I recently had the opportunity to speak with Peter Apathy, Systems Transformation Project Manager at the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), about their successful implementation of Blueprint.  He said “Blueprint is the first place I go when I want to document or  analyze a process.” SEARHC is a consortium of 18 remote Alaska Native communities, many of which can only be reached by plane or boat.  Blueprint gives SEARHC the ability to unify the workflow processes across these regions.

In February of 2009 SEARHC launched the ALERT Emergency Department Information System, becoming one of the first and largest tribal health organizations in the country to begin implementing this comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR) system.  The ALERT EMR is interconnected to ancillary systems (Novarad for diagnostic imaging, Mediware for pharmacy, Orchard for laboratory, etc) using the Health Level  Seven (HL7) messaging protocol.  HL7 facilitates a standard language between systems, but SEARHC recognized the need for process mapping and documentation in the messaging methodology since every vendor accepted and passed along data such as x-ray orders, lab reports and billing information in slightly different ways.

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The October ‘09 update is now available on blueprint.lombardi.com! This release has some exciting enhancements that I think will make Blueprint an even more valuable tool for discovering and sharing your processes. We’ve added a new process analysis mode, several new properties to the Blueprint documentation template, email notifications for changes happening to your processes, and a many more improvements based upon your feedback.

Let’s take a look the enhancements in detail:

• Enhanced Process Analysis: We’ve introduced a new analysis mode in today’s release that allows you to instantly highlight the areas of your process that need attention and improvement. When you switch to analysis mode, Blueprint heat maps both the discovery map and process diagram with the data you’ve entered in the details for each activity. This allows you to instantly see which parts of your process have problems, excessive cost or cycle time, or that are risk points. It substantially increases the visibility you have into all of your processes, and is an excellent tool to help you make a business case for improvements.

  You can find the Analyze button in the toolbar whenever you’re viewing a process. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

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This morning, the August ‘09 update went live on blueprint.lombardi.com! The team has been hard at work over the past month and I think you’ll be very happy with the latest improvements. We’ve improved the portability of your processes with the first shipping implementation of the BPMN 2.0 export format, added full text search across all of your process data, and made substantial usability improvements to Blueprint’s activity feeds based upon your feedback.

Let’s take a look the enhancements in detail:

• BPMN 2.0 Exports: We’re committed to ensuring that you can use your processes in whatever way you’d like with whichever system that works best for you. To that end, we’re delivering the first shipping implementation of the BPMN 2.0 export format. We expect BPMN 2.0 to quickly become the de facto standard for exchanging process diagrams among modeling tools. The BPMN 2.0 specification just reached beta status, and as Bruce Silver pointed out there are areas where it still could be improved. We hope that our implementation can help further the discussion and serve as a reference for others in the industry. We think that well designed and supported standards are hugely beneficial for our customers and we’re committed to making BPMN 2.0 just that.

  And don’t forget: Blueprint also supports XPDL 2.1 to give you the maximum flexibility with your models today.

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Recently the Foreign Currency Exchange Corp. (FCE) recorded a webinar with TechTarget discussing the experiences that they have had with BPM.

FCE, which is a subsidiary of the Bank of Ireland Group, provides a broad range of currency conversion products and services to wide range of industries and uses both Blueprint and Teamworks as an alternative to traditional application development. Using BPM lets them deliver projects an eye-popping 50% faster than traditional  approaches.

Some important take-aways discussed in the webinar include:

• How they became self sufficient after their very first project
• How they gather business requirements in a much more collaborative way
• How they recevied valuable feedback during development, not waiting until after it’s 80% built
• How to engage the business to take ownership in their business applications

To listen to the FCE webinar, go here (you will need to register) or alternately you can listen to a podcast version of the interview here.

For those of you looking for hard metrics to help you justify your own BPM initiatives, I recommend you read the July 23rd issue of Campus Technology Magazine (CTM). It includes an extensive interview with Stewart Mixon, the COO of Medical University of South Carolina.  

The article, “MUSC cuts error rates and improves efficiency with automation” discusses the financial grants management process that MUSC implemented in Lombardi Teamworks. It also points out the reasons why they elected NOT to go with an ERP system to accomplish this project, and and how they incorporated some legacy systems into the process.

Some nice ROI figures that MUSC achieved:

• [Teamworks] has reduced the per-grant error rate dramatically, from 85 – 90 percent down to just 20 - 25 percent initially, then finally 2 percent to 3 percent as users learned to use more efficient processes.
• “human touches” during the grants allocation process, traditionally a source of errors in any process, have dropped 65 percent.

