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Knowing all you can about customers gives you insights into how they’re using your product and how you can support them. The best-case scenario for customer intelligence is that you learn predominantly during the prospecting phase and then maintain a close relationship that allows you to continue to build your customer knowledge thereafter. When that happens, you can be strategic about developing products that you know will meet their needs, which will help you continue to sell (and upsell) while you maintain your relationship.

But the reality is that it’s difficult to understand customers and how they think. You may not always know what questions to ask, and they might not even be aware of the benefits they’re receiving (or not receiving) by using your product.

Customer journey mapping, however, can be an effective way to get inside the brains of your customers. And even better, it identifies patterns that will help you understand customer behaviors, which can help predict future actions. This will put you in a position to service the specific needs of customers throughout their entire engagement with you.

Customer journey mapping is applicable across many departments in a company because it’s an exercise that impacts so many customer-driven activities. Sales, marketing, product management, user experience (UX), and IT all benefit from insights into how customers work with their product and company. The results of mapping help you to visualize your customer’s experience from the customer’s point of view, and for all the various touch-points they have with your product and people as they seek to achieve a specific outcome.

Customer Journey Maps Deliver Key Insights

The format for a customer journey map is usually an integrated, visual representation of the customer experience. How do they use your product/service? What information and support do they need from your services and sales teams? These journey maps can take complicated information and analytics about customers and provide a unified set of data about how customers engage with your company.

The customer map is generally built from the customer’s point of view and gives vendors a powerful way to make better decisions that will benefit customers. It is a combination of behavioral data (some of which requires deeper analysis) and anecdotal feedback from customers and provides the following:

• A comprehensive understanding of a customer’s overall experience with the vendor and its product
• Identification of how impactful the vendor’s product has been in helping them address specific goals
• Awareness of potential points of frustration, or where the vendor falls short of expectations

This kind of information is hugely valuable and gives companies far better and more usable insights than the traditional tools, which usually rely on competitive analysis, sales forecasts, and general market trends.

The Dimension of Time in Customer Insights

What if you could predict how your product and service could make your customer more successful, and then use that information in your engagement? This can only be done with predictive capabilities, which is what Process Timeline was designed for.

Process Timeline enables companies to apply business process automation for creating time-aware business processes to help organizations get deeper, and more meaningful insights into customer activity. It uses machine learning to integrate information from multiple applications and data source, and then create processes that can predict actions based on behavioral norms. Applying this in the context of customer usage means that you can create a sense for how customers are using your products, how they engage with your company, and where there are gaps you might want to fill.

When the dimension of time is applied to customer journey mapping, the major advantages are insights into what you’re doing well, and what you could be doing better in order to create an overall better experience. This includes things like:

• The quality of your interactions with customers. What things do you provide that make them most satisfied, and where are they dissatisfied? Gain insight into behavioral patterns so you know what needs to be emphasized and what needs to be fixed. 
• Where are customers prevented from achieving their business goals? Could your product or service do more to support them and relieve them from having to rely on multiple solutions or apps in order to be successful? Having an understanding of the limits of your product (at least, the limits they perceive) will guide you in building a more usable product.
• Customer decision-making. Knowing how your customer is making decisions, and who in the organization is responsible for them will make sure you’re building the right product for the right people.

Process Timeline delivers these and other insights and does it in a future context. In other words, it identifies patterns and gaps and can communicate those to your team so they can refine the processes for product development and customer communication. Armed with this kind of information, you can communicate intelligently to your customers about issues you are taking steps to resolve. You can also involve customers early in the various decisions that will impact how they engage with you in the future.

The element of time offers a strategic advantage when planning for the future. And because your future depends on happy customers, adding Process Timeline into your customer journey mapping processes will keep you tightly engaged with prepared to meet future challenges.

Process Director is an effective, proven, and comprehensive process automation solution for a variety of vertical markets. An additional advantage it delivers to customers is a unique function called Process Timeline™, which is process automation functionality for creating easily modifiable and time-aware business processes to help organizations with their process improvement.

BP Logix developed Process Timeline to help organizations improve planning for business outcomes by addressing the lack of predictability in workflows and processes. While most process automation solutions can only tell you when a particular task is late, Process Timeline uses its knowledge of an organization’s process execution history to automate and predict when each task is likely to complete, no matter how far in the future that task is scheduled to begin.

Process Timeline Features

Process Timeline offers a simple way to compose, manage, and modify business processes. Process-related data and analysis, such as process duration and critical path insights, are delivered in a continuous fashion as processes are running. Organizations recognize significant advantages through features such as:

Low-code Approach

Designed for business users, Process Timeline gives non-developers the ability to build and deploy enterprise-grade, time-aware workflows and processes, with no programming.

• Build rich, complex applications through point-and-click method.
• Intuitive graphical user interface facilitates rapid deployment and time-to-value.

Continuous Improvement

Time is essential to all business activity. Late actions, or actions that Process Timeline predicts will be late—are highlighted and identified while they are running.

• Visual task building interface that lists tasks, dependencies, and highlights potential issues.
• Process Timeline automatically generates and updates a visual interface that identifies, at a glance, how (and for how long) the process will run

Keep Processes On-Track

Process Timeline offers the earliest possible notification that some future task is predicted to be late, and can automatically take direct action, escalating or rerouting activities to account for the predicted delay.

• Process Timeline continuously evaluates processes based on past experience and current status.
• Provides accurate predictions when any future activity is likely to be delayed, offering the earliest possible opportunity for manual or automatic intervention.

Tracking and Measurement

As organizations evolve, performance analysis and awareness are critical for continuous improvement.

• Process Timeline records every action taken by every process participant (human or automated), ensuring total accountability.
• Process Timeline maps users to activities within process that are consuming the most time, so users can quickly focus process improvement efforts where they will have the most impact.
• Drill down to review historical information about any activity, or to see how different actors have performed within a given task.
• Reset analytics at any time to get a fresh perspective.

Today’s colleges and universities require comprehensive data communication to be successful in supporting the needs of students, faculty, and other stakeholders. In an ideal situation, applications connect seamlessly with one another, but in reality, different software solutions were built to solve for different needs. As a result, they weren’t necessarily designed to share data. Yet, for innovative campus IT teams, achieving harmony among all these systems can be achieved with a smart digital integration strategy.

When applications and technology systems operate together as a functioning, cohesive machine, colleges achieve optimal outcomes with their technology investments, and they’re also better equipped to meet their goals as academic institutions. Achieving that level of interoperability requires a focused effort to align tools and strategies. This includes the processes built around those applications, the methodologies for applying them, and systems and the people managing those processes. As digital transformation changes the way that academic organizations stay innovative, it’s important to know how each can advance their enterprise integration management strategies.

Preparing for Higher Education Digital Integration 

Integrating digital systems is an ongoing challenge for colleges and universities because they require such a diverse set of systems, from ERP to SIS to HRIS. Some are centrally-run systems while others are spun up at the departmental level. Campus IT teams are constantly trying to meet new technology needs that come from things like compliance mandates, the creation of new student services, developments in academic departments, and a host of other changes.

The best way to optimize a school’s technology investments and maximize the potential of its systems is to integrate applications so data can be shared. Doing so requires a foundation, one that is process-based, that will provide the framework for building new applications and connectors between and among applications.

To get started with an integration plan, schools must first identify the outcomes they desire and then map the applications that will provide the necessary data and functionality to meet those outcomes. For example, the registrar’s office could schedule classes faster if it could integrate data about facilities availability, enrollment numbers, and course requirements. In many cases, that information has to be retrieved in separate and disparate formats. A single view, delivered through integration, helps expedite scheduling.

Build Process and Workflow into Integration Requirements

Requirements can then be built, and on top of those requirements, teams can start to build processes. These processes must deliver, at a minimum, these things:

• Workflow automation: most applications will have some level of built-in workflow. The goal of processes is to ensure that workflows are connected so that real-time updates in one application are correspondingly made in applications to which it is connected. Consider how convenient it is for financial aid information to automatically populate with a students’ tuition bill so she knows, in real-time, precisely what her financial responsibility is.
• Connector flexibility: applications are upgraded from time to time, and they deploy new functionality. Make sure that processes are flexible enough to adapt to changes in existing systems, and can be applied to new technologies.
• Productivity gains: the whole point to an integration strategy is to be more productive with the technology that’s available to you. Make sure that stakeholders are actually getting better visibility into data and then able to apply that, through automation, to improving performance.

Deploying a Sustainable Digital Integration Strategy

Once goals have been identified and processes begin to be built, IT teams need to perform some important steps as part of their strategy as the initiate integration efforts:

• Develop a set of proven best practices from process thought leaders. Familiarize yourself with case studies of colleges who have done this kind of work.
• Partner with stakeholders (others in IT, department heads, users, executive sponsors, and others) to determine what their specific needs are. Learn their pain points and understand what constitutes “integration nirvana” for them.
• Establish a content governance framework so that processes adhere to a specific, but flexible, set of requirements.
• Ensure compliance for industry and institutional compliance frameworks.

A Continuous Integration Roadmap

At this point, you will have a vision and an actionable roadmap. With a tool like Process Director, you can initiate the integration process. This can be done by identifying which inputs will inform your integrations, and how that data will be incorporated into it. Typical integrations come from applications like these:

• Databases
• LDAP or directory servers
• Standard enterprise applications like CRM, marketing automation, HR systems, and others
• Specific higher education tools like student lifecycle management, financial services apps for financial aid, scheduling and logistics apps, and others
• Document Imaging Software / Scanners
• File System Monitor Application Integration
• Email Servers
• Social BPM Application and Workflow Application Integration
• SharePoint or other file-related applications

With a process-driven approach, campus IT teams will be able to dramatically reduce cost and improve efficiency. Processes allow them to handle connections among the applications and systems listed above, as well as others so there are repeatability and consistency. Insight and visibility into all aspects of processes.

With integrated applications, the entire student lifecycle can become far more streamlined, and university operations can be more efficient. Academic organizations can realize significant cost savings and better deployment of resources. By sharing data and functionality, colleges and universities will be able to emphasize their strengths to their stakeholders as they provide the best possible college experience for all stakeholders.

Recently, a bipartisan team of members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that would promote equal access to academic opportunities, services, and materials for students with disabilities. The Accessible Instructional Materials in Higher Education Act, also known as the AIM HIGH Act, would create a commission to develop voluntary accessibility criteria for instructional materials and educational technology.

The AIM HIGH Act is the result of a collaboration between the National Federation of the Blind, the Association of American Publishers, the Software and Information Industry Association, the American Council on Education, and Educause. To successfully implement the provisions of the Act, schools will need to create processes both for implementation and to monitor compliance. Done effectively, these processes will also generate analytical insights that will help schools become better at delivering services and at meeting their institutional goals and legal mandates. The most effective tool to support these efforts is with a business process solution.

Codifying Accessibility with Processes

Accessibility takes on many different forms. As a general rule, information and communication technology is considered accessible and usable if it can be used in a similar fashion, and to the same effective results by people both with and without disabilities. Essentially, comparable access to information must be provided, taking the needs of all users and learners into account. Digital formats can complicate accessibility for not just the sightless and the hearing impaired, but also for those who are color blind, those prone to seizures, and people with physical limitations that require keyboard navigation rather than the use of a mouse. These are only some examples.

Things like what to make accessible, and how to comply with the Act will fall to individual schools to decide. Without specific guidelines, the effort could be complex, but with a process-driven approach, IT teams can frame the scope of the effort to become AIM HIGH compliant and customize to their own needs.

University IT departments can start by developing workflow standards to guide all aspects of development and implementation. Building these standards will be critical for establishing the consistency needed to be accessible in the eyes of the legislative framework, and the agility to manage the specific needs of individual cases.

IT teams can start by identifying specific categories they need to work on, including:

• Testing and data collection tools: this includes things like Web-based tests (open-ended or multiple choice), or data collection that students might employ in the course of doing academic research.
• Academic presentation material: includes electronic document templates used to create coursework-related documents or presentations. This could be a standard PowerPoint template that’s required to establish a common look and feel for presentations or requirements for using and submitting term papers in Google Documents.
• Educational materials: this covers interactive online courses, which are increasingly becoming used in higher education. This includes self-paced training courses; educational webinars; other educational presentation formats; and support materials for such activities, including electronic worksheets, required reading, and tests. It could also include a course syllabus or administrative documents and tools.

