your process models and publications make all the difference in successfully achieving your process model-related goals. Bizzdesign can help with this. Historically, Bizzdesign started as a process modeling company and to this day, we’re known for our IP on business process management.
We’ve designed a guided process framework solution for process teams, which includes out-of-the-box framework templates and management dashboards. Process teams design and manage a structured process architecture aligned with the enterprise’s strategic business goals. So we’re giving process teams the tools for process modeling: to create, edit, and manage process models at various levels of detail, but aligned with enterprise architecture so they can get insights on the complete enterprise model to execute transformation initiatives effectively.
In a nutshell, with our Business Process Management out-of-the-box solution, it’s possible to:

• Execute high-quality process framework deliverables
• Communicate multi-level processes
• Put all your process information in one place
• Discover and identify new processes
• Raise business process management maturity

DOWNLOAD: How EA and BPM integration leads to powerful business transformation

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Business process transformations and CIOs Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

CIOs are typically tasked to execute business process transformation change initiatives. Executing change is often complex because today’s large organizations have thousands of employees, processes and IT systems. An essential driver for the CIO to execute change is for the enterprise to move and change direction as one entity, and this is where enterprise architecture plays a key role.

A change in one department may impact different parts of the organization. For example, deciding to deliver a service via an app instead of at a physical location will impact people, processes and IT systems. With Enterprise Architecture, the impact of change becomes known, and it becomes possible for the office of the CIOs to design scenarios for the future and plan and implement changes.

Bizzdesign Horizzon provides the CIO with impactful insights 

Business process transformation and enterprise architecture

The enterprise architecture practice is ideally suited to support the CIO’s office to execute business process transformations because their scope is much broader than IT. This practice is increasingly concerned with business issues and is given joint responsibility for ensuring that C-level management achieves the organization’s business goals.

To help them get impactful and data-driven insights that could assist C-level management in making the right decisions, they use a modern enterprise architecture platform such as Bizzdesign Horizzon.

Bizzdesign Horizzon is unique in that it’s a shared workbench for all architects (not only enterprise architects) to share critical business insights. For example, Solution Architects collaborate smarter by speeding up their design work and aligning with CISOs and security architects around a Zero Trust Architecture , and process owners and (business) architects easily maintain processes and publish and execute insights fast. All architects are aligned and connected to the big-picture enterprise architecture backbone to give C-level executives the insights they need to successfully execute change initiatives, such as in-control and secure (digital, cloud, organizational) transformations.

Visit our dedicated Content Hub for the office of the CIO for more insights and expert guidance or contact us if you’d like more information.

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The power of using EA to optimize BPM Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Business process management (BPM) and ‘business processes’ are at work in our everyday lives when we order products from the Internet, buy goods from a store, or check into a hotel. The list goes on. There are many definitions of business process management on the Internet, and this discipline essentially focuses on delivering the organization’s products and services to customers (external or internal). BPM focuses on ‘how’ the organization operates.

Business processes don’t work independently. They’re related to areas like applications, risks, data, etc., and they’re aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. When business processes are well designed and function optimally, they run unnoticed. However, sometimes business processes aren’t clearly defined, effective, efficient, or well designed. When business processes go wrong, customers and employees become frustrated due to waiting times, products and services are not delivered as they should, and the organization may even lose revenue because tasks take too long.

To ensure that the organization’s strategy is accelerated, risks are minimized, and processes are optimized in the context of the larger organization, it becomes necessary to integrate Enterprise Architecture (EA) and BPM.

EA provides an integrated view of the entire enterprise – your business and technology environments – and focuses on the enterprise-wide coherence between strategy, the organization, capabilities, operations, and technology support. It also considers the position of your enterprise in its broader ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and partners. In essence, EA focuses on the ‘what’ and not the ‘how’ of the enterprise.

Combining EA and BPM is necessary to design well-defined, optimized business processes that run efficiently throughout your organization’s ecosystem.

Download: Integrate EA and BPM to Support Change and Transformations

How to integrate business process management with EA

Bizzdesign Horizzon is a modern EA and BPM software platform that helps you integrate EA and BPM. For process owners and users, Bizzdesign Horizzon offers insightful publication and easy maintenance of processes with interactive dashboards to visualize and analyze business and IT processes on aspects like cost, risk, processing times, etc.

For process designers, Bizzdesign Horizzon provides powerful modeling, analyses, and design of business processes in relation to strategic goals, applications, business rules, risks, and controls. Bizzdesign Horizzon offers multiple levels of detail, from process architecture to individual tasks using relevant modeling languages such as ArchiMate, BPMN, DMN, UML, and ERD.

Elements in these models can be related to each other (for example, a process in BPMN is supported by an application in ArchiMate and uses a business rule defined in DMN), which results in integrated modeling and analysis for EA and BPM.

The value of using Bizzdesign Horizzon is that it enables you to integrate EA and BPM to benefit from the best of both disciplines. You can perform critical analyses covering the entire space – from strategic direction via your architecture backbone to the concrete business processes underlying your strategy.

Source: Bizzdesign Horizzon

Where to from here?

Many of our customers may not know that Bizzdesign was founded over two decades ago as part of a research project to develop methods and tools for business process (re) design. Our efforts led to creating Bizzdesign Horizzon, but suffice to say, we’re experts at integrating EA and BPM. Models in Bizzdesign Horizzon are supported by best practices based on our many years of experience.

READ: Fundamentals of business process management

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5 Steps to Optimally Use Your Process Models Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Process models are a powerful means to describe, analyze and communicate processes. However, process models are often outdated and underused. The reasons for this differ. Sometimes it seems that people are unable to read and understand models; people do not know the models are available; or content is unrecognized or outdated. Putting effort into the design and the way you publish your models is key to success in handling these issues. This way, the effect of process models can be optimized! So how can you optimally use your process models? In this blog I present five simple steps that help BPM practitioners to realize this.

1. Determine the objective

Making process models is never an objective in itself. Process models contribute to achieving an objective. For example, process models enable you to compare alternative process flows in order to shorten the production time of say, bikes. What is it that you need to achieve? In this blog I use the example of the fictitious organization ‘ABC’ that works with numerous long-term projects. The main objective for ABC would be: using process models to improve collaboration between projects. Their secondary objective is that projects are facilitated by using the right templates and procedures while working.