You may read the whole story here

Recently, two Lombardi customers were interviewed by SearchCIO’s Manufacturing News as part of an article that discusses how manufacturers are using BPM [i.e., Lombardi Teamworks] to assist with making their supply chain more effective.

The article, entitled “BPM tools help firms bridge communications gaps in supply chains,” provides some interesting insight into how manufacturers can receive value from BPM. 

One of the customers is El Araby, an air conditioner manufacturer based in Cairo, Egypt. They had this to say:

 “Before Lombardi Software [BPM] was in place, all we could do for a customer was recommend them to the nearest service center and that was the end of it… We had no clue what happened next until the monthly report came out afterwards. Now, the Lombardi BPM software system handles all of the details of the repair process, even down to what technician is working on what appliance in what service center.”

We’re pretty proud that Teamworks customers around the world like to share such great testimony!

You can read the whole story here.

I’m pleased to announce that the Blueprint July ‘09 Update is now available on blueprint.lombardi.com! This release has addressed some of the top requests we’ve heard from you. We’ve expanded the ways you can leverage the models you create in Blueprint, given you additional ways to secure and control access to your account, and tackled several other improvements that you suggested in the Blueprint Forums.

Let’s take a look the enhancements in detail:

• Model Portability With XPDL: We’re committed to ensuring that you can leverage the processes you create in Blueprint in anyway you like. That includes giving you the ability to seamlessly execute the processes in Lombardi Teamworks, but also any other tool that you choose. To that end, we’re committed to supporting the BPMN 2.0 specification when it is released. However, we know that you need a way to use your models today, so we’ve introduced the ability to export your processes to XPDL 2.1 format in this release. You never need to feel “locked in” when using Blueprint — you can get your information out in any format you’d like, whether that be as a PowerPoint presentation, Word document, or in XPDL.

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Last week, UK analyst firm Butler Group published their latest Technology Audit report on Lombardi. In it, analyst Mike Thompson reviewed the capabilities of Teamworks 7 as they relate to Butler’s product assessment methodology in the areas of building, optimizing and managing processes faster and smarter in this Technology Audit.

It’s a good report for you to send to those colleagues in your company who are interested in 3rd party takes on BPM technology.

The bottom line – excerpted from the report:

“Teamworks 7 is a full-featured BPM solution, with all the functionality expected of a market-leading solution. It really differentiates itself from its competitors in two distinct areas, one technical and one non-technical. By using a shared-model architecture, Teamworks ensures that the process model is always up to date, regardless of where and when changes to the model are made. Thus, changes to a running process instance can be reflected back to the high-level model. From a non-technical point of view the major focus has been on ensuring ease of use for any and all of the participants of process lifecycle management. This ensures that the people involved in the process are able to help in optimising the process, which makes far more sense than handing off the task to a ‘process expert’.

Allied to Teamworks is the Blueprint solution which creates a collaboration and communication environment that further empowers the process participants in all aspects of process management. A final factor worth highlighting is the graphical nature of the product – not just in process design terms, but in having the ability to graphically represent KPI and/or SLA non-compliance on the process map.”

We couldn’t agree more!

Butler customers can access the full Technology Audit report here, or you can also get it compliments of Lombardi here (if you have not registered with us before, you will be asked to do so).

I’m proud to announce that CIO Magazine has named NACCO Materials Handling Group as one of this year’s CIO 100 winners in recognition of its success with BPM. This is the second year in a row that one of Lombardi’s customers has won an award for their BPM project!

The 2009 CIO 100 Awards honor 100 companies that are creating new business value by innovating with technology.

We are especially proud that Teamworks was the only BPM product specifically mentioned by CIO as delivering customer value in the awards, and that it has saved NACCO approximately $2 million, while improving their customer satisfaction and time to market.

Congratulations to the NACCO team!

Dave Angelow, adjunct professor at Texas State University just finished teaching a semester long course in Production and Operations Management.  The course, which focuses on the supply chain and value chain as well as some production methods, is a core requirement in the school of management.

I talked with Dave to hear how the course went and how BPM fit into the syllabus.

>>My talk with Dave (5:12): Take a Listen

Prof. Dave Angelow of Texas State in action.

Some of the topics Dave tackles:

• How a fair number of students also have day jobs (the course is taught at night) and how this allows them to directly apply what they’ve learned.
• How BPM, both Business Process Management and Modeling, fit under the quality management section
• BPM as a means of compressing cycle time and extracting more value for customers.
• Using Blueprint for a hands on modeling exercise and value the students saw in the tool.

Blueprint Educational Program

Lombardi provides free Blueprint subscriptions for educational use.  If you are teaching or taking a course where you think Blueprint would be appropriate, please contact us at blueprint@lombardi.com to learn more.