Implementing Accessibility with Process Director

Process Director has long been used in higher education to meet all manner of student and institutional needs. It can be a critical tool in helping to codify and manage the necessary processes that will help schools be successful in administering AIM HIGH and other accessibility requirements.  IT teams can use functionality in Process Director to apply a guided approach that includes:

• Discovery: it’s essential for IT teams to understand the unique needs of the issues for which they are solving. A well-prepared team will be better able to incorporate specific milestones, approvals, and decision-making into workflows if can use a process-driven approach to understanding and implementing necessary tasks.
• Awareness: this is about recognizing when to accommodate and when it’s not necessary. This may seem easy to ascertain, but for someone who has never had to consider accessing a website in a way where they have unique physical or mental abilities, it may be difficult to truly understand how to meet the needs of different users.
• UX design: make sure that the design of any digital format is built in an accessible way, and perform UX testing with the audience for which the solution is being developed.
• Visual design: this is different from UX. Visual design is about the actual placement and layout of web pages, forms, and other tools so they can be interpreted and understood.
• Development: your code should be accessible so that, irrespective of ability, it is able to be deployed in different formats.
• Workflow development: ensure that in all workflows, AIM HIGH requirements accounted for.

To successfully meet the needs of higher education inclusion, colleges and universities will need a dedicated effort that includes some level of complexity. In order to make sense of it and roll it out successfully, they will require a process-driven approach. Being compliant with legislation like AIM HIGH will be one goal of these efforts, but of far more importance will be the ability to create an inclusive learning environment for learners of all types of abilities.

Modern institutions are realizing significant advantages from low code development, an approach to building software which allows non-developers to build applications in a visual, drag-and-drop environment with components for different types of functionality. Low-code platforms have enabled the rise of a business analyst support system who can direct application priorities by abstracting the typically complex coding tasks associated with programming by using reusable components. Innovative college and university IT teams are taking advantage of low-code platforms to improve process automation and derive significant ROI from their technology investments, and it’s changing how they build for the future.

By employing low-code capabilities that enable non-developers to connect various stakeholders and implement sophisticated functionality, users and teams realize greater efficiency. Essentially, those closest to the problems can now have the greatest impact at solving those problems. In higher education, solutions are wide-ranging, and low-code allows schools to benefit from:

• Automating processes, integrate apps with existing systems, and easily connect to data from multiple sources so information and functionality render in a single user experience. Each instance of building a connector can cost as much as $25,000 in developer expenses when using traditional methods.
• Optimizing ROI from legacy applications to deliver better user experiences and increase user adoption.
• Designing and building best-in-class apps that can be deployed when needed. Provide the ability to iterate and improve as needed.
• Recognizing and delivering solutions for all aspects of the university experience. This includes things like HR management, student recruiting, facilities and operations, and alumni relations.
• Migrating applications from on-premises to the cloud.
• Delivering applications in mobile formats to increase usage for students, faculty, and school staff.

Low-code solutions like Process Director give users a highly visual dashboard and software components that can be used to create an application without having to use code. The combination of rapid development capabilities along with the low-code approach offers enterprises the ability to build, deploy, and iterate quickly. Additionally, it provides ways to identify deep insights into usage and performance of applications.

Higher Education Technology Transformation

In higher education, using a low-code approach is about much more than just the applications themselves. It can save schools money, improve how IT resources are used, and deliver services to better meet the ever-changing needs of the 21st Century university student, faculty members, and staff. These things, in turn, make schools more competitive and economically viable.

This is important for colleges because they operate according to prescribed schedules — admissions, registration, financial aid, and the routine of the quarter or semester system. It’s difficult to innovate when the next milestone is right around the corner. Having to adhere to the typical application development lifecycle is slow and typically results in solutions that can be obsolete before they even become available. However, by building and delivering quickly, and with reusable components, university stakeholders can not only deliver fast, but IT teams and departmental groups can iterate and update applications continuously.

Low-code process automation provides a foundation for all university processes, and operates as the engine that moves the student through their journey from first point of contact, all the way through graduation.

Process Management and Workflow for Higher Education

In a university environment, admissions, financial aid, HR, and all departments are using Process Director to effectively manage the complex processes involved with operating a school and delivering effective services. Higher education institutions are able to deploy Process Director to help them meet business-level goals for things like student outcomes, effective recruiting, employee management, and facilities-related operations. It also supports IT goals like integration, process efficiency, and repeatability.

Institutions use Process Director to automate services delivered according to a school’s specific requirements. An example is its digital process automation capabilities, which enable the efficient processing and reviewing of applications across all necessary admissions counselors and administrators. As the application process has become more competitive and rigorous, students are required to provide more data points to make their case and stand out from other applicants. Consider that the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) received 102,242 student applications in 2017, each of which required analysis and processing, all within a 3-4 month timeframe. Building the application framework to support this scale of automation cannot be done in normal development timelines. Low-code changes how a school like UCLA would be able to adapt to increased demand through effective process automation.

The Importance of Process Automation for Colleges and Universities

Low-code equips teams to build applications that work in a human-directed work style. Process Director encourages this innovative approach through things like:

Document and forms management: Consider how students submit all manner of documentation in the course of their time on campus. And employees use a variety of forms in order to be hired in the course of their time as employees. Schools like the University of Central Florida Global deliver low-code solutions to ingest and make sense of things like transcripts, test scores, recommendation and letters for students. For employees, it manages applications, personal data, benefits information and a variety of other types of documents. Some of these are submitted and stored digitally, while some are delivered in paper form. Process Director is able to digitize these documents and include them in individual files. This eliminates outdated and inefficient processes like managing files through email attachments and paper-based artifacts. The result is more context about students and other stakeholders, provided through validated documents. Process Director also enables sharing of information with trusted decision-makers so that milestones in the process can be made with greater efficiency.

Application integration: The student and potential employee application submission is the first touch point with the university, and kicks off processes that will lead to admissions or employment. Process Director uses built in connectors for a variety of ERP systems, and allows users to construct forms that can pull and deliver data that can be useful for things like financial aid and scholarships, housing, and registration for students, and things like hiring and benefits administrations for employees.

Decision-making, enhanced with workflow: Process Director uses the following innovations that make it a first choice for many colleges and universities:

• Attractive, web-based, and responsive user interaction;
• Built-in support for multiple languages, locales, and cultures;
• Easy integration with a broad array of databases, web services, and applications;
• Directory synchronization with LDAP, Active Directory, and Windows network security;
• Full integration with federated authentication services, including Oauth and SAML.
• Strong encryption of data at rest, and data in-flight;
• Digital signature of documents;
• Granular permissions structure, with temporary privilege escalation.

Many colleges and universities rely on outdated systems that cannot support schools’ desires to meet the competitive needs of 21st Century organizations. While there is an increasing need to move fast and address specific needs, the low-code capabilities of Process Director can provide digitally transformative education solutions that facilitate efficient management and streamlining of processes.

An article in Educause summed it up nicely, "The digital transformation of higher education is at hand. Leaders must prepare their institutions now to take strategic advantage of the coming shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.”

“A student who is concerned for their personal safety cannot learn.”

- Virginia Smith, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

Most colleges and universities have made student safety a priority, but campus crime is still an unfortunate reality. Ranging from petty theft to physical violence, crimes on college campuses are far more prevalent than anyone is comfortable with, but thankfully, from 2001 to 2016, the aggregate number of reported crimes committed on college campuses decreased by almost 32%.

Much of this is due to the passage of the Clery Act, which was signed into law in 1990. The act requires all higher education institutions that receive federal financial aid to keep and publicly disclose data about crime on and near their campuses. Adherence with the Act is governed by the U.S. Department of Education, and those who do not comply with its requirements are subject to substantial fines and can be suspended from participating in student financial aid and other federally-funded programs.

In addition to reporting incidents and maintaining statistics, the Clery Act requires that schools also provide warnings and emergency alerts for safety issues, information on victim’s rights, and other important resources that can be used by members of the campus community. In order to comply with all the requirements of the Clery Act, schools need to employ a systematic way of capturing information and deploying it through processes in an effort to effect change. Process automation is the most effective way to support this.

If one were to break down the elements of what’s required to comply with the Clery Act, they would note three main elements:

• Tracking incidents
• Reporting incidents and alerting on safety issues
• Managing data about criminal activity

Solving for all of these needs is best done with a single, comprehensive process automation solution like Process Director. Because it has a process and workflow foundation and uses case management capabilities, Process Director can support the need to capture data from multiple sources and communicate it to necessary stakeholders. These are critical for colleges to manage information and act on it quickly.

It’s important to recognize that inherent in the goals of the Clery Act is not simply data collection. To have a positive impact on reducing crime and keeping students safe, the results of all activity relating to the Clery Act must result in decision making about policies.

University IT departments can initiate a process-based approach to identify and manage massive amounts of data. That data is also coming from a variety of internal and third-party sources, which adds a layer of complexity. Smart processes can identify the right processes to kick-off based on that data. But it can also guide it through streamlined processes that can anticipate future-dependent actions, communicate with necessary stakeholders, reduce errors, and ultimately track all of this activity to demonstrate compliance.

Process Director provides a way to collect that data and immediately apply machine learning to understand the details of incidents (location, time of day, victim information, perpetrator information, and other relevant data), and initiate the necessary processes that will perform the tasks needed to meet the demands of the Clery Act framework. It does this with a variety of critical process automation features, including:

• Access data that can help with decision-making and meeting workflow milestones.
• Efficient approval handling that guides crime-related data and corresponding communication to the right milestones and decision-makers.
• Insight and visibility into all aspects of processes.
• Sophisticated reporting that pulls user-identified data points into visual charts.
• Case management to categorize and report on specific incidents and/or individuals.
• Processed-based security capabilities for managing, securing, storing, and ultimately, protecting a massive amount of data including students (student information includes personally identifiable information [PII] like student records, financial aid information, and healthcare data, among other things), staff and faculty HR records, operational data, and records related to government funding.

Additionally, Process Director applies future planning into processes with its time-based process engine— Process Timeline™. This offers a simple way to compose, manage, and modify business processes. Process-related data and analysis, such as process duration and critical path insights, are delivered in a continuous fashion as processes are running. This enables schools to be informed in near real-time and effect necessary changes rapidly.

Process automation is an effective tool for compliance with the Clery Act, but more importantly, it can be a critical ingredient to keeping students safe. Schools that employ a process-focused approach to safety are able to improve response time and awareness about campus crime, which ultimately helps them be better and more effective, caretakers.

A recent study of the threat potential for a comprehensive set of industries called out higher education as one of the most targeted. In the past couple of years, cyberattacks have increased by 68%, and the average cost of each attack is almost $700,000. Colleges stand to lose a great deal when attacked— beyond just the theft of data and financial loss from ransom demands, they also risk reputation damage that can negatively impact student recruiting and potential for advantages such as research grants.

As we know in today’s global, data-rich economy, all organizations face cybersecurity risks. Some are manifested in attacks that go after individuals for their personal information for financial or other types of exploitation. In other cases, the security targets include intellectual property and system-wide information. Organizations that touch large numbers of stakeholders are targeted because of the variety of data and multiple access points they offer.

Higher education institutions fall into this category and have become attractive targets for attack. They serve a disparate audience of constituents, and they store and transact with sensitive data about all of their different stakeholders. Because of this, colleges and universities require a structured security roadmap that enables flexible access to data and records, but protects also students, faculty, employees, and other stakeholders within the higher education ecosystem.

The Security Risks for Higher Education

University IT departments are responsible for the managing, securing, storing, and ultimately, protecting a massive amount of data including students (student information includes personally identifiable information [PII] like student records, financial aid information, and healthcare data, among other things), staff and faculty HR records, operational data, and records related to government grants and research, much of which is sensitive in nature.

Attackers go after private, critical data through a variety of tactics, including:

• Cloud attacks: with more higher education institutions rapidly moving critical workloads to the cloud, hackers are exploiting aspects of the shared responsibility model that leave holes in workloads and cloud environments.
• Phishing: one of the most common types of attacks is phishing, which is done through sending unsolicited and unscrupulous email messages that link to fraudulent websites.
• Device security: most organizations operate with “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies that enable employees and contractors to use personal smartphones, computers, and tablets for business use. Proper security protocols are often not enforced for these devices, which can leave sensitive data vulnerable.
• Malware: malware is software that has maliciously been installed on users’ computers. Various types include ransomware, viruses, worms, and adware. As recent events have shown, these malware threats are often used as a means to steal information and to commit fraud, including extortion.
• Denial of service (DoS): in DoS attacks, individuals who normally have access to systems or networks are suddenly denied the ability to view data or systems. It includes critical, university-specific applications, email, or other digital points of access.