2. Determine focus groups

Who should use the process models? Put yourself in the shoes of the people in your focus groups; imagine what type of people they are and in what situations they use your process models. For example, our organization ABC has several focus groups: project managers, project members, division management and supporting staff of projects. Besides these groups of end users of the process models, another focus group consists of the process managers responsible for maintaining the models.

3. Describe what information is required per focus group

Start by breaking down the required bits of information you need to bring to the fore. Obviously, creating awareness of responsibilities requires insight into tasks and roles, not so much in-depth descriptions of how to use an application. Make choices; too much information in one model overwhelms people. Also, check whether the choices you made are validated by your focus groups. In the example of ABC, project managers request logical models of the general project processes. For them, a process model should describe:

what needs to be done, in what order;

• who is involved in what way using RACI standards (a responsibility assignment matrix);
• insight into the involved risks and controls per activity; and
• easy accessibility of templates and procedures.

4. Discover in what way the information should be presented to the focus groups

This can make or break your success. Different focus groups have different experiences concerning ‘logical’ entrances to information or convenient styles of publishing. Ask focus groups for suggestions, instead of relying on your own assumptions. The project managers of ABC prefer the use of an interactive publishing tool (e.g. Insite Lite) that allows them to work on their mobile devices and to directly access process information and suggested templates. By adding visual analyses to the model, it is easy to check RACI, risk and controls, without being overwhelmed with information.

5. Build landing pages

Now that you have established what is needed in order for process models to be used, and how to expose them, the next step is to make it attractive for people to actually access the publications. Every organization has its own corporate identity. Using the company colors, heading, fonts and visualizations ensures that people ‘feel at home’, are not distracted and focus on the content. Besides using the corporate identity, landing pages are another instrument to support people navigating through the huge amount of information.

When you use a html report (e.g. Insite Lite), build a general landing page with shortcuts that lead to your focus groups’ specific landing pages. The specific landing pages only show the models and process information for a specific focus group. Reserve a place on the landing page for new information or models you want to put in the spot light. And again, do not assume what you made is logical. Ask your focus group to review your landing pages. Brilliant ideas are more often than not a result of joint effort!

Making the most of process models
BiZZdesign believes that these five steps can be of true benefit for the optimal exposure and use of your process models. We advise you to think of your publication as communication material. A well designed structure and layout of your process models and publications make all the difference in successfully achieving your process model-related goals!

Do you want to learn more? Feel free to contact us, we are more than happy to help you.

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Horizzon Data Governance: Getting Started with Data Policies Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

We all know that using up-to-date and correct data is crucial to support informed decisions. This is why we are introducing Data Policies in Horizzon to make it easier for you to carefully delegate responsibilities across your organization. This move will ensure high data quality, as well as support the creation and consumption of trusted analytics.

Data policies are a set of rules that help to determine who (either a user or group) can edit Data blocks associated with an object or a specific Data block. In addition, you can set update schedules to keep the data fresh. Based on the update schedules, automated data update tasks will be sent to the people that are responsible for maintaining that data. In this blog post, I will tell you more about getting started with Data policies and will also provide some insights into our future ambitions with Data policies.

Creating a Data policy

Setting up Data policies is very easy. Once the change is in effect, a model package’s menu will start featuring a new item, “Policies”. On this page you can create new and/or edit existing Data policies.

At the moment, we can specify a Data policy at two levels. On the default level you can specify editors for all Data blocks associated with an object. The second level, meanwhile, allows you to specify a Data policy per data block. Here you can add extra editors and/or remove default editors.

Now, if you want to make sure the data is refreshed regularly, what you can do is specify a Data update schedule. Setting a Data update schedule will result in a data update task for the specified editors.

To ensure that the Data policies are being applied you need to indicate whether you only want to allow specified editors to be able to edit the data or you want all contributors to be able to edit the data. This can be done on the package management page.

Stay tuned

We will keep developing on this new capability and will launch additional features in the near future. I will keep you posted on these developments in one of my next blogs. In the meantime, if you’ve got any questions about Data Policies or Data Update Tasks please let me know by dropping me an email.

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Defining requirements for Business Rules and Decisions in Business Process Modeling Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Introduction

When tasked with defining business requirements and constraints for business rules and decisions as part of designing a solution in Business Process Modeling, I often find myself asking: What is the best approach to ensure accuracy and relevance? Defining business rules during the design phase is essential in projects involving new IT solutions. However, many traditional requirements engineering methods focus primarily on IT system requirements, making them unsuitable for defining business rules requirements.

In this blog, I present a practical three-step approach for defining business requirements for business rules and decisions, with a focus on Business Process Modeling. This approach addresses three key aspects you need to consider when defining a business rule: How, Where, and What.

Step 1: How – How Should the Business Rule Work?

The first step is to gather relevant knowledge sources that help define the decision and how the business rule should operate. Sources such as policies, regulations, expert input, and best practices are key here. At this stage, it’s not necessary to describe the business rule in full detail. Instead, refer to the knowledge sources and provide a high-level overview. It’s also important to identify any legal or regulatory constraints that may apply to the rule.

Step 2: Where – Where Does the Business Rule Apply?

The next step is determining where the business rule applies, which should be defined from a business perspective. The best way to identify this requirement is by referencing Business Process Modeling, where you map out the relevant business process or activity in which the business rule applies. Business processes define the sequence of tasks that lead to a result, and business rules typically align with specific steps or sets of activities. Existing business process models, whether from within the organization or industry reference models, can be used to pinpoint where the rule fits. If such models aren’t available, you can describe the location of the rule in business terms, though this approach is less precise.

By following this approach, you can ensure that business rules and decisions are well-defined, aligned with business processes, and adequately supported by relevant knowledge sources.

Step 3 What – What information is necessary to execute the business rule?

