Ideal BPM software for an organisation going through major change

The Project Management Institute of New Zealand (PMINZ) is going through major change at governance, operational and commercial levels. Also as a non-profit organisation PMINZ faces unique challenges such as the staff are nearly all volunteers and are from all over New Zealand. Where Promapp is having the biggest impact is giving PMINZ the tools to plan, implement and manage change and implement continuous improvement. So what are these tools and how have they made an impact? Document management: Promapp's excellent document management functions has enabled PMINZ to move from a legacy document management system for key documentation covering policies and procedures to a much more comprehensive easy to use system. User access and permissions: This is easily configured to mirror the PMINZ organisational chart and business rules. Permissions are proving very useful currently during the intensive review of the governance of the organisation to restrict access to policies that are still under review by the Board of Directors. Process development: Promapp is challenging PMINZ to simplify and restructure all processes using plain language for the published versions of processes. One important example of this is in the revision of HRM practices and procedures. Up until their update in Promapp the old processes were outdated. The revision of HRM in Promapp is now having a major impact on our organisation through better recruitment, induction and recognition of volunteer achievements. Feedback and improvements: The ability to implement continuous improvement within PMINZ using Promapp is also starting to have major benefits by the ease of which users can suggest improvements to processes. They now are more engaged. The most critical success factor of all has been is to ensure that the Board of Directors and senior management have fully supported not just the changes taking place but understanding what Promapp can deliver. So my recommendation is during the early stages make sure the key decision makers and influencers are educated about and understand what Promapp is about. The final comment is that is has been very liberating for our organization to free itself from the large wordy, difficult to read Operations Manual to an easy to use online software tool. Promapp is warmly recommended.

Pros

Ease of use, customization, makes it easy to simplify processes

Cons

More customisation in how processes are displayed (particularly the use of the swimlane display).

Excellent tool for any size company to engage entire workforce!

Explore the different ways your employees can share and interact with the material in your Promapp library. Promapp works well with SharePoint. Promapp is a cloud-based tool and stores your processes remotely. Consider having a backup of material in case there is ever an outage. I can say to Promapp's credit that this is quite rare and they've moved to AWS for cloud-reliability, but some managers within your organization may insist on a backup "rainy day" plan being in place to access crucial material.

Pros

This is an extremely intuitive system for all of the users within our organization. This system has a friendly user-interface that is very easy to read, easy to write within, easy to navigate, and easy to leave feedback. This is definitely a no-brainer choice when looking for a software tool that our work would engage well with. If you actually want your entire workforce involved with process improvement efforts (rather than just a handful of people trained in a more complex BPM tool), there's simply no better program out there than Promapp. This software has very robust features to get the job done. Users can opt for a visual map or text outline served up to them for any given process and the system remembers preferences. Furthermore, if you often have slight variations to existing processes, you can tweak users on the back-end so that they receive the variation most appropriate for them by default.

Great Kiwi Innovation

I have been using Promapp for over 4 years now and love it more today then ever before. Having gone through several organizational transformation programs the bottom line is still true, you need to have an organized, well thought through process to make an organization productive and profitable. The simplicity with which we can build and change processes aligned to our organization is just elegantly simple, allowing all our people to understand what their core role processes are and how they fit into the bigger picture. It allows us to simply deliver guides, hints, tools and explanations about how our business works to our people. One of the additional features I enjoy is the Risk module, which allows me to identify, score and measure risks and mitigations that exist in our processes. Overall the tool is simple to build, simple to deploy and simple to use. It is an enabler, it will do nothing on its own but if you allow it to work for you then you can make your business a much more productive place! The team at Promapp have always been fantastic to work with, from pre-sales, consulting, through deployment to BAU support. Their vision for future use and enhancements is also excellent, which allows me to feel confident about the future of the tool. In short, I'm a fan