Developing an Effective Security Framework

 University IT security programs require a framework for continuous monitoring and response, one which manages threats to stakeholder data and intellectual property. This would not simply be a monitoring tool that sends alerts when certain security controls are breached. Rather, a foundation of vigilant approach must be embedded into processes and the way that schools conduct their operations.

The risks are ever-present and increasing in regularity. Education IT departments must apply a methodology that enables security regulations to be adapted to meet both the changing needs of their school, and to combat the increasing complexity of cyber-attacks.

Higher education IT departments are using business process management and workflow solutions like Process Director to understand their threat landscape and implement plans and policies that automate attack prevention. To begin the process, colleges and universities have to initiate a strategy that takes into account the data risks of the different populations they serve, as well as the processes employed across all different IT applications in use. While most schools have some set of loosely-defined guidelines, this first step demands mapping a comprehensive plan to a process-driven framework.

Necessary Steps for Higher Education Data Security

This security plan should be developed, implemented, and managed with an approach that takes into account the following elements:

Collaborate and plan effectively: awareness of stakeholder needs in higher education can be tricky; the requirements to operate effectively as a student is much different than how one functions as a faculty member. Consideration for these differences is critical because higher education comprises such a diverse set of needs and user types. Even within academic departments, there are vast differences in how workflow tools and process management is applied. Learning the work, goals, use cases, and language of different teams, and then tapping into their processes and methods, will give IT teams the right perspective into how to secure them.

Understand business patterns: the most effective way to understand security risk is to have an automated way to detect behavioral anomalies within workloads and processes. IT teams should develop a scenario of regular business and data patterns and establish them as baselines. They need to also meet with department leaders to gain an understanding of concern areas or vulnerability areas where behavioral anomalies tend to occur. These can be accounted for when building processes, and will lead to better visibility into what is considered as acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Automate processes: in the course of business transformation efforts, college IT departments should seek ways to give departmental managers flexibility and ownership of their processes. In doing so, they should establish policies that encourage repeatability and automation. Processes should emphasize self-service wherever possible, and facilitate straight-through processing of standard requests and account provisioning.

Integrate tools with processes for better outcomes: colleges have already invested a great deal in their technology stack. It’s imperative that IT teams understand the tools, data, and communication channels that are used across all technology efforts, and then recognize where security vulnerabilities could happen within each of them. Reducing overall ‘application spaghetti’ is an excellent first step toward consistency of process. This can start by collecting the security protocols required of each system, and then finding a way to apply them appropriately to the processes they touch, or whether the systems themselves should be eliminated altogether in favor of a self-build low-code application.

Implementing a security approach to higher education management does not happen overnight. IT teams have to be thoughtful about what they want to achieve, and operate with awareness of stakeholder needs and the intricacies of the technology stack. Additionally, while digital transformation efforts to move workloads into the cloud and use BYOD policies are delivering greater flexibility, they are also opening new threat vectors. With a process-focused approach, colleges and universities can improve their security posture and help to ensure the safety of critical data.

In modern IT environments, compliance and security are highly reliant upon one another, and they share a common goal: responsibility for keeping an organization’s data, users, resources, and intellectual property safe and usable. Some enterprises compartmentalize governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) as a separate function that sits apart from workflows and business processes. This thinking prevents the true integration of GRC principles into all aspects of how IT environments operate, which reduces visibility into a company's security and compliance posture. Innovative enterprises understand that effective compliance and security are tightly coupled, and why it’s critical to use a solution that enables rapid, agile workflow, but does so with GRC embedded into it.

GRC is typically codified as a collection of controls that are applied broadly across the IT landscape, and are designed to ensure that organizations manage their information security risks appropriately. GRC identifies gaps in security controls and provides a framework for prioritizing mitigation and remediation activities. Adhering to internal, industry, and/or governmental frameworks, GRC measures the effectiveness of security controls against relevant security requirements. It’s basically looking for proof that organizations do what they say they do, and then validates that.

Risk and Security Management Protect Company Assets

Requirements for governance and compliance come in many forms, starting with an organization’s internal information security policies. These policies should align with the company's business objectives and reflect its specific infrastructure and services. Compliance with internal security policy can be assessed through internal security reviews and any discovered exceptions should be appropriately managed.

In addition to security requirements defined by internal security policy, enterprises must abide by compliance frameworks established by industry and governmental groups. There is a tacit, although sometimes explicit, understanding that operating in accord with these guidelines is mandatory to conduct business within a specified region or market. These security requirements typically come in the form of audits and assessments performed by external regulatory groups. Some companies elect to be audited in order to demonstrate best-in-class business and security practices; these include things like ISO 27001 and SOC 2. For some companies, these can be competitive differentiators, as they demonstrate a focus and commitment to GRC principles.

The most effective approach to governance and compliance is to align GRC guidelines within an organization’s processes and workflow. This creates consistency and establishes a behavioral mindset for anyone touching processes (which is pretty much everyone in the organization).  This type of solution must be able to collect data from across workloads and data sources which may be used for identification, direction, and reduction of risk. Process Director employs both predictive modeling (which may help a company avoid being out of compliance), and automated reporting and collection that provide insights to how closely processes are adhering to GRC requirements.

In breaking down the value of BPM and workflow for GRC, consider the impact of the following on how teams can improve efficiency and their overall security posture:

Consistency

When an organization develops a framework for GRC, they still have to implement and manage it across disparate groups. If GRC requires anything, it’s consistency. Without it, there’s no way of knowing how well or poorly the company is adhering to its principles. By implementing GRC-based requirements into workflows and processes, teams have immediate visibility to identify where they are out of compliance. If they are using a BPM platform like Process Director, which enables non-programmers to create and modify processes, then issues can be addressed and remediated quickly. BPM is like a continuous insight engine for GRC, and that gives organizations the ability to be consistent in how they approach the work of risk management and compliance.

Automation

Companies get stuck if they have to evaluate every activity that deviates from normalized behavior. Because BPM can help optimize the continuity and consistency of GRC behavior, this becomes a critical way for companies to ensure governance and compliance adherence. Some will choose to do it manually, but this is a time killer and can distract process actors from focusing on outcomes while they fix problems that don’t add value. Effective BPM solutions automate the GRC framework which enables managers to focus on process improvement rather than fixing process shortcomings. They can be set up to deliver alerts that pinpoint where GRC-related issues exist and help managers rapidly address them.

Visibility

With GRC, teams get a broad picture of the organization and its processes -- this includes how data, people, and resources are accessing, being accessed, and transacting among internal and external stakeholders. Because BPM can be set up to apply specific GRC-influenced requirements to various stages of processes, managers have access and control to change processes, if needed. But perhaps more importantly, the deep visibility enables actors to understand where GRC issues are common. This may indicate a vulnerability within internal systems, or it could mean there are teams or data sources that are not in compliance.

Reduce CapEx

With GRC visibility and automation provided by a BPM solution, teams can dramatically reduce the manual work needed to identify issues and manage change. They also become aware of which systems, applications, and data sources might be regularly out of compliance. The attention required to fix these issues is lowered significantly because fewer people are needed to manage GRC, there is less of a trail to unravel to identify the source of problems, and insights gathered over time can help managers make technology purchasing decisions and allocate expenditures that are ultimately more advantageous (and cost effective) for their GRC needs.

Business Culture

When objectives and missions are aligned through a workflow solution, the actual principles by which the business operates can become tightly integrated into the fabric of how the company operates. This is important because it essentially codifies those things that will reduce risk and maintain a healthy level of governance within the business activities of the company.

GRC is intended to give companies better control over their data and intellectual property, but there are no shortcuts to managing it effectively. It is a continuous process, but one that BPM and workflow are optimized to manage.

There were more than 20 million students enrolled in colleges in the United States in 2018, and that number is forecast to increase in the coming decade. More than 2/3 of all college students receive some kind of financial help in the form of grants and scholarships. Just as admissions are critical to an institutions success, ensuring that these same students have access to funding sources is critical to the future of higher education.

Colleges and universities operate to serve their students, and the financial aid they provide reflects this commitment. Unfortunately, however, most of the processes and workflows that support grants and scholarships exist in a combination of paper-based formats and disparate digital repositories, which can make it difficult to identify and utilize the necessary data. Lacking a system for moving this data from intake to funding, colleges are at risk of preventing deserving students from being able to attend and benefit. Fortunately, process automation enables higher education institutions to facilitate the requests of students to help them fund their education.

Is Automation the Future of Education Process Management?

Automation is the foundation of simplifying grant and scholarship management. Just as workflow has enabled human resources in higher education, it is also being used by colleges and universities to facilitate the flow of that data of students, financial institutions, and universities so it can be evaluated and disbursed. Access to this data is only one aspect of the process. Utilizing it and processing it with the right permissions, and with speed, give all parties the best shot at ensuring grants and scholarships are awarded efficiently.

But the process-driven coordination of financing, collection, and student lifecycle management demands an effective workflow framework, one that incorporates activity among government bodies, non-profits (who are often the benefactors who distribute scholarship money), students, parents/guardians, and financial aid departments within the schools. Ensuring your grants and scholarship management solution has the capability to navigate this intricate web of decision-makers and groups in an organized fashion is pivotal in expediting the processes around financing students.

Streamlining all Points in the Financial Aid Process

Managing workflows for grant and scholarship awards with a platform like Process Director helps present a clear picture to scholarship and grant administrators of all aspects of the financial aid process.

Financial aid processes typically require the input of multiple sources, and not all of them exist within the same organization. Process Director can apply a case management approach which is optimized to coordinate the activity of all involved in the process. This includes university departments like the Office of Financial Aid, Admissions, Registration and Academic Records. External groups include banks and other funding sources, government agencies who disburse grant money, and private institutions and individuals who fund private scholarships.

The Tools Necessary for Comprehensive Education Process Management

Pulling all of this together demands a broad assortment of tasks that includes data that includes paper records, approvals, data sharing among applications and databases, and forms management. With so much at stake, it is essential that deadlines are met and that milestones are attained. Procedure Director generates arrangement among, and between, process phases and different information sources. The result is a system that's inclusive of participants, allowing efficiency, compliance, and consistency. The course of action is all about efficiency and speed. Process Director applies abilities for lightweight application creation, workflow automation, forms management, and integration through a process that uses these steps:

Data collection: students submit applications for grants and scholarships from a variety of sources. This data will likely include artifacts such as an essay, high school transcripts, letters of recommendation, and family tax history among others. All of these items are relevant to the deciders of how grant money is distributed.

Case management framework: Every application is tied to a unique student, and can be considered as an individual case. As a case is created, it will likely be stored in a database, LDAP repository, or cloud storage bucket. But the case is very much active as member schools evaluate the application. Process Director uses a case management approach which enables each student’s file to be moved through the processes and milestones required by financial aid committees and departments.

Distribution of funds: Process Director is built with workflow automation as a critical component, which gives those involved with financial aid evaluation the ability to create rules and processes that will distribute applications internally to important decision-makers, and externally as application data is shared among banks and government groups.

Review/Evaluation: decision-makers will not miss data or milestones when the process is managed with automated workflow. This ensures that all available data can be shared and reviewed, but ultimately, it means that all students have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their needs.

As competition among schools becomes fiercer, there is an increasingly need to provide access to all worthy applicants. Process Director provides digitally transformative education workflow solutions that include facilitating scholarships and grants management, so deserving students can benefit from a higher education experience.

The original intent of workflow processes was to create a standardized and accepted way of identifying and solving for issues of efficiency. Eventually, workflow processes were introduced as a component of effective BPM, and today, innovative organizations apply both in a way where they support one another. These organizations realize that a workflow process will help you create repeatable outcomes, and workflow process is the workhorse that maintains consistency among the disparate elements that make up processes. To put it another way, workflow tools give organizations visibility into processes in order to monitor results, reduce inefficiencies and incorporate automation. But let’s look more closely at how workflow and process support outcomes through their own unique attributes.

Workflow Process Evolution: from Coordination to Prediction

Workflow Process serves to align the process management discipline to tasks and to support and work with patterns of business behavior. The technology that drives workflow is all based on coordinating interactions, milestones, and assets. When workflow automation software was first available as a codified technology solution, it was embedded into applications to supercharge their connectivity and operational capability. For the most part, those who benefited were typically just those with access to the specific applications. Over time, workflow became a foundational element to the overall process-driven mindset that smart companies employ. It now operates almost as a middleware technology, and its shared capabilities enable interactions among disparate groups of stakeholders. This includes both internal and third-party users.