The final step is about data. A business rule is based on a combined set of information or data elements. For example, the business rule for whether an insurance claim is accepted depends on the amount claimed and the customer’s payment behavior. Part of the set of requirements of a business rule, is to define the essential data elements that are necessary as input to the business rule. Without these data elements available, executing the business rule is impossible. Existing data dictionaries or data models can be used as starting point. In addition it can help to describe where the data should come from (e.g. which system, which department, which external party, etc.)

Next steps

In Business Process Modeling, describing these three aspects together creates a comprehensive set of requirements for the business rule. A business rule designer can then use this information as the foundation for creating a detailed design of the rule.

Additionally, this set of requirements can serve as input for executing rules within a business rules engine. In this case, a subsequent step is needed to define the technical requirements that arise from the constraints of the chosen implementation platform.

About the author:

Rob Kroese

Product Manager at Bizzdesign

Rob specializes in Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture. He has been with Bizzdesign for more than 18 years, and as a member of the Product Management team, he is working on translating strategic goals of the company towards required functionalities in our software platform. Responsible for the software platform’s overall architecture and guiding our development teams in terms of architecture design, scoping, prioritization and requirements definition.

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Process Optimization Challenges, Part 3: Using Lean Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Welcome to the last installment in this series. Today we’re taking a look at using Lean techniques as part of a process optimization initiative.

You’ve surely heard of Lean before and may have even dealt with Lean management up and close, so we’re not going to dive into its background. Instead, we’ll focus on a number of techniques and their benefits in the context explained above. This means we’re not going to touch on all existing Lean techniques, but rather exemplify some of them in an actual real-world example.

Using Lean to improve processes – a scenario

The way we’ll go about this is by following the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) improvement process, a core tool in Lean-Six Sigma activities. DMAIC gives any improvement project much needed structure, and so in our case it will help bring clarity as we navigate the imagined scenario.

1. Define

The purpose of this step is to shed light onto the issue(s) at hand, as well as the main goal, requirements and scope of the endeavor. The situation is as follows: a mainstream bank that offers a wide range of services notices that its customer service call center is voted the worst among its peers due to slow resolution times. The bank runs this area of its business in an industry-standard way so there is no initial immediate problem that stands out to them. In order to alleviate the situation, though, and improve the customer experience, management decides to investigate in more detail. This marks the start of our DMAIC process.

It is at this stage that a technique called Stakeholder analysis is used. With its help, the optimization team will be able to identify and elaborate on who the stakeholders are, how they influence the outcome. They also take note of stakeholders’ feedback. Now it comes as a surprise for the team spearheading the initiative that a majority of the employees in the Customer Support department find the hierarchy and existing processes unfit for purpose and are very eager to share their own vision for the department. Indeed, after carrying out the Stakeholder analysis, it turns out there is considerable strife among their ranks, which luckily can now be finally addressed. At the same time, the team creates a SIPOC table to maximize their understanding of the context at hand. With the process thus thoroughly defined from beginning to end, work can continue towards finding a solution.

2. Measure

During this stage, the process improvement team wants to learn all there is to know about the processes that make up the CS department’s activity. They use a Process mapping technique to create a schematic model of the process landscape, which highlights the high level of complexity of the software agents use to resolve tickets. It also makes visible things like bottlenecks and other related issues.

Then they employ a Fishbone diagram, which makes it obvious that the most widely encountered problem by staff is the range of issues they are being asked to tackle on a regular basis. According to the call center employees, the vast array of unpredictable situations created by the organization’s extensive products and services offering causes most of them to progress cases quite slowly. This is due to the fact that jumping between disparate scenarios, often involving services that are vastly

different, makes it impossible to build up an efficient cadence. Additionally, by using the Fishbone diagram during their workshops, the process improvement team learns that this is exacerbated by a lack of a repository where agents can share knowledge with one another or present interesting case studies and how they were resolved.

An example of a Fishbone diagram produced with BiZZdesign’s Horizzon platform

Apart from this workshop activity, the optimization endeavor also sees the use of a Checklist technique during actual workhours. This confirms previous accounts via actual direct observation and clarifies the incidence of negative points reported by staff. Finally, the team employs the Five times why technique during another batch of workshops to ensure they uncover any hidden underlying causes for the problems. This is a straightforward and effective way to get to the bottom of issues, and in the bank’s case it works beautifully, highlighting and solidifying candidates for improvement.

3. Analyze

The third stage of the DMAIC process is analyzing the findings in order to come up with the most effective solution. Problems often have multiple causes. So, in order to properly focus their resources on the right obstacles, the bank in our scenario decides to utilize the Root cause technique to correctly identify the elements that are critical to the success of the project.

An example of a Root Cause analysis illustration produced with BiZZdesign’s Horizzon platform

This problem analysis tool allows them to identify three core problems within the department – the vastly different nature of the tickets that agents have to deal with on any given day; the poorly integrated and all-around inefficient software platform they’re using to investigate cases for customers; and thirdly, the inadequate organization of the department, whereby, human resources are poorly allocated and processes sluggish. With a good idea of what to address, the team gets to work.

4. Improve

The fourth stage of the DMAIC process is Improve. This is where the actual solutions are brought forth and changes get implemented. The main technique used at this point is Radical design. This simply means that everyone is asked during brainstorming sessions to try and envision a mode of work that is really efficient, both for the customer as well as the CS personnel, without – and this is key – paying any thought to real-world restrictions. So, what are the solutions they reach in the end?

Firstly, there is a division of labor between agents. Effectively they gain a specialization going forward, so that they no longer have to deal with products ranging from mortgages to insurance to the mobile app, payments issues etc. In the new system, everyone has a category (or categories) of tickets assigned to them so they only deal with the cases they specialize in. This brings in a certain level of excellence, which ultimately translates into them being (and sounding, if we’re really mindful of the customers) more knowledgeable as well as solving tickets faster! Not only that, but this way they also feel less stress at work and get higher satisfaction from performing a better job.

Secondly, a repository is created where agents have the ability and are actually actively encouraged to share their knowledge, with rewards awaiting those who rise to the challenge. In addition, a schedule is created for regularly organizing workshops during which staff present case studies of interesting problems, or workarounds for known bugs and so on. This reinforces a mentality of excellence and is a good means to spot candidates for promotions, too.