Pros

Simple do create, develop and deploy

Cons

There are some situations where the tools wont create exactly what you want

Promapp brings processes to the people

Using Promapp has been an eye opener for how simple things can be and it is not just about the software itself but also the company culture and vision. It is clear why Promapp are in the market and what they want to achieve with their product so it breaths simplicity, collaboration and continuous improvement. As a process professional with many years experience in BPM it can be a mindset change but you quickly realize the tool is for the people working in the processes and not just for us process nerds. You can tell Promapp has been built for high usability and is aiming to bring processes to the people and not the other way around and to make processes fun as sharing and collaborating around processes is exceptionally easy and works in a social media style that everyone knows how to use. Integrate with SharePoint, share links to the processes with customers and suppliers to increase collaboration and with a feedback feature you get improvement ideas right into the tool, it is so much easier and better than before. Creating and maintain processes is very intuitive and whenever you are in doubt there is great support videos to guide in process mapping techniques and how to use the tool. Another key feature is the governance part where the process owners and stakeholders get control over all process they own or are involved in, be notified if something changes and can in one view answer questions as; Are the processes up-to date? Are they used? What do the users feel about the process? and more. From my perspective I see Promapp as outstanding in its segment, or actually in its own segment as I have not seen another tool with the same functionality.

Pros

The simplicity and usability, great collaboration features, sharing and SharePoint integration possibilities and of course excellent governance functionality. More advanced things as process timeframe and costing is possible and made easy.

Cons

I think the advanced process professional might lack support for BPMN 2.0 and other features the more advanced process software's have but I understand Promapp does not have that as an aim, they have all the employees as a target group and the focus on simplicity, ownership and overview is more important.

Business.........finally catching up with evolution!!

Promappian Explosion' is enabling the business world to finally catch up with human evolution by providing a 'visual representation of what we do'....suddenly the language barriers between an executive vision full of concepts and mission statements and the grass roots processes to deliver upon expectations have a common visual and intuitive system that transcends the hierarchy of a company organogram by tapping into the human DNA and the way we interpret the world. The 'Promappian Explosion' has also given rise to what I call the 'Cultural Evolution'....regardless of your position you are able to identify where you fit and how you contribute the business, the realisation that you are not an isolated cog in a large machine but an integral part and contributing factor to a business' success meets another evolutionary desire, that of belonging and being valued within the pack, I and you are replaced by we and us...in the main we interpret our world through visual means but we express our thoughts and beliefs through our language and there is noticeable positive shift in the vernacular used across the business...about the business. ProMapp is being embedded in the DNA of our business, an intuitive tool that speaks a universal language providing everyone opportunities to contribute in describing how we do what we do and to then allow positive critical analysis and continued improvement whilst creating an audit trail and improving the culture of the business is pretty difficult to argue against.......evolution at work.

Pros

Simple, intuitive tool that connects the dots of how we do business.

Cons

Closed protocol ca sometimes hinder business tailoring...but understandable.

Promapp is the best process management tool I have ever used!

Ability to monitor, amend and improve processes within our business; being visible to all employees without the necessity to send numerous emails (which are not always read).

Pros

It is simple to use, I like that you can upload screen shots, documents, photos and even videos. The incident manager has been very useful in monitoring incidents both internally and from our customers. Allowing reports to be run and trends to be captured that are utilised in executive reviews with my customers. It is also great that they are kept updated throughout the life cycle of an incident. The fact that an incident highlights the need to review and amend a process is brilliant. I also find the fact that you can share a process via a link with your customer invaluable, allowing us to work in partnership with our customers to make improvements.

Cons

There is very little I can criticise about this software; the value comes from its content and configuration. It would be useful to be able to search for a specific incident

Well presented and set out software that can be used intuitively

Pros

It sets out complex processes simply and are able to prepared quickly. Allows URL links and document links; Can be scaled for different organisational size. Can be used for induction, risk management and health & safety/training. Can be used as a basis for testing. Can share processes with other organisations (even if they don't have the product) and can receive processes from other like- organisations who are prepared to share their processes and then adapt these to your own environment,

Cons

It is a financial commitment, so small organisations may not have the capital to invest. It still needs internal champions, though it is easier to motivate staff to use promapp than most products and that require data and therefore effort and thought to keep up to date.

Distribution simplified...