But today’s innovative workflow solutions do far more than just coordinate the flow of activity. Platforms like Process Director apply machine learning and time recognition to help users take advantage of predictive insights and understand behavioral patterns. The component of time offers workflow users control they can’t get solely through application analytics and dashboards. With the inclusion of machine learning, Process Director’s workflow automation now allows identifies patterns that can require human intervention if a task isn’t expected to complete on time. In this way, the coordination of activity that a workflow process provides actually considers patterns of behaviors among different work streams to create a more focused model for delivering to specified outcomes.

Clearly, workflow design has evolved to the point that, as opposed to a typical flowchart it can almost drive activity from inception to completion. Rather than just relying on, “what happens next”, workflow is now equipped to identify and ask, “what must be completed before this step can begin, and how long will it take?” It’s in this way that workflow demonstrates its support for BPM, process efficiency improvement and governance. It delivers what’s required to provide oversight over multiple streams of activity, all working towards a common goal.

Business Workflow Process Instills Outcome-Based Discipline

For all of this effort to truly be effective, it must operate within a workflow process management framework, and this is where we find the distinction between workflow and BPM. A comprehensive workflow process approach emphasizes a holistic approach to coordinating everything that contributes to the outcome of business goals. This includes documents, cases, people, tasks, and sub-tasks are completed and executed for quality and/or compliance. Workflow assumes the work involved to connect and communicate among these things but that activity must adhere to the context of BPM.

Effective BPM solutions are foundational, and as a software application, they have to be able to integrate through APIs and other connectors so the right information and assets are available to decision-makers. Today’s knowledge workers — and in this economy, just about everyone is a knowledge worker to at least some degree — require a combination of subjective and analytical criteria in order to make decisions and move activities towards successful outcomes of business goals. BPM is the structure that enables repeatability for those processes and workflows that require consistency, but they also enable flexibility for processes that have to adapt to changing business needs.

Workflow Process and BPM are Foundational 

No business can operate without a foundation of sound, yet flexible, workflow processes. Part of that flexibility comes from being able to do more things with processes that might have been previously intended for more narrow purposes. Take, for example, an experience from the world of retail. Imagine a marketing process intended to deliver email notifications to customers about upcoming sales. While that may appear to be relatively simple, underneath that activity are a series of connected processes that include pulling data from a user database, engaging writers, involving the graphics department, and scheduling the mailing on a calendar. The end result is more contact with customers— contact that is the result of connecting processes and workflows that ultimately involve partnering with stakeholders.

Today’s business users need flexibility and accessibility to influence and participate in business solutions. Working in concert, workflow and BPM can deliver that access where and how they work and live, and engage all different types of users who are relevant to outcomes. For people and companies driving results, the ability to adapt and modify, review and approve in real-time, improves decision-making and keeps things moving forward.

Organizations depend on their business processes for the smooth, orderly flow of all their activities. But as companies evolve, the workflows they have relied on may not necessarily have evolved accordingly, and this can limit an organization’s ability to grow and adapt. The shelf life of most workflows is fairly limited, especially in a business climate that never stops changing. This is where workflow analysis comes in.

Workflow analysis can provide major benefits because it identifies where workflows are either outdated, need to be re-worked, or where a process requires an entirely new approach. The process takes apart the workflow in order to identify where there are issues of inefficiency and where changes within the process demand corresponding changes in the workflow. Going through this exercise of workflow analysis identifies bottlenecks, users who are no longer stakeholders, redundant tasks, and uncovers where improvements can be applied.

Ultimately, a well-performed workflow analysis will provide an organization with three key outcomes:

• Elimination of manual and redundant tasks.
• Application of automation where it is currently not being used.
• Gaps in the workflow that prevent it from being optimal.

Once identified, an organization will be able to use its human and technology resources more efficiently, which reduces costs and speeds the delivery of time-dependent processes. Even small improvements save costs and time, so workflow analysis should be a regularly scheduled activity that businesses create a discipline around. To initiate an effective analysis, an organization should take into account these considerations:

Create the Workflow Analysis Structure

It’s best to have a team of reviewers that is made up of representatives from different groups. This will provide perspectives from those with a stake in certain workflows, as well as independent thinking from others. This team should have a cadence of regular meetings, a communication tool like Slack, and a set of requirements by which they will conduct their analysis. The workflow analysis should consider the impact of a workflow in a variety of ways, including these:

• Is it efficient by impacting the speed and/or efficiency of how tasks are accomplished?
• Are stakeholders able to automate repetitive tasks by using it?
• Is it directly improving business goals?
• Does it improve my organization’s ability to be compliant?

Creating an Inventory of Workflows

Collecting all the workflows you want to review may be harder than you might think. Organizations with good process discipline will have a repository of their workflows, but in many organizations, these are created in an ad hoc fashion and are not necessarily accounted for in any type of orderly way. The discovery process will require input from stakeholders across the company and will initiate the review process, so be prepared to have either an individual or team who leads this effort and can be the key decision maker.

Initial Workflow Review

After having an inventory of workflows, it’s best to start reviewing to determine what you should keep and what is no longer relevant. For some, this may take a deeper analysis of the current and future viability of certain workflows, but for others, you’ll know what can be eliminated when you see it. Those that don’t make the cut should be officially taken out of practice. Stakeholders should be made aware of next steps on these workflows - that usually means alerting about removal for some, while for others, it may mean that a replacement will soon follow.

Workflow Analysis and Data Discovery

Workflows generate all kinds of data, most of which should provide insight into usage and efficacy. A workflow that might appear to be really effective may have not been used in many quarters; this data might help you decide to eliminate it. Or perhaps the data will demonstrate that there is a task within a certain workflow that takes an unusually long period of time to complete — that might be an indicator of where the workflow needs a reformatting.

Consider reviewing for this type of data:

• How many workflows have been initiated over the previous two quarters?
• Of those workflows, how many have been completed, and how many are still in process?
• Average of the time taken to complete tasks.
• Length of time to do reviews.
• How many are currently using forms?

Involve Stakeholders in the Workflow Analysis

Armed with data, you can begin to get a better sense of what you’re dealing with, and it can act as an important filter. But the data may not tell the whole story, which is why you need to now get out of your office and talk to people to determine how workflows are being used. Identify stakeholders from different teams and groups and consider evaluating based on these types of questions:

• Start with getting a general sense of the workflow; ask them to walk you, step-by-step, through the processes they go through.
• Find out where they are frustrated by the process.
• Get a sense for whether or not they are getting things done faster and/or with greater efficiency.
• Ask for their input on how a workflow could be improved with the right workflow tools (it’s usually those closest to the problem that have the best solutions). Encourage them to be specific on this point; is there certain data they need, is there a problem of automation, do they get the notifications they need, etc.
• Consider using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology by asking, “On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being ‘most likely”), how likely are you to recommend this workflow to a colleague?” The answers may give you insight into both the necessity and efficacy of a given workflow.

Regroup and Assess

Now that you’ve collected data and put boots on the ground, the review team needs to go through workflows again and determine their state, which should fall into one of these categories:

• Eliminate the workflow
• Re-design the workflow
• Replace the workflow with a new workflow

Beyond the Workflow Analysis

At this point, you should have the beginnings of a blueprint to start moving forward with the next phase of your workflow design and implementation. With a focused team and the right tool, you will now be equipped to make better decisions about what you want to achieve and how your workflows can help you attain those goals.

Most workflow projects take the approach of addressing an outcome and then working backwards to build an efficient, linear flow of processes and actions. Designing steps to think through workflow design requirements is essential, but it must be done with a methodology that accounts for all manner of variables, and includes the element of time. Every workflow is intended to deliver faster and/or better returns on work, but process agility and the application of predictive capabilities, translates into additional competitive advantages. The true goal of workflow design is getting to a state of continuous innovation, repeatability, and efficiency, and this is best accomplished by using smart, disciplined thinking.

An effective workflow is liberating for users. They can automate decision making and rely on the application to deliver content and assets to the correct stakeholders, which frees them to focus more on analyzing outcomes and coming up with creative solutions. With the component of time built into workflows design, business users get additional control by having a way to predict events that can be automatically built in to processes, all with the flexibility of being able to intervene as necessary. To take advantage of a timeline-influenced workflow, an organization should structure their workflow design with a framework that takes these elements into account:

Workflow Design - Define Your Requirements

This may sound elementary, but to get the right outcomes, you need to be specific about the results you seek. For example, declaring that you want a workflow for “manufacturing optimization” encompasses a wildly broad set of activities. But breaking that down so you understand the various, separate tasks that help you ultimately achieve manufacturing optimization will enable you to be specific about the upcoming workflows design process.

Tasks, Events, Dependencies – Know Your Process

You’ll need a whiteboard, a really big whiteboard. The best way to get started is to actually diagram the logical sequence for a workflow, and then iterate as you factor in decision points, approvals, assets, sub-workflows, and all other factors that will guide a process from beginning to end. This part of your planning is tactical, and is truly foundational, and the way your workflow design is structured will be among the most important factors on whether or not your workflow management software is successful in achieving intended goals. During this part of the planning, you should be looking out for these things:

• Be thorough and include all information and detail so you know precisely what is required to achieve success at each step.
• Know, document, and account for dependencies at every step of the workflow.
• Highlight gaps where more information is needed to ensure effective process flow, and then fill those gaps.
• Simply where you can, reduce steps, if possible, and be rigorous about eliminating the potential for wasted effort.

Account for Continuous Processes

Also, don’t forget to consider the continuous nature of some processes; for these, a true ending point may not necessarily exist. When that is the case, ensure that workflow stakeholders are prepared to continuously adapt their workflows tools as they integrate more inputs and data into the process.

Assign Roles In Your Workflow Design

Know your stakeholders, whether they be inside or external to the company. Identify which tasks and activities they will be part of, and their level of involvement. This might also be applied in terms of groups or teams, rather than just individuals. For example, some decisions may require the approval of any member of a specified team, while others may need approval from anyone who has a “Vice President” title. And in other instances, decisions might be handled by anyone in a specific team or region. Know how roles are going to be used within your workflows so you can design them for best efficiency.

Apply Timeline Dependencies

A typical flowchart lays out “what happens next”, but when you apply timeline approach to your workflow design, it forces you to think, “what must be completed before this step can begin, and how long will it take?” These questions help you to imprint process efficiency improvement and governance with a timeline-focused workflow design, and provide additional control by allowing integrating predictive elements, and allowing for human intervention if a task isn’t expected to complete on time. Typical workflow processes may include an approval step, but usually fail to communicate when the task or full process will complete.

Know What You Need to Integrate - Inputs and Outputs

Today’s workflows can be so powerful because of the amount and type of data available within a typical organization’s IT infrastructure, and through integration of data from partner and customer sources. To get the power of all this data, you need to identify which inputs will inform your workflow, and how that data will be incorporated into it. Typical integrations come from applications like these:

• Database Application Integration
• Document Imaging Software / Scanners
• File System Monitor Application Integration
• Email Servers
• Web Services / REST
• Social BPM Application and Workflow Application Integration
• SharePoint or other file-related applications

After identifying these, you will need to build requirements for the tactical implementation of your integrations. This might come in the form of pre-packed integrations or with vendor-provided APIs. Your team may need to build custom integrations, so you’ll need to account for the resources and time required to do all this work.

Review Your Workflow Design

This isn’t just a “check my work” step; it’s really intended to give all stakeholders an opportunity to provide input and change anything that isn’t supposed to be part of the workflow. Additionally, it allows you to take a step back and evaluate whether or not the structure of your workflow is still capable of meeting your intended goals.

Automate Your Workflows

By automating workflows, organizations will be able to dramatically reduce cost and improve efficiency. Automation allows them to handle every manner of workflows and sub-workflows so there is repeatability and consistency, all while freeing time to focus on more strategic issues of the business. Workflow automation enables teams to do the following:

• Build processes and create forms to meet changing business goals.
• Access data that can help with decision-making and meeting workflow milestones.
• Efficient approval handling.
• Insight and visibility into all aspects of processes.

Business goals involve increasingly complex levels activity and collaboration in order to achieve them. Workflows, however, don’t need to be overly complex, and this is why they provide huge benefits. Developing and codifying workflows removes barriers to speed and alleviates the stop-start cadence that trips up too many organizations.

While there is not a single way to develop and manage workflows, adhering to a smart framework of workflow design can help organizations improve their operational capabilities and achieve better outcomes.