Thirdly, an incentives system is put in place to encourage the CS team to be at their best every day. In this initial iteration of the system, certain cash bonuses are offered to all the agents if the level of service is kept above a certain level, and the agent with the overall highest performance receives a bonus all for themselves.

5. Control

We’ve reached the last stage in DMAIC – Control. This is a serious case of “last but not least”, since all the improvements in the world won’t make a difference, ultimately, unless they are sustained in the long term. The bank, therefore, formalizes the different specializations within CS with the help of the Human Relations department. This ensures the structure won’t disappear as soon as the present Global Head of CS leaves.

Another measure that they take is to create a quarterly meeting face-to-face between the Head of CS and the CEO, whereby updates and ongoing improvement programs are presented to the head of the company. This lends importance and legitimacy to the entire process improvement endeavor, making people it’s not a fad but an integral part of their mode of operation. In order to drive home this latter idea, a Lean technique called Day starts is implemented. This means at the start of the week, agents and managers get together to discuss ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’ of the previous week and get everyone motivated for the week ahead (yes, they are called Day starts, but most companies really prefer a weekly approach).

And lastly, online questionnaires and email follow-up programs are created as part of their new KPI (Key Performance Indicators) approach. This is so as to provide constant feedback on the CS team’s performance and help with service level assessment.

Conclusion

To sum up, Lean techniques are a valuable tool that you can employ during process optimization initiatives. The established methodology and intense focus on increased efficiency add great value to the work of a business process improvement team, therefore boosting the likelihood of success. To learn more about Lean management please download our free Lean eBook or get in touch so we can tell you about our Lean services in more detail.

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Process Optimization Challenges, Part 2: Know Your Audience Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Welcome to the second part of this series on process optimization challenges. Last time we went over the importance of simplicity in process, and more specifically how looking at the big picture when affecting change can ensure that you make a more significant improvement.

Today we’re focusing on another important aspect of process redesign and that is the people, the stakeholders that are involved in the process – or rather that you should make sure are involved if you’re in charge of the initiative. You can’t expect to deliver on your optimization promise if you aren’t well acquainted with the relevant audiences. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at these and see what you should pay attention to along the way.

Listen to Your Audiences

The first of the groups that you need to listen to are customers. Their feedback is crucial in determining the direction of a process optimization initiative, so tap into any recommendations/complaints repository you may have at hand. If that doesn’t exist, go ahead and run a poll. It’s not extreme to ask the people who pay for the lights to stay on what they think of your services and whether you could do a better job. It shows you care. It’s precisely targeted, insightful advice that’s also invaluable in prioritizing initiatives or getting buy-in from different actors within the organization. It’s ideal, really. So don’t push it aside as frivolous exercise, you will undoubtedly find some gems among the cynical remarks.

The second group of stakeholders that needs to have their say are the actual staff that directly run the process. These are the people on the ground, so to speak, and they are intimately acquainted with the innerworkings of how value is delivered. As such, these employees are most likely full of useful practical insights and advice on how to make things better. Value their feedback for the treasure trove that it actually is and leverage it because what they have to offer is the equivalent of thousands of hours of real-life quality testing.

Throughout their time in the role, these stakeholders will have seen the process in so many unpredictable circumstances (and will have made it work, somehow) that you could hardly ask for a more knowledgeable crowd. Be careful, though, often times the problem as stated by them at first is actually just a symptom. Or a link in a chain that goes further up the value stream, and up the chain of command too. Follow this in order to get to the root cause and then you might actually help them more than just focusing on the very visible things they pointed out to you in the beginning (for more information on this last bit, check out Part 1 of this series). Also, keep in mind, this is the group that will carry out the process going forward. So, it only makes sense to ensure they’re buying into this redesign initiative and its results.

Finally, what is management’s take on the problem? It would be prudent to have a high-ranking executive take part in the optimization process because certain high-level directives may actually shed much needed light onto the situation. For instance, you may learn of strategic plans being formulated that would actually give a big boost to one of the options you were considering for simplifying a certain stage in the value delivery process. Or indeed that the company will be moving away from a certain service, which spells doom for a solution that you had on the radar – back to the drawing board, then.

To further support management decision making, you may also want to measure aspects of your process, and not just rely on people’s opinions. For instance, in industrial production processes they extensively measure things like defects and rework. It’s potentially contentious though – people don’t like being measured – and it may smell like Taylorism, but having some facts is helpful. Of course, the customer feedback we mentioned above is also a form of measurement but that may be influenced by their general happiness, the weather, and other extraneous factors.

Engaging with Everyone to Find the Truth – a scenario

Now let’s tie everything in with a simplified real-world example. Consider a mainstream bank. Their app provides a poor user experience – slow, lacking in functionality etc. Other high street banks fair a little better but newer fintech companies really outclass them. Now, the indisputable fact is that people like and want to have their bank in their pocket. And when we say ‘bank’ that encompasses salary, overdraft services, currency exchange, possibly insurance, mortgage, cryptocurrency – the whole range of services. Nowadays customers want it all and they want it beautifully delivered.

The first step in tackling the problem is to see what the customers are saying. What aspects do they mostly complain about? Well, it turns out the items that are most often mentioned are the ability to produce e-statements on the go in order to prove their ID/address to other companies, and accessing great rates for currency exchange. The predominantly young audience who mostly uses their app is moving home a lot, trying out new services, and traveling abroad a few times a year, so the two issues they’re highlighting disproportionately affect their lives. At the moment, there is no way to produce an official eStatement on the spot and exchanging money involves a laborious process on the website, followed by an actual envelope holding the cash being sent to a desired address. Overall, the experience is unwieldy and outdated.

Interestingly, when consulting with the customer support team, these issues don’t come up almost at all – clients are mostly after general information. In a way it makes sense – if the functionality isn’t there, it’s unlikely people will have questions about it. A blessing? Well, actually the opposite. The poor experience compounded over time makes customers very ‘trigger-happy’ so when they learn of a new fintech product that, say, provides an easy answer to all their woes they’re all too eager to migrate. There are a number of (primarily) currency exchange companies whose customer bases number in the millions only a few years after launch. Surely the big banks’ hundred-year early start would have made them a prime candidate for coming up similar services first? You’d think so, but history shows otherwise. So, after consulting with the CS team the main headline is the need for a self-service desk to take low-priority miscellaneous tasks off agents’ plate.