Our Distribution Centre is a key component of our business organisation, and it is essential we provide the best possible service to our customers - this means being as organised and efficient as possible. We have been using Promapp for our business processes for about 18 months now and I have found all aspects of this software very easy to understand, and already we are seeing some major improvments in the way we do things. After getting over the initial go-live converting the basic business processes of the Distribution Department into the Promapp system the simplicity of recording how we do things with Promapp in comparison to our previous ISO system has made it so much easier to see where we need to apply resource to improve specific processes, it has helped highlight where some of our processes are not as strong as they could be, and it has already helped with stream-lining some of the key steps in warehousing which has greatly improved our operational efficiency. Probably the best gain we have had from this new way of looking at process documentation is that it is now very easy for us to establish where incremental improvment gains can be made - by actually getting descriptive processes into an easy to understand format we now have a very clear picture of what our department does, and who is responsible for doing it. This has also enabled all our team to have a say in making improvments to the way we do things, and we have also noticed that it is a whole lot easier to run an effective operation when we have key staff out of the building - be it for training or annual leave we are still able to run our complete operation without disruption. There is a common point of reference which is easy to access for all the various tasks we undertake and anyone can refer to these processes if they are not sure of what to do. It also makes a great place to start for all our new employees and this fits well with our company culture of continuous improvement. I would recommend this product to any organisation interested in providing a world class experience to their customers...

Great Process Mapping Software

Promapp is a very user friendly piece of software, and it is excellent at what it does. We have used it in our business to map out all of our processes, and it is easy to use and easy to read and follow the processes after they are entered. A few of the key features of Promapp are the ability to visually see the process on a "map", and see the responsibilities of each functional area on a given process. The ability to use some value stream mapping functions is great as well. It also has the ability to link a process within a process. This allows you to build out separate, smaller processes that may be used in multiple different larger processes, and limits the amount of edits necessary if there are changes to the smaller process. The review and publishing functionality is great as well. The Promapp support is great. They have always been very responsive to our requests. The only reason I give it 4 starts instead of 5 for features and functionality is that there are a few features that we would find very useful that it can't do yet. Such as the ability to turn a process into some type of checklist so we can better track and ensure that people are following the process. There are many very useful features, and Promapp is very good at executing the features that it does have.

Pros

Process mapping functionality and user friendliness

Cons

There are some limitations with the software that make it difficult to track and see whether processes are being followed or not.

Simple, flexible, effective

The ability to easily develop process maps that are easy for people to understand. Through the maps we have found people more likely to follow the process / procedure that the map applies to

Pros

The ability to configure without being an IT geek. The system comes with standard settings which are really easy to change to suit your business. Promapp has a look and feel that is familiar to most users so it so "comfortable". As a quality manager in a regulated environment I am also a huge fan of the audit trail that the system maintains - every change is tracked and logged.

Cons

Some of the terms used are unique to Promapp and cannot be changed . A small price to pay when compared to the benefits offered.

Excellent for capturing processes with good paths for providing feedback for continuous improvement.

Support from the team is excellent. The tool is easy to use and administer and the feedback options help to keep processes up to date and real.

Pros

The expandable levels are helpful - the Process "map" at a high level, the expandable notes in the procedure section allow people with different levels of expertise the appropriate visibility.

Cons

Can be a bit tricky for an absolute newcomer to see how to get started. But the help and training is excellent, so that is never really a problem.

To Promapp or not to Promapp

We got Promapp for a 14,000 employee organisation that operates in the early education industry. This organisation did not have any business processes in place, documents stored in various places, experienced a high rate of staff turn-over and with it knowledge retention was a challenge. For this organisation to maintain its operations, it needed a simple, intuitive solution that would help in bringing policy, procedures, processes, glossary, roles and responsibilities and systems list together and make it accessible at the fingertips of all of its employees across Australia.

Pros

Simplicity, ease of use, usefulness, cloud-based, friendly staff, connecting processes and documents, security groups and elements connectedness.

Cons

Pricing, support, understanding of staff of BPM to provide better guidance and fit for purpose advice.