As economic growth spreads across the globe, one of the main engines of progress is manufacturing. Especially in the United States, which produces more than 18% of the world’s goods, the manufacturing sector is driving not only financial health, but also innovation. Increasingly, manufacturing companies are looking for competitive advantages which are being facilitated by business process management as a way to encourage digital transformation. Organizations that are effectively pairing agile business process management (BPM) with things like Six Sigma and other operational excellence frameworks are able to move fast to respond to market trends and customer demands.

Digital Transformation is Necessary for Manufacturing

To realize just how important manufacturing agility and innovation is to business growth, consider just how important and impactful it is to the U.S. economy:

• In 2018, manufacturing drove 12% of overall economic output, accounting for $2.3 trillion.
• Every dollar spent to develop and improve manufacturing operations contributes $1.89 in business growth to other economic sectors.
• Manufacturing in the U.S. is projected for continued growth into 2020 and beyond.

The primary benefits of digital transformation in manufacturing include better efficiency and reduced costs. Those two goals alone, once achieved at a sustainable scale, can create massive value for companies that want to differentiate themselves from competitors. Manufacturers that are employing digital transformation strategies that can immediately address a variety of use cases where innovation can deliver incremental changes in quality, performance, process management, analysis, or other aspects of operations.

Agile and Six Sigma in Manufacturing Digital Transformation?

Technology intended to support manufacturing can often look overly complex. But when agile and Six Sigma thinking is applied to it, one starts to recognize that technology is really only focused on getting the actions in the manufacturing process from point A (initiating manufacturing activity) to point B (finished product) faster, and more efficiently that was done previously.

Digital transformation enables this simplification of these processes through the application of effective BPM principles. Typically, processes handle everything involved with the development, creation, collaboration, and fulfillment of every manufactured good. BPM forces organizations to identify not just what points A and B are, but also incorporate workflow management software to determine what intermediary steps are involved in every process, and evaluate how valuable and/or important those steps are.

Manufacturing organizations have to know what’s happening at every step in every process. This includes development-related documents (many of which don’t fit standard document types, like blueprints and photographic images), compliance information, change orders, distribution tracking, parts ordering, inventory control, and a massive number of actionable steps that must be included in order to be optimized. A surprising number of manufacturers operate with a cobbled-together structures of paper-based systems and manual operations that are impediments to speed. Ad hoc processes used to manage the flow of unstructured data can create knowledge gaps which can slow processes and even prevent essential data from being part of the manufacturing continuum.

Streamlining Manufacturing Business Operations

Especially as manufacturing becomes more complex through the addition of additional content sources, suppliers, and other stakeholders, BPM is needed as a foundation to streamline every aspect of manufacturing processes. It helps eliminate organizational redundancy AND oversight, both issues which contribute to slow down of activity and confusion. These are the “enemies” that digital transformation seeks to eradicate, and an effective BPM solution like Process Director rapidly delivers an actionable framework for elements such as:

• Product development: Gone are the days when a blueprint was created and then years and years of consistent delivery of that product constituted a healthy business. Today’s planning and design requires the input of many (often many who are not internal employees) and it must be adaptable so incremental improvements can be made along the way. A BPM solution like Process Director enables collaboration, data management, and change capabilities through its lightweight, low-code application development capabilities.
• Procurement: To get the best cost efficiency, companies need an agile approach to working with vendors and suppliers. The ability to rapidly integrate with a stakeholder’s systems and share necessary data means fewer roadblocks on the way to incorporating the advantages of that vendor into your own processes.
• Production: Here again, the essence of effective manufacturing is getting from point A to point B quickly, painlessly, and with the right outcomes. However, in today’s connected world, nothing seems linear, so making that connection is a major challenge for companies that are producing goods. To overcome that, BPM can act in a way that captures data and assets, includes the necessary inputs from the right people, and ensures that all of that information is available, automated, and correctly inserted across and throughout processes.
• Distribution: Manufacturers need visibility and awareness so they can fulfill orders and plan accordingly for changes in demand. Process Director provides unique functionality in this regard through the use of its patented Process Timeline, which models workflows to anticipate capacity, demand, and activity. This predictive analysis means better notifications for stakeholders, as well as automated reassignment and rerouting at the earliest possible notice that a future milestone or deadline might be at risk.

The right mix of digital innovation with a logical BPM-focused approach means that manufacturers can build a framework to rapidly and efficiently coordinate their operations. Process Director is purpose-built with the needs of enterprises that take advantage of modern methods to operate their manufacturing with lean, agile principles. As the economy gets more complex, Process Director is helping to simply how manufacturing gets done.

“In practice, digital process automation (or DPA) refers to the use of intelligent interpretation, automation and presentation of business solutions to their intended service customers. DPA includes by nature the dynamic assembly or reordering of a given process, based on declared business objectives and customer requirements.”

- Jason English, Analyst, Intellyx

From workflow management software to BPM, now to digital process automation – it can be difficult to keep up with the ever-changing trade terms… and the overlaps therein. Digital process automation (DPA) enables enterprises to identify and manage new channels where their data and services can be pushed, and when paired with technologies facilitating this journey (often sharing space with BPM platforms), it provides companies with major competitive advantages over those who still rely on traditional methods. Not all organizations that tout themselves as BPM have the agility or adaptability to facilitate business goals around digital process automation, and now more and more that do provide these advantages are promoting themselves as DPA platforms.

Processes have always been at the foundation of how businesses operate, and in an environment where organizations seek to increase their reach through new channels, they are using modern technologies like the cloud, machine learning, and even social media to extend their digital footprint. It’s through this digital process transformation that companies are able to become more efficient and better able to deliver their services and brand.

Process Director includes DPA capabilities like a foundation of rapid application development, as well as smart forms, predictive process management, and a flexible deployment model. This creates a comprehensive solution that makes Process Director a digitally-enabled DPA platform that dramatically shrinks the gap between technology functionality and desired business outcomes.

DPA for Stakeholder Engagement 

A platform created to be a digital process automation solution will give you the means to engage your customers, gain exposure, and increase customer satisfaction and retention, simply and quickly, without the overhead of traditional software development or legacy packaged applications.

This solution should be agile, and support rapid environments with automation, case management, predictive analytics, and more. As well, a low-code BPM approach to rapid application development gives the ability to be highly responsive for all types of stakeholders, and digital capabilities means the solution will be able to reach those stakeholders through channels where they are accustomed to operating.

Does Digital Process Automation Just Mean Agile and Innovative BPM?

There is still an overlap between BPM and DPA, and the products that successfully embody this new generation of digitally transformative tools fulfill the promise of helping companies be more customer-focused, as well as enabling the employ of analytics and other context-necessary data. As market competition becomes fiercer, there is a corresponding need to provide immediate access to processes and data. DPA platforms pave the way for these digitally transformative applications, ones that that facilitate efficient management and the streamlining needed for an organization to be a market leader and instill a culture of growth.

With DPA combined with BPM, enterprises are able to build, operate, and automate processes that are driven by both data and human decision-making, and they can also then distribute and connect them more effectively as business needs change and adapt. When different types of stakeholders can contribute to process development and goals, the organization benefits from a more collaborative mindset and lens; this provides and advantage in both technology and business scenarios because data is used more efficiently and the enterprise gets a more accurate view of how data and applications are being used.

DPA and BPM combined in Process Director

Process Director brings process automation to an organization's digital transformation initiatives in a number of different ways: for one thing, it delivers a scalable, no-code platform that is widely used by IT as well as business users. This democratizes enterprise problem solving so it can be extended to anyone, irrespective of whether or not they have a background in coding. Process Director operates as a perfect marriage of BPM with digital process automation capabilities by providing:

• Diverse platform deployment options including on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid environments.
• Multiple APIs, connectors, and other frameworks for using and distributing data across third-party apps and even IoT.
• Smart forms and menu-driven builders for easy data capture and usage.
• Ability to combine structured and unstructured data into different types of process patterns.
• Case management capabilities for project focus and sophisticated, case-aware applications and reports.
• Process Timeline, which enables a simple, rapid, and time-aware way to execute a process-driven engine for digital channels.

IT can no longer operate as the sole driver of digital change; there is simply too much demand placed on IT departments from businesses hungry to adapt and move fast to meet aggressive business goals. Digital process automation helps by giving organizations a way to both distribute operations and to increase the reach of the results of those operations. Process Director helps by implementing digital business excellence across the entire organization, so that a company is better equipped to manage their human capital and optimize their technology investments.

Through DPA combined with BPM, the tactical steps required of processes are able to be managed in an automated process flow. The human element can enhance automation with insights that can be used as needed to refine outcomes. Together, these two operate to make efficient organizations equipped to put those efficiencies to work immediately, and for those who can best benefit from them.

How Does BPM Help Operational Excellence?

“An organization cannot simply shut down operations while processes are re-tooled for operational excellence.”

With greater flexibility and a framework for innovation, business process management (BPM) is improving how organizations apply technology towards their digital transformation goals. More than ever this connection is integral to an organization’s cultural improvements, as well as their contributions to overall operational excellence. BPM is driving digital transformation, and with it, is delivering greater efficiency, more widespread user adoption, and agility. All of these create an environment of continuous innovation. And now everything from meeting business goals to the management of IT infrastructures are undergoing a rapid evolution of operational capabilities, paralleling the evolutionary path of BPM technology itself.

Better outcomes through BPM and Operational Excellence

There is not just a single way to apply business process management for operational transformation. Organizations must be thoughtful in their approach— perhaps it’s employee efficiency, more collaboration, reduction in paper-based processes, or any myriad of outcomes. For organizations that have a concept of what “ideal” looks like, they will find that BPM provides them a platform to make the changes required to transform the way they operate and the results they get.

With an organizational mindset that encourages collaboration, efficiency, and continuous improvement towards becoming a true digital enterprise, BPM acts as a foundation for transformation. The right tools in the right organization can go a long way towards helping transform how work is accomplished, but giving people the ability to actively engage with these tools and contextual data to effect change is what truly has a transformative effect.

Process Director delivers a complete operational platform for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, one that provides low-code development, application integration, AI-driven decision-making capabilities, and other elements that map to organizational transformation goals. For those who rely on processes to drive their business goals, Process Director is recognized as much more than workflow software - it's a fundamental platform for how they operate their business.

Organizations that want to improve their operations through their digital transformation efforts need to concentrate their efforts around three key areas:

BPM Adoption and Usage

To build engaging tools that meet the needs of fast-moving organizations, Process Director delivers a way to create sophisticated, low-code digital applications that take into account the necessary data and workflow sources on the back-end, and considers how users on the front-end will actually use an application within a process. By being able to create simple apps that integrate relevant information, including smart forms and processes, users can get information they need, can contribute with their own informed input, and can glean insights that will help them perform better.

To truly enhance operational efficiency, processes must be easy to use for those who need to build and use them. True BPM provides that and reflects it in elegant, simple usability that encourages repeatability and adoption.

Collaboration is Key to Operational Excellence

With capabilities that facilitate connecting and communicating across departments, and even externally, BPM enables organizations in creating a digital environment where applications, forms, and data sources can be included into a collective portal. This delivers the assets, timelines, and other important information needed to change how work gets done. It enables more engagement and participation, too, because it is optimized to deliver and transact through digital channels that older systems cannot do.

The digital transformation of enterprises cannot happen on an application-by-application basis, however. Companies that want to align their processes to business goals need the ability to apply digital transformation through the use of smart workflow and processes. To serve these needs, Process Director provides digitally transformative and contextual workflow solutions, facilitates efficient distribution of documents and assets, and streamlines the monitoring and management of information.

Transparency Provides Clarity

Process Director maps directly to operational excellence is because of the transparency it provides. BP Logix has customers who, prior to using Process Director, could not place the location of a document during its approval routing, and did not know when to expect a business action to be completed. By employing BPM technology actions are now automated and each status is given real-time visibility, enabling quick remediation. That visibility means that goals and deadlines can be applied and met rapidly and in context with business goals. That, in turn, leads to far more efficient planning according to whatever schedules (quarterly, yearly, by-project, by team) are demanded by the organization.

With the added level of visibility comes the ability to review and analyze outcomes. Knowing where things tend to stall, and where there is room for process improvement enables the business to continuously improve and optimize its actions -- and as they do, purposeful transformation begins to take shape. There are huge advantages to being able to review and understand in the midst of a transformation project. Like a continuous post-mortem, this allows a team to identify areas that can benefit from being modified or changed — and can bring together the players that will help them achieve their goals. This can be done concurrently with an eye towards efficiency and profitability, and involves all necessary decision makers in the process.