Last but not least, consultations with management reveal that a major strategic component of their plan forward is getting in touch with the 18-34 audience and doing a better job of catering to their needs. This is good news because under the umbrella of this plan, new processes can be developed to tackle the problems highlighted by customers. This will eventually lead to entirely retiring, for example, the currency exchange process. It will be transformed from a slow analog experience to something that takes place exclusively within the app. This way, young customers get what they were looking for, they feel more of a connection with their bank, and the result is management’s desire to get closer to that market segment is ticked off as well. Naturally, prioritizing means that some aspects (such as what the employees mentioned) will be addressed later on. Still, this a good start towards streamlining the process landscape and making sure it actually delivers for customers while also consolidating the organization’s future.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in optimizing a process landscape you need to be keenly aware of the relevant stakeholder groups and the ways in which they can help you successfully carry out the job at hand. Make certain you don’t exclude any of them. Their differing points of view come together to create a

more cohesive big picture of the process landscape and how it needs to change in order to drive things forward. Thanks for making it to the end. For a more in-depth look at the topic, download our free eBook, Thinking in Processes. See you next week for Part 3!

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Process Optimization Challenges, Part 1: Tackle the Root Cause Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Excessive complexity is something that most organizations over a certain size have to deal with. The more successful you are, the bigger the enterprise gets, and the farther removed it gradually becomes from the original core tenets that probably made it successful in the first place. So how does this hurt a company? Well, if we’re talking about the IT estate, erratic expansion and the resulting unmanaged complexity makes its presence felt in the form of higher IT management costs, increased risk, and a slow rate of innovation.

On the process side, which is what we’re interested in in this instance, the most common problems are the existence of bottlenecks, a weak level of systems integration, lack of actionable business intelligence, duplication and, of course, the emergence of silos. An organization that suffers from these symptoms can’t be successful in the long term, or at the very least it can’t reasonably expect to continue growing. When it comes to business processes, usability is what drives adoptability, and the single biggest variable in achieving usability is simplicity. So, as processes straggle farther and farther away from the principle of simplicity, they become increasingly more prone to being ignored or ‘customized’ by staff, which opens the door to all manner of risk (think breaking regulatory compliance terms etc.). That’s when you know you need to redesign your process landscape.

Think of the Big Picture

However, one of them main issues when trying to turn the ship around – process-wise – is that stakeholders tend to focus their attention on details, on the potentially very idiosyncratic realities that you find at the tail end of a process. Say you’re working with a process owner in an organization who suffers from overly complex processes. As you’re trying to understand a process and the context in which it exists, it’s very likely that you’ll learn all about the many paths it can follow depending on whether certain events come to pass or not, exceptions – so what you get in the end is a large diagram with a whole bunch of logical branches.

Now, it’s obviously necessary to find out about the situation on the ground, however, once you get the lay of the land it’s equally important you don’t let yourself dragged into the existing paradigm. The status quo may actually seem reasonable once you’re in the thick of it, but remember you’re here to streamline things, and that may sometimes mean giving up on re-compartmentalizing the house and instead just build it anew. This means you ought to try and fix the root of a problem, so that the time and resources you spend make a bigger impact. Why don’t you identify whether there are efficiencies to be gained further up the river, so to speak, before the situation arises where you need 7 types of behavior to deal with exceptions? Tackling things at the root makes more sense than trying to make the best of a bad situations with minimal success.

Solving the Root Problem – a scenario

Now here’s a scenario for you. Imagine you’re a global markets company running a range of products aimed at facilitating e-trading for banking clients. Your Customer Support team are regularly contacted by customers who can’t execute trades. These same clients are getting increasingly aggravated with the long resolution times and lack of a more permanent solution. So, what’s the problem?

Upon investigating things, it turns out there is a distinct team who set the parameters for trading on your platform – the Trade Enablement team. Then there’s the Customer Support team, who are the first point of contact for customers experiencing an issue. They can access data about the clients’ trading activity but, importantly, can’t change clients’ trading parameters. Actually, there’s another

team in charge of that, the Market Surveillance team. To make matters worse, the company has CS team members in all the regions where it does business as part of its 24/7 support offering but the more advanced teams only work from Singapore.

So, how does an average case get solved? As you might expect, it all starts with the CS team being contacted by a displeased trader. After carefully analyzing their account setup and their trading log, the CS agent concludes it’s probably something to do with the way the platform has been set up for this particular customer, so the issue is escalated to Market Surveillance. MS then look at the detailed logs in order to discern what exactly is happening when trades are initiated by the client. They uncover the fact that this particular bank is trying to engage in currency exchange trades of a type for which they have no clearance – nothing wrong with the system, it’s a matter of how they were onboarded and how the tool was configured!

As such, the problem is the sent to the Trade Enablement team who confirm the client is simply lacking the privileges to trade a particular currency. They reach out to Account Management, ensure this is something that was negotiated and after approval they rectify the problem, get back to CS telling them everything’s been solved, and then CS in turn go back to the client with the story and recommended steps. The problem is it all took a long time and the bank missed out on the trades they wanted to do. This is a prime example of how convoluted process (and this is by no means a hellish scenario; rather average, at best!) affects customer experience and can lose an organization business.

Now, one might be tempted to try and improve communication between these teams, or replicate the more advanced Trade Enablement and Market Surveillance teams in other regions, as well… or one could simply develop an automated system checkup that reviews customers’ trading configuration against a ‘golden record’-type registry. This would be labor-free and human error-free in the long run (apart from the initial development work) and would eliminate oh-so-many needless customer support interactions.

