IBM Blueworks Live, the roadmap to tackle process improvement

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1 IBM Blueworks Live, the roadmap to tackle process improvement Revolutionize how you discover, document and collaborate processes and decisions Contents 2 Capture the right requirement 3 Involve the right participants in each requirements definition 4 A platform for continuous improvement 4 How one organization uses IBM Blueworks Live 4 Next steps Executive summary IBM Blueworks Live is a cloud-based process improvement solution that has been embraced by business leaders worldwide. Blueworks Live makes it easier for you to achieve process discovery and documentation, because this IBM solution is built with collaboration in mind. Expect a process improvement solution that is intuitive yet powerful. Leaders today recognize that a clear understanding of processes is fundamental if they wish to achieve true enterprise agility. As organizational leaders move quickly to refocus their activities around the services they perform, how they do something gains greater importance over what they do. The how of an organization is made up of the processes it executes daily. So more than ever before, organizational leaders are motivated to uncover everything they can about their processes from acquisitions to hiring to strategic intent requirements. Imagine tracking a process as it moves from your back office operations environment towards your front office administration environment, Envision a state in which you know how your customers are treated each time they interact with your organization. Imagine that your staff is empowered to innovate at scale. With Blueworks Live, all this can be transformed into a blueprint upon which your leaders can make better decisions. This strikes to the heart of business, because it is the quality of daily decisions that determines the future of a team, a department or an entire organization.

2 Employ the prism of process to better understand your requirements for hiring processes, system upgrades and new strategic directions. With IBM Blueworks Live, you can realize value rapidly as you uncover, capture and communicate requirements at large. Capture the right requirement Before your organization gets invested in implementing a requirement, it is essential that the entire stakeholder pool that surrounds the activity become involved. These stakeholders must reach a clear understanding of what the problem area is aimed at addressing. Organizational leaders can no longer afford to throw valuable time and money into projects that are not aimed at addressing specific gaps in the way the business is carried out. This is where the act of process discovery and documentation becomes the crucial first step on your road to transformation. Once your organizational leaders gain a clear grasp over what their organization is in the business of doing and how it carries out its business, your leaders will be better positioned to perform the next step: the analysis that searches for the gaps that must be filled in order for your organization to improve. IBM Blueworks Live empowers you to go as deep as you require. Use Blueworks Live when your goal is to document entire processes, or when you wish to explore various dimensions of the individual activities inside those processes. Learn who is tasked with carrying out a particular task and discover the costs associated with that task. Know which systems are involved in carrying out a business task. Learn which interfaces need to be developed in your existing systems or in new systems. Furthermore, if yours is an organization that has specific dimensions or properties that it deems more important to document and measure, Blueworks Live helps you to accomplish this throughout your environment of processes. 2

3 Once your organizational leaders perform a review that is appropriately thorough, they can carry out the analysis of existing processes, procedures and systems. The Analysis view within IBM Blueworks Live is a critical feature that leaders find extremely useful. Whether your business is large or small, you can narrow down priorities. You can determine the right areas for improvement. streamline their processes. In the healthcare industry, for example, leaders use the analysis performed through IBM Blueworks Live to justify new layouts of emergency departments to cut down the time wasted by medical personal moving from one area of the hospital to another area. Involve the right participants in each requirements definition IBM Blueworks Live is built on a foundation of collaboration features. Whether an individual is front-line staff or is a Six Sigma Black Belt, that person is now more empowered than ever to add value. Anyone can contribute the smallest details of how a particular process works, and can document these details in a rapid manner. These detailed insights reveal how you can fill the gaps that are identified through your analysis. IBM Blueworks is browser based, with a simple and intuitive interface that gets out of the way of the task of process improvement. Blueworks Live has been able to attract more than 15,000 active users who now feel, for the first time, that they can have their voices heard. The Analysis view within IBM Blueworks Live Experience the power of a solution that can have positive impact throughout the wide range of your business. When you address the type of requirements that emerge out of your Blueworks Live analysis activity, consider the lower end of the spectrum. Leaders who use Blueworks Live have added headcount in the areas in which they found gaps that affected service levels. At the other end of the spectrum, leaders who use IBM Blueworks Live have made multi-million-dollar investments in technology to help them reduce costs and to Now I think people truly, holistically understand that, once they understand their processes and how they do things, they basically have the keys to the kingdom. They can do anything. They can look at any part of the organization and improve anything they choose to improve Carla Wolfe, senior business analyst, Elevations Credit Union 3

4 The different stakeholders throughout your organization can now get aligned around what needs to get done and also how things get done. The individuals who make up your workforce can take action in real time through the instant messaging or playback functionality available with Blueworks Live. They can take action asynchronously, because they have the ability to leave (and reply to) comments that are made to various aspects of a process,.ibm Blueworks Live helps you to break down the silos within your organization. This action in turn contributes to significantly better requirements when your goal is to determine specifically what you must get done in order to improve. A platform for continuous improvement IBM Blueworks Live brings a a wiki-style approach to the discovery, documentation and analysis of process improvementrelated requirements. Expect a solution that becomes an active participant in your efforts to institutionalize innovation throughout your organization. Organizational leaders recognize that once a requirement is captured and communicated, an iterative process must be put into place. This iterative process must be one that will change and adapt over time.in the past, requirements would be printed and handed off from one department to another; the changes that subsequently occurred were inevitable. This type of approach costs valuable time and resources that today s agile organizations can no longer afford to support. IBM Blueworks Live keeps your requirements alive in a continous manner after you complete the initial analysis phase. This ability provides much value for leaders who seek agility, because it gives business requirements the power to morph and change over time. In that sense, Blueworks Live supports a single source of truth when you create your organization s roadmap to its future state. How one organization uses IBM Blueworks Live When he was first tasked with making a new healthcare facility as innovative as possible, Doug Johnson, the director of innovation for the Presbyterian West Side Healthcare System, realized that he faced a challenging endeavor. I ve never been faced with a challenge like opening up a 68-bed hospital and designing all of the processes within that environment, Johnson says. We need to make sure that all of our systems are going to work before we open up the facility, and we needed a way to define and standardize all of these needs. Using IBM Blueworks Live, hospital leaders were able to identify gaps and conflicts in its processes quickly, including some processes that had been causing inefficiencies for years. Hospital leaders were able to design a process to ensure that medications were available for new procedure designs for their new hospital. The performance of Blueworks Live helped to identify where gaps existed, and leaders were able to take action to institute mitigation activities to ensure patient safety. Hospital leaders discovered gaps in scheduling, and they were able to connect departments so that patients could be transferred more efficiently. Next steps Learn more about the leaders who rely daily on IBM Blueworks Live to help them analyze, capture and communicate the right requirements the right way, and to the right people. Visit 4

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6 For more information Get started today. Visit blueworkslive.com for a 30-day trial at no charge. To learn more about Blueworks Live, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner. Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the IT solutions that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We ll partner with credit-qualified clients to customize an IT financing solution to suit your business goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. IBM Global Financing is your smartest choice to fund critical IT investments and propel your business forward. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing Copyright IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY USA Produced in the United States of America April 2012 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and Blueworks Live are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. It is the user s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other products or programs with IBM products and programs. Please Recycle WSW14188-USEN-00