This is how transformation happens. An organization cannot simply could shut down operations while process are re-tooled for operational excellence. This is not a “lift-and-shift” activity because for it to be successful, it requires context for those who will be close to processes - end-users, LOB managers, decision makers; pretty much everyone in the organization has to internalize operational excellence into their business approach. Process Director enables consistency and enhancement of technology by creating better, more inclusive processes.

BP Logix recognizes that those closest to business issues are in the best position to create corresponding solutions. Having the ability to adapt as goals and business needs change, all without having to engage with IT or apply technical expertise results in faster implementation of meaningful solutions. People being able to respond rapidly to issues, coupled with tools that support their need to make changes, all leads to the best kind of digital transformation.

The transformational advantages provided by Process Director are championed by a wide variety of BP Logix customers in different vertical markets. While they may seek different goals, the common thread among them is less about the computing capabilities themselves, and more about the benefits an organization realizes from more visibility, more collaboration, easier ways to collect and distribute information relevant to processes, and a culture that is steeped in the idea of operational excellence.

The Origins of Business Process Management

Business process management has been around for as long as there have been systems. Adam Smith penned “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776 and described the division of labor as a way to improve organizational processes. In 1911, Frederick Taylor Winslow, often considered the father of modern management, published “The Principles of Scientific Management” that emphasized standardization of methods, considered improved working conditions, and espoused cooperation among different groups within an organization. Even as the world has become enamored with the latest technology, smart enterprises recognize that the best way to optimize these solutions is when they are deployed across teams that have a process mindset.

What Business Process Management Software Should Do

In terms of approach and goals, not much has changed about BPM - it is still the most effective way for organizations to optimize the way they assign tasks, use resources, and ensure efficiency. In an environment where digital transformation efforts are causing both IT and business unit teams to accelerate the speed at which their teams can meet new, and changing goals, business process management software is called upon to facilitate success. If properly executed, BPM supports process design, execution, optimization, and continuous improvement, backing efforts to drive digital transformation. Applications, workflows, new tools, and entirely different ways of working can be normalized when they are driven with a process-based mindset. In fact, no company can thrive without a dedicated approach to change and adoption of new solutions. Fortunately, the right business process management software serves as an agile, adaptable foundation for companies that need to change rules, deploy resources, and act with real-time immediacy in order to stay competitive.

Process Director: The Next Generation of Business Process Management Software

Rather than approaching business process management as a linear set of functions, Process Director applies machine learning to help teams derive analysis of events, responses, and decision points to predict activity that can be enhanced through rapid, agile improvements to processes. With capabilities that support validation, verification, optimization, and deep insights, Process Director helps users evaluate the performance of their processes. And as a platform for process-based collaboration, integration with social media and enterprise apps, and real-time decision management, it is a business process management software solution that extends its capabilities across the entire enterprise.

BPM as a Customer Retention Tool

Peter Drucker, the great management thinker, famously said that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. Businesses know that they must also retain that customer to continue to derive sustainable profits. The most astute companies understand how to use BPM to create a customer-tailored chain of events and activities that deliver exceptional value to these customers.

These companies use their business process management software to create end-to-end processes that extend outside of the company walls, connecting with customers and delivering results at a speed and efficiency that differentiates them from competitors. Customers are no longer satisfied with having a product sold to them. They seek relationships with the vendors with whom they do business, and want to know their needs are not just met in one-off fashion, but that they are integrated back into the company processes to ensure continuous improvement.

Your business process management software solution is an integral tool in creating a better customer journey through things like case management and predictive processes. These things allow for customization of processes that ultimately deliver a unique solution for customers, and anticipate what customer needs will be. Smart BPM solutions are also highly adaptive which gives companies an easy and rapid way to correct aspects of product delivery and customer interaction.

Business process management software solutions like Process Director apply a case management approach which enables companies to integrate data and documents from various applications into a shareable profile of each customer. This provides clarity for all workflows so that decision-makers can identify potential issues and rapidly apply improvements; this ultimately enables them to achieve results faster and with better context, and demonstrates to customers that their needs are important.

Process Director also has native integration with many modern enterprise applications which enables workflows to be comprehensive in the data they can deliver. Users can build workflows with Process Director with the benefit of data from the full complement of application modules that impact decision making. In this way, case management-based workflow becomes a critical component of outreach, responsiveness, and retention for key customers.

Business Process Management Software Should Facilitate ALL Connections

For more than a generation, business process management (BPM) has been used by forward thinking enterprises to create an efficient path to achieving their objectives. Organizations may subscribe to different schools of thought around how best to use their business process management software, but all have benefitted from the idea that good processes—adapted as needed and adhered to with discipline—are the most important tool they apply to achieving operational excellence.

What they have discovered is the essence of BPM: when technology is used to support and improve business activity, while adhering to principles of operational excellence, it can lead to dramatic competitive advantage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUuQYbYdOro

As software “is eating the world”, it seems that EVERY company is a software company, at least to some degree, and the software they use and manage becomes one of their most valuable assets. In order to operate at the speed of business and deliver the best solutions, both internally and to customers, it is critical that companies use all that their software solutions have to offer. In terms of strategic assets, having the latest, most feature-rich versions of software will facilitate the agility required by modern enterprises to create and sustain their competitive advantages. To reduce constant learning curves and internal disruptions, incremental upgrades of successful enterprise software solutions gives the greatest lift, for the least time and effort.

Software upgrades lead to operational success

By upgrading to new software versions, companies benefit from “outsourcing” innovation at the tooling and platform level. With a process engine that extends to new channels and drives towards new goals, an agile platform equipped with modern workflow tools becomes the facilitator of IT and LOB team strategy. Teams are better equipped to test and execute pioneering changes when they are building on a tool equipped with the latest code base.

BP Logix has always been hyper-focused on two things: 1) product innovation and 2) customer success. The Process Director development team continuously explores how best to enable customer success within their BPM software investment. Additional features and functionality are not meant simply as a way to keep score against our competitors. Rather, continual advancement enables customers to operate on a stable, consistent, and innovative BPM platform, one that will always be able to support their changing business needs. We recognize that upgrading software is a fundamental element of business continuity and this becomes a critical aspect of our competitive differentiator.

Continuous innovation relates to better outcomes

Some organizations seek to disrupt by being the first to market with something new and exciting; others focus on ensuring the delivery of a consistent, stabilizing workflow software solution which supports repeatable business outcomes. Doing either one of these things (or accomplishing anything along this spectrum) requires a foundation on which organizational strategists and developers can build.

When a company doesn’t upgrade to the latest versions, there is not only the opportunity cost of not taking advantage of new features, but there is also the sunk cost of falling behind. With each new version comes a learning curve as well as some up-front changes to how the supporting team manages processes. As an example, when Process Director was upgraded to its current version, 5.0, users had immediate access to a host of functionality that could deliver new benefits, including:

• Support for compliance frameworks through out-of-the-box controls and compliance automation.
• Sentiment analysis for contextual data to make operational improvements.
• Addition of machine learning capabilities to drive behavioral and timeline-driven decision making.
• UI enhancements for iterative list search, inline text editing, calendaring, and knowledge views.
• New connectors for a variety of enterprise applications, including SharePoint 365, Microsoft Exchange, and Laserfiche.

Software upgrades map to customer needs

Among the inputs used to build new innovation should be insights from analysts and a deep understanding of business and market trends. But the most significant effort, however, goes into delivering a product that equips customers with solutions to real problems. This means incorporating a bit of crowdsourcing into the model, where key requirements needed by actual users are built back into the product in a continuous cycle of development and delivery. This model reduces the total cost of ownership and provides “future-proofing” for users. Rather than having to reinvest in new integration models and establish connectivity with other assets and applications in the customer’s IT stack, upgrades ensure a continuous compatibility with operating systems, browsers, applications, and third-party solutions.

The solution product team should understand the trends that are being adopted by customers and seeks to implement functionality that supports these trends. All of our developments — among them, no code/low code BPM, AI, digital application development, support for IoT — have been created to support the changing landscape of organizations that are adopting new technologies and environments for their business processes. Some are aggressively moving workloads into the cloud, while others are building a hybrid infrastructure of on-premises and multicloud systems. Because Process Director upgrades are all governed by general principles of aiding the flexibility and adaptability of customer needs, companies are able to take advantage of new technologies at a pace with which they’re comfortable.

The economics of upgrades

New versions of software happen in incremental steps, but they can lead to transformative effects. The time and cost savings of not having to hyperfocus on platform improvements enables teams to emphasize the implementation of the business goals they are trying to achieve. Through upgrades, new technology is readily available to complement the organization’s desires to make advances in capabilities and in reduction of costs and complexity.

Software is like any other type of asset; its utility and value diminishes over time. But upgrades generate continuous value; it’s like there is a built-in evolutionary component that adapts to meet new needs and reduce any identifiable issues. This becomes a critical asset for organizations that want a cost-effective, sustainable way of driving newer and better solutions.

Higher education institutions must adhere to a disciplined cadence of organizational milestones in order to operate effectively. To manage workflows and processes, ensure that documentation is delivered and acted upon correctly, and instill accountability across all stakeholders is a hugely demanding job, irrespective of the size of the school. Low-code process automation is being employed by many higher educational organizations to help automate business processes around every aspect of the educational lifecycle, including student management, hiring, facilities, vendor management, capital expenditures, compliance and governance, and a host of other issues that demand continuous oversight and action.

Business process management (BPM) supports the various needs of a higher education administrator’s department, as processes drive virtually all aspects of campus and academic life. BP Logix customers regularly cite an agile approach to process which ensures higher education IT departments are able to serve a wide variety of stakeholders (administrators, parents, students, financial aid organizations, among others), and still maintain adherence to governmental, organizational, and industry governance requirements and compliance frameworks. Finally (but definitely not least importantly), higher educational institutions are often constrained by limited budget, and BPM provides a foundation for delivering effective solutions in a cost-effective way.

Process Director’s digital process automation capabilities enable schools to focus on what they do best: deliver quality education to students eager to improve their lives. Different schools look for various ways to achieve this, and the use cases of BP Logix customers illustrate how BPM can be a critical aspect of higher education digital transformation and organizational growth.

There are plenty of higher education BPM examples that show successful implementation and deployment of BPM Software across colleges and universities.

Higher Education BPM Examples

UCF Global is part of the University of Central Florida system, and acts as a hub for students and faculty who are studying and teaching abroad. In order to manage the thousands of students (the entire university system supports more than 64,000 students every year through 93 bachelors, 86 masters, and 27 doctoral courses of study.

A key challenge for UCF Global is handling the massive amount of private student data. While student records are protected by federal and state regulations, it’s also important for the school to build trust with students by doing everything possible to safeguard their data. Process Director helps solve for these requirements by providing:

• Comprehensive and automatic logging, with digital signatures, of every action taken by any actor, human or automated.
• The highest levels of encryption of data at rest and data in transit.
• Digital signature of documents.
• Granular permissions structure, with temporary privilege escalation.

By ensuring a safe environment for transactions and storage of student data, UCF has been able to build processes that automate the flow of student information through all processes in the student lifecycle, from admissions to graduation. UCF is a great higher education BPM example of success and efficiency.

Technical School BPM Example

For Davis Applied Technology College (DATC) in Utah, continuous innovation is core to its strategy for growth and student success. Another higher education BPM example, it uses Process Director for digital delivery of academic programs and other types of campus services, and it also supports staff by providing easy-to-use rapid application development capabilities to enable HR, finance, and other staff departments to create agile apps and process that are specific to their departmental needs.

Prior to using Process Director, these efforts were hampered by an outdated system of data collection and integration. The school had cabinets filled with paper forms but accessing them and applying them to digital routing channels was time consuming and inefficient. The IT team recognized how the processes that were manifested in those forms would benefit from workflow automation.

DATC's IT team created requirements, scope and criteria, then decided that Process Director BPM would be the most effective way to deliver on their goals. The IT team rolled out Process Director to a number of departments in only a short amount of time; in the student services department alone the school was able to deliver 17 completed processes within only a few quarters after being deployed. The Finance, HR and IT departments all showed massive progress in short tie. The Director of IT for DATC said of Process Director, “Knowing where our business processes and workflow are without having to chase them down is invaluable. What used to take days is taking hours — what used to take weeks is taking days.”

Higher Education Electronic Forms (eForms) Example

One of BP Logix’ higher education customers, the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), used Earth Day as the impetus for adopting a BPM approach. With a mandate to reduce paper usage, the UTEP IT team embarked on a plan to eliminate paper where possible by relying instead on the digitization of forms through scanning and digital storage. It quickly became clear that efforts to improve reviews and approvals through digital means could lead to other efficiencies through BPM.