So that’s one thing to keep in mind during process redesign, try and determine whether there’s any way of going one level up and perhaps eliminate the problem altogether, not just deal with it better. Root cause analysis will yield good results in situations where it seems there is no end in sight – perhaps you just need to set your eyes higher up on the horizon! At Bizzdesign we understand this ethos quite well – our very roots are in process improvement! In fact, and just as a side note, in the early days of the business process re-engineering wave in the 1990’s there was a famous article called Don’t automate, obliterate by Michael Hammer. The essence of that was that just putting a messy process in a system doesn’t actually make it any better, and we subscribe to this.

Conclusion

In conclusion, simplicity matters and one way of implementing simplicity into your processes is to take a bigger picture approach to your solution delivery. Give yourself more space to maneuver – no structure or framework is off-limits, as long as you have a genuinely better replacement. Remember, processes that aren’t simple are a burden – on the employees, who may feel alienated by the extra effort; as well as on the bottom line, which gets impacted by poor efficiency and wasted investments. So, when redesigning business processes, don’t get lost in the details. Set yourself a few solid principles to act as a ‘dependable 20%’ (as in the Pareto distribution) and then carry out work along those lines – the clarity and coherence that you’ll enjoy this way will prove priceless in your endeavor.

Thank you for reading and join us again next week for Part 2 of this series on overcoming process optimization challenges!

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Turn the Ship Around – Break Free from the Shackles of the Present Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Background

Across the globe, Enterprise Architecture teams deliver three key organizational functions. Firstly, they provide understanding of their current organization; this enables the organization to effectively control and regulate its existing operating model. Secondly, those teams provide a window into the organization’s potential, insight into where value can be found and unlocked, and an insight into the future. Thirdly, EA teams drive, enable and support the iterative improvement of this direction setting insight, and with that they translate strategy into reality, creating real business value.

However, in many cases, they find themselves locked in the present, unable to drive either the vision or the change required to get there, and in some cases even struggling to simply control/regulate the organization as it currently stands.

Why

There are many factors that contribute to a steadfast focus on the present. These include:

• Training and philosophy. Many Architects and Analysts are trained in the deep assessment of the present. This leads them to over-analyze the present, iron out risk and carefully plan the future. The result is a tendency for information bias, in other words a focus on the present where too much information is gathered, which becomes outdated before it is useful. The investment in mapping existing processes, systems and technologies can be huge and time consuming.
• Pragmatism. This information bias further manifests itself as a lack of real-world experience. By the time the planning has been completed, the team could have taken pragmatic steps to test out their theories in the real-world, which may have delivered immediate value. The tension is apparent in many organizations, with agile teams promoting minimal planning and maximal value delivery, but resulting in increasing technical debt and uncoordinated activity when applied at scale; on the opposite end of the spectrum, EA teams can be risk averse, seeing technical debt as such a high crime that change becomes stagnant.
• Entrepreneurship. Although many EA teams see themselves as a vanguard for busting organizational silos, many become insular and act as a silo themselves. Those teams lack the spirit of internal sales, promoting their wares and challenging how they can best focus their resources to deliver maximum organizational value. Sure, EA products can be useful – but they need a salesperson to promote their use and embed those products within the organizational governance and decision making processes. This requires someone able to create noise, excitement, take risks and promote a new way of working.

Opportunity

Although there is value in a book-keeping approach to Enterprise Architecture, the full potential remains unlocked. For those organizations that are locked in a current-state mapping mindset, they should challenge whether they are missing out on influencing and driving their organizations through periods of significant change. This might be change due to demands in their market, opportunities for mergers or acquisitions, data analytics, or digital transformation. If your organization is undergoing significant change and the EA team is not involved, you should question why.

Unlocking potential

Although we have advocated a significantly different approach to Enterprise Architecture, one of pragmatism, risk taking and entrepreneurship, you do not have to take an overnight shift in your activities. There are small but significant activities that can change your mode of operations. In “Turn the Ship Around”, David Marquet describes the key changes in mindset that are needed to break free from a restrictive and sub-optimal mode of operation. There are many parallels we can draw with the operation of Enterprise Architecture teams. Here are some of the key activities and fundamental changes in mindset we advocate.

Key Activities

1. Answer a business question. Your work should provide an answer, or at least insight, into a business challenge. This insight should demonstrate where there is untapped value (i.e. the gold in a mine) and how it can be extracted through change.
2. Creating a drum beat. With modeling activity, it is easy to become relaxed about when and how value will be delivered. Mapping what you have is a never-ending task. Your first step should be to create a regular rhythm of activity, challenging what is delivered within a time frame. The rhythm of activity and delivery can be aligned with existing change initiatives, which forces you to think about the business question.
3. Promote your work. Simply producing insights by itself is not enough. You need to shout from the treetops about where the value lies. A visualization will not sell itself without a narrative. Keep in mind, the clearer your message (what you solve), the easier to promote.
4. Carve out an evangelist role. The team needs an evangelist, someone who goes out of their way to promote, sell, undertake road trips and spend time with stakeholders.
5. Start small and grow. Grand conceptual visions rarely gain traction. Start small, show value and grow. The ‘just enough architecture’ principle can ensure that the time-to-value is as short as possible.
6. Start a conversation. Don’t fear providing material that is not perfect, create ways to engage stakeholders and challenge their thinking. Create material that will trigger a discussion and use this to iterate and improve. Keep in mind here to speak the language of your audience. In other words, use other visualizations when necessary. The end justifies the means.

Summary

Within BiZZdesign, our CSO team are there to help you create new material and help you excite and engage your organization. Feel free to start a conversation with us about how to start the conversations you want to be having.

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A Leading EA Tool Comes with Extras Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

The recent release of the annual Gartner MQ Report for Enterprise Architecture Tools provided all of us here at Bizzdesign with a very pleasant piece of news. For the fourth year in a row we were acknowledged as a Leader, and for the second time the vendor with the highest Ability to Execute score.

That’s basically a company’s ability to deliver on the promised outcomes – in other words, to guarantee clients’ success both now and in the future. Naturally, we’re very proud of this achievement. Staying ahead of the pack is something that we conscientiously strive to achieve anyway, but having that outside recognition tells us we’re going about it in a way that is recognizable to others.