With the rollout of this new digital emphasis, the UTEP IT organization began to implement Process Director BPM across more parts of the University. They focused their efforts on 1) the easy movement of documents across campus via electronic workflows, 2) enabling the review and approval of electronic documents via email, 3) the ability to have dashboards that allowed users to edit, view and receive messages regarding activities and tasks as well as to retrieve reports, forms and notifications, 4) Having electronic records signed via a digitized image of a signature and 5) ability to populate a series of form fields by extracting information from a database instead of requiring users to input that data.

With broad usage of Process Director’s capabilities, UTEP has instilled an agile, prowess-driven mindset in how IT delivers solutions to various departments. Speed has been a critical driver, but so too is how comprehensive Process Director is at ensuring that necessary participants are included in reviews and other transactions throughout the various university lifecycles.

Higher Education Digital Transformation

Higher education institutions are seeing more demand as young people come to rely on higher education as a path into the global economy. To serve these needs, Process Director is providing digitally transformative education workflow solutions, facilitating efficient distribution, as well as streamlining the monitoring and management of information.

The democratization of technology is completely reshaping business methods and the outcomes they seek to achieve. Helping organizations take advantage of this revolutionary shift in technology and business operations is low-code development. Low-code/no-code solutions, when leveraged properly, put users in positions to create applications that solve their immediate problems. By employing low-code capabilities that enable non-developers to connect various stakeholders and implement sophisticated functionality, users and teams create greater efficiency while business goals are achieved more accurately. Essentially, those closest to the problems can now have the greatest impact at solving those problems.

Low-Code Development: Enabling the Citizen Developer

When business process management was first delivered as a solution in the later part of the 20th century, it was seen as a revolution. Mostly driven through elements of workflow, BPM came to symbolize efficiency at mass scale at a time when technology was rapidly becoming widely adopted. As business users came to rely on BPM to achieve their business-related tasks, more demand was created on the IT teams that had to build complex applications. The IT queue began to lengthen and process-related applications weren’t being built to solve the problems needed to maintain an agile, growth-oriented culture.

So into the fray comes the notion that empowering employees to create their own applications would reduce the onus on IT, AND deliver applications faster. To deliver this, a highly visual dashboard of drag-and-drop workflow tools and software components were created so that “citizen developers” could create an application without having to use code. The combination of rapid development capabilities along with the low-code approach offers enterprises the ability build, deploy, and iterate quickly. Additionally, it provides ways to identify deep insights into usage and performance of applications.

Low-Code and Rapid Application Development

By integrating workflows and application functionality, comprehensive low-code platforms offer a solution that can move business objectives rapidly from conception to implementation. And by using an agile model for creating functionality as well as enabling users at different levels to contribute critical modifications to workflows and processes, organizations are able to respond more quickly to customer demand because they can build and modify customer-focused solutions based on the deep insights and predictive capabilities. With low-code (or no-code) solutions such as these, teams can deliver their own rich digital applications, on any platform, before competitors have laid down the first thousand lines of code.

Organizations that want to enable their teams with an agile low code development software solution should consider how this will change their current relationship with IT, and what demands it might place on their own team members. They should also, however, look closely at what is required to fully implement using low-code development and how it can best be applied. The following help to illustrate the realities of using low code development within a BPM environment:

Efficiency Means Different Things for Different People

The low-code option makes it easy to build applications fast, and speed has real economic value. But applications built from low-code environments are typically meant to address narrow issues and may not be optimized for efficiency. Business leaders need to understand that full-fledged, comprehensive applications typically still must adhere to the rigors of the full application development lifecycle.

Low-Code Development is Still Development

Anyone can drag-and-drop, but for it to generate anything meaningful, one must understand not only WHAT she is dragging and dropping, but how to use all that dragging and dropping to achieve a desired outcome. Those using a low-code platform need to understand the business context for what they’re building, and they need to also recognize how the “chunks” of applications work and fit together.

This requires that you create a culture that encourages employees to learn the basics of how applications are structured, where they fit within the internal technology stack, and how to build them around specific goals. It is also important to instill in process actors that application development takes more than just clicking; even though it can be done rapidly, it needs attention and oversight.

All Low-code Development needs Project Management

Many vendors position low-code development as a way for anyone to go into a room by themselves and come out hours later with a usable application. It’s just not that simple. While low-code gives many people the ability to contribute, they must still adhere to some level of requirements and apply discipline to keep application projects within scope.

In addition to building the applications, these citizen developers must also build tests, identify issues, scale easily, and ensure that they can deliver a highly secure application.

Low-code Security

Applications built through low-code are typically optimized for a speedy deployment. While not the same approach as DevOps, which prizes continuous iteration, low-code applications still are not necessarily built with a comprehensive set of security rules built into them. These applications, and the data they transact, will need to rely on third-party tools that the IT department must procure and deploy. This doesn’t slow down anything, but it is something that applications developers must be serious about because all applications must use some level of security monitoring and remediation capabilities with them.

Executing sophisticated business logic and using complex rules typically requires a standard application development approach. But getting solutions addressed rapidly and specifically can help organizations solve problems quickly after they are identified. Ultimately, using a low-code approach can save millions on expensive technical staff, incompatible packaged applications, and maintenance of obsolete code.

In order to organize and focus an organization’s efforts, and the people involved therein, business processes are developed. While the intention is to drive efficiency, issues of complexity and scale can creep in to derail their efforts. Even structured, disciplined organizations can get off track if they don’t adhere to the requirements they’ve built for their processes. To help maintain order, business process modeling and the ability to effectively build and manage parallel processes assists those tasked with managing processes. This results in more focused efforts, and acceleration toward target goals.

Time and Business Process Modeling

Time is a critical ingredient of a business process. It enables organizations to gain control over outcomes, while creating the ability to predict how later process stages will be impacted by earlier actions. This early notification leads to early intervention and response, which results in a more comprehensive view of business options, the players that can affect them, and how they can be executed. The capability to predict changes the entire nature of how we perform business tasks, and this is where Process Timeline becomes a defining element of Process Director, providing BP Logix customers with a particularly unique view into how BPM is handled.

BPM is often thought of as a linear function, but the reality is that any type of work is abstract. Most BPM vendors also tend to view processes through the lens of methodology, rather than for practical action and reaction. Process Director takes into consideration that processes, actions, and decisions are time-dependent, and that the amount of time needed to complete, route, authorize or do any number of actions for a given activity is dependent upon other activities in the process. Activities that may need to be adjusted as the process evolves.

Optimize with Parallel Processing

Effective timeline management provides advantages for organizations wanting to plan beyond just day-to-day operations. At any given time organizations must operate multiple processes to maintain continuous improvement and growth. The more valuable aspect of the timeline, therefore, is in the reliability of how it manages parallel processing; in other words, the most effective way to deliver better business outcomes is through the agility of multiple, disparate processes, all being managed through a realistic lens of timelines.

We created Process Timeline to enhance our customers’ abilities in measuring and predicting process execution times, and to do so for different stakeholders who need to manage different types of projects and processes. Process Director enables organizations to be flexible in modeling parallel processes, and to give non-technical users the controls to build and adapt these processes as their business goals change. Every step of the way is governed by three specific ways of thinking:

• What must complete before this step can begin?
• How long will this step take to complete?
• What processes do I have running in parallel?

Using Business Process Modeling to Deliver Value

The questions above help users apply elements of dependence, duration, and disparate-ness. Each activity will begin as soon as its prerequisites, if any, are complete. The result is a solution with many valuable features:

1. Modeling is greatly simplified: project owners list each activity, estimate its duration, and then drag-and-drop it onto the activity or activities that must complete before it can begin.
2. As many of the activities as possible will run at the same time, without the need to explicitly configure parallel behavior.
3. The status of the process can be determined at a glance.
4. At any point — even the moment the process is launched — the system can determine which activities, if any, may not complete by their due date.
5. The system records actual versus predicted execution times each time the process is run, and adjusts its time estimates accordingly.

Organizations look to Process Timeline to help them deliver better results with more addressable solutions. The benefits from Process Timeline include:

• Faster time-to-value: The simplified model gives businesses the opportunity to go from discovery to full automation faster than was previously possible.
• Proactive response: The earliest possible notice of potential delays (and the resulting missed deadlines) — even for tasks that haven’t yet begun — means that your business can predict a future problem, adapt to changing circumstances, and succeed in overcoming those obstacles.
• Improved compliance: Every approval, every piece of data entered, and every step of every process is permanently stored by Process Director, and can be made available to internal or external auditors, regulators, or risk management personnel.
• Rapid changes: Business processes must respond rapidly to changing requirements. Process Director is configured through a simple, intuitive graphical interface, requiring no programming skills. As a result, Process Director makes it possible for your processes to change at the speed of your business.

When a business goal is addressed through a realistic application of governance and execution, the likelihood of success is significantly increased. When a reasonable timeline can help identify potential issues and predict outcomes, the organization can adapt and be flexible in how it handles the situation.

Security is at the forefront of everything we do at BP Logix. By ensuring the safety of our customers’ data we facilitate their journeys to better, more secure, process applications. This means happy customers, and better business operations. Our recent SOC 2 certification is testament to our ongoing commitment to deepening the trust of our customers and other stakeholders in Process Director.

Achieving SOC 2 status gives us verifiable proof that we demonstrate operational excellence and deliver to our customers the assurance that we are committed to ongoing client security. It’s something that is both integrated in how we conduct our business, as well as in how we build our solution. Customers and partners want assurances that their data is not only being treated securely, but that the company that stands behind Process Director operates as a trusted source, and with continuous application of processes and methods that meet strict security-first requirements.

The SOC 2 standard was created, and continues to be governed, by standards developed and managed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It was designed as a way to enable organizations that transact private data with options for communicating information about their system descriptions and deliver sensitive information. While there are different SOC standards, SOC 2 is especially important for business processes because in addition to making sure data is safe when stored, it also pertains to data when it’s made accessible to external sources.

SOC 2 provides detailed information related to, and gives assurance of, an entity’s controls surrounding the security, availability, and processing integrity of the systems used to process users’ data. This also extends to the confidentiality of the data processed by these systems. SOC 2-compliant companies must demonstrate that they are managing customer data against five “trust service principles”—security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy.

For BP Logix customers, our SOC 2 compliance means they can trust that we operate with the following principles tightly integrated into Process Director and in every interaction with customer data:

BPM Security and Process Data

One of the most important aspects of any process is the data being used within the process. That data drives decision-making and enables various actors to apply their knowledge in the right context, at the right time. Contextual insights drive process activity, but what if that there was a compromise of your IT infrastructure? Data could be compromised, and it would normally require forensic analysis to understand just what was affected. SOC 2 compliance requires that organizations gather information and store them as logs. If a data breach is discovered, an audit of these logs means the customer can easily identify where issues exist, the data affected, and then more easily apply fixes. This is a huge help for customers because it can help them isolate issues before they become bigger problems for their company.

SOC 2 and Process Integrity

Process Director users not only actively develop process applications, but also constantly point to the demonstrable benefits yielded from them. In essence, this is all about identifying the right data within the organization’s infrastructure, putting it to use in the appropriate, contextual place, and transacting with it to achieve specific goals. And in order to do this, business processes have to be complete, substantiated, accurate, timely, and accessible.

However, the integrity of the process does not necessarily translate into integrity of the data. SOC 2 offers a framework so that the data being used is accurate and devoid of misuse. Adhering to SOC 2 means that data that containing errors prior to being included in a process will be detected. Process Director’s adoption of SOC 2 principles means that data, and the processes used with the data, are monitored with quality assurance procedures and ensure processing integrity.

Data Confidentiality and BPM

Process applications rely on specific levels of access and entry points; it’s one of the ways that control is applied to ensure consistency. Limiting access helps maintain a level of confidentiality, and SOC 2 Data is considered confidential if its access and disclosure is restricted to a specified set of persons or organizations.

Process Director supports this approach through federated identity management which enables companies to include third parties as active participants in their processes and workflows.  Authentication mechanisms like ADFS, SAML and OAuth give partners and suppliers access and create a new dynamic of collaboration, while giving companies greater control over who has access to what information.

Process Director was developed to provide the highest possible service to organizations that want to improve business performance through process-driven methods. With SOC 2 certification, Process Director can now ensure that customers get the highest level of availability, security, and consistency in our operational practices.