The EA Tool – Central, Not Singular

It’s also noteworthy because – and we’re not sure how many people realize this – the MQ report is not an assessment of an organization’s product offering; or rather, that’s only a small piece of it. The Magic Quadrant takes into account the entire organization – its way of doing business, its relations with customers, research and development, the ability to provide adequate levels of customer support etc. All these other competencies that come into play if your business change initiative is to be successful. This second aspect triggered an interesting thought in our minds, which is that an enterprise architecture initiative’s success depends on more than how capable the EA management suite is.

Sure, that’s the most visible variable, but it too exists within a landscape of factors, each of which contribute significantly towards the desired outcome. Just think of your vehicle. It may seem like all it needs to run is gasoline but try and drive your family’s car around without changing the coolant, engine oil, or the windshield washer fluid and you’re probably not going to get very far.

Therefore, should you find yourself in a situation to procure an EA tool for your organization in the future, remember that while having a mature and competent EA platform is vital, there are other aspects which you should not ignore lest you place a very low ceiling on your transformation initiative. These are the extras that a great EA tool comes with.

The Extras that Make an EA Initiative Successful

Some of the things you ought to inquire about and get clarification on during the procurement process include:

1. Expertise

Expertise is the slowly accrued proficiency that comes from performing at the very top of a certain field for a long time. How many organizations in the marketplace do you think are providing expert advice? Deliver expert consultancy services – especially if you consider domain expertise? Common sense dictates that only a minority, which means that yet again this is a topic that ought to be openly investigated during the scouting and procurement process.

In order to understand what you are dealing with and make a fact-based decision, you and your team ought to inquire about the sort of approach that the vendor responding to your RFP has for long-term customer success. Moreover, credentials should be made available and possibly proof presented of the experience and impact created during past engagements. Everyone may be working in the same

field but it’s one thing to follow the latest developments in the industry and another thing altogether to lead the way forward. To maximize your probability of success, engage with people that stand out in the marketplace, they’re the ones who will be providing outstanding service and navigate you safely through the most complex transformations.

2. Security

Ask yourself – what kind of security practice is this potential business partner of ours running? Do they have rules and guidelines in place in order to ensure the utmost security of our information, and if they say they do can they bring any proof of this? These are pertinent questions and if a vendor is trying to get your business then they should be ready to answer these questions without hesitation.

After all, it seems quite clear that the oil of the 21st century will be information – well, already is if you go by companies’ valuations. When you consider that and especially when you look at the increase in the frequency and severity of corporate cyberattacks, having high standards of information security makes a lot of sense.

3. Innovation

Innovation is another area where vendors can vary wildly. In order to maintain a competitive advantage and support customers achieving their goals far into the future, EA vendors need to have a commitment to innovating their product. They must have the capabilities and processes – and desire, to begin with – to advance their offering so that it not only responds to requirements this year, but also the year after and so on.

Scoring high on innovation means taking your clients’ success seriously and it also places a fair amount of pressure on the organization to ‘build’ towards that future every day. Hallmarks of an innovative culture are the amount of resources dedicated to improving the platform; or an organizational structure that is conducive to brainstorming and bringing to market forward-looking features, functionality, methods etc.; or technology/standards bodies agreements. These can all make a legitimate topic in initial conversations with an EA vendor, which is why organizations scanning the market for the right tool should engage with prospects on the subject.

Hopefully this post brought to attention an interesting point about successful business and IT transformation, which is that having a good supporting cast of capabilities around the EA platform enables your team to deliver more value as well as better future-proof the business. If you’d like to learn more about a market-leading tool, get in touch today and we’ll tell you all about HoriZZon as well as BiZZdesign’s commitment to customer success.

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EA and BPM Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management are two change disciplines often closely associated. But how exactly do they relate to one another?

Is it even reasonable to integrate EA with BPMN, or is this just a fad? In order to have a closer look at how they interact and identify whether they actually reinforce each other to the benefit of the organization, we asked Marc Lankhorst what his thoughts on the topic were. His response touches on questions such as:

Where does Enterprise Architecture stop, and Business Process Management begin?

How do you integrate the Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management practices effectively?

When is the connection between business goals and processes (most) important?

What are the main benefits of coupling EA and BPM?

What are some examples of where this integration provides value?

Below you can see his full answer for yourself. Enjoy!

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Customer Focus From Start to Finish: Delivering Business Change that Makes a Difference Latest news from (my website): Bizzdesign

Having the right focus

The customer is the most important variable in the equation of success. Please them and you’ll do well; ignore their needs and desires, especially in this age of speed and lower emotional attachment, and you invariably go out of business. However, many business change initiatives fail because they are the result of misguided focus and motivations, usually residing on a continuum that ranges from fear to conceit. Right now, somewhere around the globe, a range of misplaced motivations are actively shaping the thought process of a company’s management team and paving the way towards yet another failed change initiative.

Instead of letting inadequate motivations influence their reasoning, C-level executives and other management ought to start from the customer. Sam Walton was right when he said there was only one boss and that was the customer. In the situation at hand, this means they should do away with all the false motivations, which are like ‘motivational middlemen’ (e.g. the competitor who may be deploying some new tech in their stores; the analyst that might’ve just come up with some new buzzword) and realize that all business motivation ultimately emanates from the customer.

End-to-end customer centricity

Out of the companies that do seek to align themselves with their target audience, only a minority actually carry out customer-centric initiatives successfully. That’s because it’s quite difficult to follow through from that focus on the customer, across the entire organizational landscape and all the way to a finished product, service, or any sort of initiative. Requirements get lost in complexity, office politics further muddy the waters, and by the end of a project, that crystal-clear focus on the customer has been lost.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, because we feel so strongly that organizations should model themselves after their audience, we’d like to give you an example of how companies could start and finish such a project successfully and without losing track of the initial objective.

Navigating a real-world business scenario with Bizzdesign HoriZZon

Let’s imagine a healthcare company. There are a number of really interesting organizations in the marketplace that have captivating propositions. Especially in the do-it-yourself category, where you don’t need to interact directly with any doctor or hospital but you usually just receive a home kit and then you’re all set – you can figure out for yourself who I’m talking about here. So let’s consider such a company that sells DNA testing kits.

The problem

The financial records show that the lifetime value of a customer is quite low when benchmarked against industry standards. By running an analysis of the trends and drivers in HoriZZon, the enterprise architecture team concludes that this is a potentially dangerous issue.

The problem stems from the fact that once a transaction is complete, i.e. the kit is bought, the samples returned, and the patient receives the results, the organization has little dealings with the customer after that. Now, despite the good margin on the service they offer, the company still has to constantly find new people to sell to. This cost of acquiring new customers is eroding profits because of the inadvertent ‘single-touch’ relationship they have with clients. Ideally, the relationship would be ongoing, with mutual exchange of value spanning into the months and years.

Faced with this problem, the executive and product development teams convene to try and find a solution. Assessing the operating model, the EA team highlights that the company’s value proposition is predicated on ‘medical novelty’. People who have a curiosity about their genetic background can buy a kit and then, provided the samples are returned without incident, they can learn their basic ancestry composition in a couple of weeks. So the ‘single-touch’ aspect is baked in the way the organization currently operates, it’s not an unintended effect – the positioning, messaging, and organizational capabilities support this discovery. Architects also emphasize how a minor change in the marketplace might have severe implications for the enterprise, bringing solid arguments in the form of SWOT, PESTEL and other scorecard-based analyses.

Turning things around

So what’s to be done? Well, in this scenario, management demonstrates business-savviness by deciding that whatever business change they’ll end up initiating, it would revolve around the customer. After several workshop sessions, they decide to ride the wellness trend and become a personalized wellness plan provider. The concept has a built-in long-term dimension, which ideally answers their challenge, but also promises to deliver great value to customers, who stand to enjoy expert health and lifestyle advice based on deeply-personal medical insights. This doesn’t mean their vision was monolithic. Nuances would change along the way as feedback would flow in from their audience.

The target market segment is made clearer with the help of the new customer journey map, which you can see further down. This can prove to be an important instrument because it can help the organization focus on a new, previously untapped segment of the marketplace. For example, by focusing on a customer portal that can track customers after the sale, the company can be less reliant on a local sales team chasing up prospects, thereby freeing up the resources needed to engage a new region.

Mind you, for the sake of concision, we’re working with a slightly more streamlined version of the process, avoiding an extensive exposition that may include things such as figuring out a generic business outcome journey, or defining all the corresponding (lifetime) customer journeys together with the supporting tech (e.g. the app as the interface, DNA analysis, AI capability to analyze the customer data).

Now, in order to be able to support this vastly increased presence in their customers’ lives, among other things the company needs to pursue an app to act as a home and central communication hub for this relationship. This is where the work of the EA team picks up. The path to success begins with a series of customer journey maps that architects create to highlight the different possible incarnations of this new way of doing business. Working on these with the help of specialists and consulting with industry best practice references allows the executive team to converge on one of the options.

So the way they want the customer to experience the company is figured out. At this point, the architecture team delves deeper into the makeup of the enterprise in order to identify the current relevant capabilities and model the future required ones. Currently the company does not have such an extensive IT stack, but that will change to support their step towards mobile. The EA team models this according to the perceived needs, conducts a gap analysis and submits a business case for the changes – many of them major – that will have to take place in order to make this plan a reality. The end-to-end report clearly describes the current situation as well as the future and intermediary states.

Delivering on a plan

With the help of Enterprise Studio, HoriZZon’s modeling environment, the team is able to effectively plan the development of the capabilities. As such, they progress quickly through modeling and optimizing the necessary infrastructure upgrades, successfully navigating the winding road of bringing new tech online while at the same time retiring or planning the retirement of duplicative/incompatible technologies. The platform’s native ArchiMate meta-model and notation support users in building clear integrated models of the organization’s business, application, and infrastructure landscapes, tying everything together to answer the overarching question – How do we provide this new service to our customers in the most seamless way?

What’s more, Horizzon adds an additional layer of utility thanks to its connectivity. This makes it capable of integrating valuable data streams from different repositories in order to create a more accurate image of the deployment process and even enrich deliverables with extra levels of information. For instance, in ensuring adequate levels of service for their mobile app, color-coded heatmaps can be employed to score components by security or latency criteria, emphasizing where the biggest problems are.

And the same goes for customer satisfaction. With feedback buttons built into the app, the company can collect feedback which can then be fed into the agile improvement process of the app itself and the entire customer journey. Furthermore, different future scenarios can be examined with the help of scenario analysis, and mitigation measures be put in places to account for unexpected changes in the marketplace and within the organization itself. For example, a change in legislation regarding people’s ability to carry out certain medical procedures on themselves at home, or to do with posting human samples.

The benefits of using HoriZZon

Throughout the entire process, the management team enjoys visibility from the top, conceptual level, where the business motivations and audience considerations live, lower to business capabilities, and then continuing all the way down to technology, processes and even individual key stakeholders. This allows them to be confident in the decisions they take and the investments they sign off on.

Similarly, the different department heads and team leaders have complete transparency as to the changes that are due to take place, and how they are about to affect the processes they take part in, the applications they own, and so on. Lastly, with their supervisors solidly in the loop, junior and operational stakeholders are the beneficiaries of clear input and guidelines. They also can experiment confidence, inclusion and high morale as they work towards a well-defined goal. This supports continued improvement and an agile way of working because it makes it possible to have a business that adapts easily to changes in the playing field. Specifically, plans can be rapidly drawn up, disseminated enterprise-wide, and executed.

Conclusion

Business change should originate with the customer. Here at Bizzdesign we specialize in creating the world’s leading business design platform. Horizzon makes it possible to create and successfully deliver a business change initiative by genuinely starting from the customer and then maintaining that focus throughout the entire change delivery process – analyzing motivations and capabilities, planning technology and process changes, implementing new data flows and running an effective enterprise risk management practice etc.

The platform offers users a clear line of sight between objectives (in this case a customer-centric project) and the actual implementation, supporting a more customer-centric business. Moreover, this closes the feedback loop that is essential in any agile, adaptive enterprise. What is often lost in big organizational transformations due to complexity – Horizzon safeguards via intelligent insights, a high level of collaboration and solid governance capabilities. Watch our product demo to learn more!

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