Invoice Process Solutions

Though digital transformation is upon us, many organizations still face a pesky outlier in the form of paper (or otherwise outdated) invoices. Because of this, invoice processing solutions are becoming a heightened priority. The most common complaints include:

• Lost invoices
• Incomplete information
• Illegible data
• Errors in data entry transfers
• Purchase order matching
• Supplier/vendor discrepancies

Accounts payable and management become so frustrated with these issues that they have turned to Process Director as their invoice processing solution. BP Logix client IDEX, has met with tremendous success from implementing Process Director.

IDEX’s Cost Savings

"We discovered that Process Director’s business logic lets you go as deep as you need to be consistent with your business process. With auditors, this has made our lives a lot easier."

IDEX Corporation manufactures and markets a wide array of engineered pumps and other industrial products
and is the world leader in fluid-handling technologies. They needed an invoice approval workflow automation software solution to centralize their CapEx process.

Accounting wanted to control the process for capital expense (CapEx) requests, a manual, paper-based process at that time. As a result of misplaced documents, Accounting was missing deadlines for audits.

After an exhaustive search, they decided Process Director  was the best fit for their invoice processing requirements as it:

• Would require minimal coding
• Would enable users to make changes easily
• Be scalable
• Be cost effective
• Be deployable out-of-the-box

Process Director Invoice Processing Benefits

Businesses choose Process Director to:

• Reduce errors
• Avoid delays
• Track invoices
• Consolidate multiple formats of invoices
• Reduce costs associated with paper forms

Process Director allows businesses to streamline the approval process when invoice processing begins. This can be triggered by the scanning of paper-based forms, completion of online information, or even manually triggered when certain conditions are met. Invoices are easy to find as keywords, metadata, and indexing creates multiple search criteria, removing the problem of losing the document.

Easy integration with current accounting software, as well as other systems and software, reduces the learning curve and the need for expensive, time consuming coding. Reporting is critical to invoice processing, as is having all approval activities to create a complete audit trail for business process governance. And finally, approvals can be made on any device, making mobile workforce approvals and submissions faster and easier than ever.

The flow for invoice processing typically follows a fairly standard process, but can get stalled if the processes lack automated mechanisms for ensuring smooth movement from creation to completion. Process Director enables these processes to be easily created and modified to meet the specific finance and operation needs of a company. It provides the flexibility to incorporate different requirements and procedures that map to changes in invoice automation policies. With Process Director, IT teams can create electronic forms the enable uploading of receipts into a convenient online workflow, either as one-off expenses, or as a bulk upload.

Additionally, Process Director allows for invoice categorization capabilities for different regions, amounts, and expense types, and can automatically generate accounting codes that correspond to those categories. Those codes can be used to populate the auto-fills to validate that the dropdowns are correct.

Transform your manual, paper-based processes with audit friendly, searchable, consistent electronic forms, automation processes and simple integration with current programs. Reduce redundancies and delays through streamlined invoice processing with Process Director.

Because processes use and transact massive amounts of data, much of it of a sensitive nature, enterprises must apply a security-first approach to their process management discipline. It is the responsibility of organizations to properly protect the data that is transacted within their environment; it’s a measure of responsibility to their own organization, and to partners and customers. To do so means asking the right questions and performing the necessary due diligence in creating an appropriate framework for data and asset security.

Organizations using BPM to digitally transform their processes are combining both technology and business best practices to support a more responsive, and responsible, way of managing data, people, and decision-making. BPM solutions like the SOC 2 Certified Process Director facilitate these goals through the integration of multiple applications into a platform that allows for collaborative, data-rich solutions.

What is the Right Type of BPM Security

Identifying the right type of security for your organization requires both technology and strategic thinking. One of the key reasons for adopting a BPM approach in the first place is to take advantage of the flexibility and dynamic nature that process management and workflow can deliver; it's an environment that maps to your business needs while effectively leveraging your technology investment.

Process Director has been developed to be an effective enabler of data transactions and communication, both into and out of your enterprise environment. Your business depends upon integration with both internal and third-party applications and the ability to share unique (and usually very sensitive) data with different types of stakeholders. This requires that your data be controlled effectively, but also not totally locked down.

Within all of this must be a security posture that safeguards data and ensures your technology assets and resources cannot be penetrated. Users can certainly apply security controls in their environment, but you have to continuously be aware of the risks and vulnerabilities. Ensuring you have processes in place to alert and remediate allows you to fix issues before they result in your company being the next corporate poster child for data breaches.

How to Ensure BPM Security

As you begin developing your framework for security, consider things like internal policies and requirements, compliance, application development, security training, automation, remediation, and other critical elements that are necessary to having a comprehensive security mindset. The following questions should help you and your team make smarter decisions around how you're going to procure, develop, apply, and manage security while you’re using Process Director:

• Support for alerts and remediation: Do your security policies demand that you alert partners and other stakeholders, as well as trigger remediation processes upon detection of security issues? If so, you should apply an automated, process-driven approach that will integrate security alerts so users can be made aware of issues based on the risk, along with information that identifies where the issues lives. Only with a clear view over your entire IT surface can a user adequately rectify issues.
• Customizing security settings: If you’re using Process Director in the cloud, your cloud security provider (CSP) will likely offer out-of-the-box security settings, but these might not be totally appropriate for your specific needs. Process Director in an on-premises environment will give you some predetermined controls, but these also may need to be customized to your needs. You will want to create guidelines for what levels of security are adequate, and then apply those requirements as controls across Process Director and other assets in your environment.
• Security management: Is security handled by a single team within your organization, or is responsibility handled across your enterprise? It is likely a team with the IT organization, and they should be aware of how broadly Process Director is being used, with specifics about teams and the role within those teams that are using it. Management has to be flexible enough that your security solution can extend to different teams based on their needs, skill levels, and requirements.
• Security Training: Process Director maximizes the contributions of more team members so they can be active participants in how applications are built and decisions get made. With that in mind, it's critical that there is a training roadmap for whatever security approach you choose to use. How will you handle security skills and training? Not every user will have a background in security, but training and education will go far in enabling them to innovate and build while adhering to smart security policies.

The goal of security, no matter what platform or environment you use, is to protect your critical data from attacks and from internal misconfigurations. By customizing your organization’s security framework to fit your architectural and platform needs, you can be better assured that you will be able to maintain continuous awareness and apply risk mitigation best practices.

Making an investment in a BPM solution has far-reaching implications, extending across many different areas of your organization. While the decision-making process most likely involves the IT department, beneficiaries include end-users in a myriad of business units. The chosen solution must be able to meet the demands of a wide range of users and business needs, but much of purchase team input will be biased towards their own individual priorities. Therefore, spending time considering what you will have to address in order to generate achieve structured success in your organization is critical.

Many technology solutions are purchased to address fairly specific use cases. LOB-specific applications, security tools, databases; with these kinds of tools, people can fairly anticipate the outcomes. A BPM solution, however, delivers value in a wide variety of ways and its benefits differ along with each team’s unique processes. With that in mind, it’s critical to establish a disciplined approach to the journey of vendor discovery.

Starting Your Journey To BPM Purchase Success

Initiating your plan to adopt BPM should begin with an honest and insightful analysis of the needs of the different groups within your organization. One of the things you’ll need to effectively assess the economics of your project is agreement among the different stakeholders who will be impacted by adoption of a new solution. Once identified, you should consider kicking off your vendor search by getting agreement on these questions:

• Process breadth: Will the solution need to enable our processes to work only internally, or externally as well?
• How will processes be accessed? What impact do I anticipate from mobile, social and other types of digital interaction?
• Are we looking at short-term, repeatable processes only? Is this limiting our ability to achieve better results from BPM?
• Are there documents and data sources that, if included in my processes, could make it more valuable?
• Could my processes be more valuable if it provided data analysis and metrics?

With a better overall sense of how the organization wants to proceed, and with a more accurate barometer of what you’re looking for, your organization should evaluate your decisions with these steps in mind:

Gathering requirements

Start by knowing the desired outcomes for your BPM solution, and then consider the requirements that will help you arrive there. These requirements are represent the functionality that the solution must deliver. This may seem laborious, but it’s best done by having team members walk through decisions, processes, milestones together. Almost like reading the script before actors go on stage, it allows team members to develop fine-grained clarity over what constitutes “have to.”

Remember that requirements must be both of a technology and business nature. If your solution needs the ability to operate in IoT devices and through social media integration, identify those things are requirements - those are technology elements that have to be part of your ultimate decision. Perhaps there are specific ERP systems you need to integrate with; ensure that information is accounted for. But also recognize that some solutions may have been deployed in verticals like yours and therefore may be better equipped for your environment. If that’s important to your team, make sure it exists in your requirement list.

Also consider your staff and resources; if this solution will be used broadly by non-programmers, then make sure you seek something that is low-code/no-code and uses a graphical user interface that empowers business users to participate in process management.

Evaluating BPM vendors

You’re looking at features and functionality, but you also want to work with a vendor that has a trusted brand and a legacy of happy customers. Ask to speak with customers that are actively engaged with your prospective vendor, read case studies, find the word on the street.

While you may need to kiss a few toads before you find your prince, spending time with different vendors will help you determine where there’s the best fit. It’s important to keep criteria like the following in mind:

• Does the solution map to my requirements?
• Does the product team have plans for future versions that will meet anticipated needs for my organization?
• Can the solution capable of doing things I might not yet have considered as critical for my organization?
• Can I do a proof-of-concept (POC) that is an accurate representation of the solution?
• What is the customer turnover rate for the vendor?

Remember that you are investing considerable financial and human resources into this endeavor, and the vendor should be able to patiently and effectively address your current and anticipated needs.

Getting buy-in

Many BPM projects fail because executives and decision-makers do not fully understand its value and how it will be used. Some will view it only as another technology solution and will either tacitly, but noncommittally acknowledge it, or perhaps they will actually question its overall variability. Getting buy-in for your BPM project from your business and technology leaders ensures that you will be equipped with the long-term resources required to deploy a sustainable BPM solution.

Educating execs about how BPM is a critical bridge that delivers cross-functional processes should be one of the first steps to demonstrating comprehensive value. When done correctly, cross-functional types of processes lead to a more collaborative working environment that demonstrate real, measurable results. Without a tool to support this interactivity, companies will continue to rely on inefficient modes of communication and application development, and because these inefficiencies breed delays, companies will always lag in their efforts to deliver meaningful solutions.

You have a vision for your BPM solution, but does your purchase team really understand what that is? Some educational material will be required, in-person meetings with influencers are important, and framing the conversations around value will all help you make your pitch. Create a vision that demonstrates how they can be part of something really important, like digital transformation, and show them the path to be a player in that process.

Do some modeling that actually shows what “value” actually looks like. Create a PowerPoint that highlights goals and plans for achieving them, a spreadsheet that shows cost savings, and flowcharts that show before and after scenarios. You want to paint a vivid picture of what differences you anticipate ahead. And not just differences, but also the subsequent benefits.

Preparing for launch

Whoever leads the BPM charge in an organization needs to communicate the impending changes in a way that emphasizes preparation. BPM adoption can be initially disruptive because it is something that can only be conducted through humans. That disruption, however, can be minimized by willingness to embrace the change.

The staff should understand what to expect and feel supported in their efforts. There are a lot of stakeholders, and it’s incumbent upon you to set expectations for how this project will impact them. For the IT team, they will have to build some connectors, do some testing, and identifying ways to add continuous change into the new BPM system. End-users will need some level of education before they begin to see demonstrable outcomes. Provide your team with timelines and milestones, but with a continual reiteration of the big picture, or ‘mission statement’.

Identifying “improvement”

All enterprises seek improvement from new technologies and business methods, yet there is a certain amount of naiveté in thinking that simply buying and using a new tool will ensure success. Remember that a BPM solution is not just deployed; BPM needs to be integrated into how the organization works. The essence of what BPM is and provides has to be embedded into the minds of employees and manifested in their work.

Do you know what results you are trying to achieve? A workflow is wonderful only if it improves results by delivering a result faster, better, or more efficiently. The key for you and your business is knowing what that “thing” is. You should give serious thought to the results you are currently achieving— and create a model for what a post-BPM world would look like. Make intelligent, thoughtful predictions about the improvements you will see, then measure whether or not you are actually achieving them.

Once you have initiated your solution, you can begin to look at the results: Are projects being accomplished faster? Did you eliminate time-consuming steps? How is process automation contributing to your company’s overall efficiency and effectiveness? Remember to think about the metrics that will demonstrate the improvements you wanted to achieve — then analyze your processes to determine whether or not BPM is helping you reach them.

Good luck on your journey – the future is bright ahead!