UPDATED 11:30 EDT / SEPTEMBER 29 2016

NEWS

Promapp’s process manager now handles variations from the script

Auckland, NZ-based process management vendor Promapp Solutions Ltd. is adding new features to its Process Variant Management (PVM) software to give companies the ability to control variations in automated processes.

Promapp, which also has offices in San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne and London, sells a cloud service that enables organizations to hard-code repeatable processes into software with a variety of workflow and management mechanisms to keep them on track.

For example, the process of closing a sale may involve a dozen steps around provisioning, payments and contracts. Using Promapp, companies can document these processes and build workflows that ensure compliance. The software provides a process mapping tool, a cloud-based process repository and a set of tools for improving process efficiency.

Promapp’s PVM module enables users to incorporate variations in processes that are needed to meet the requirements of specific customers, locations or products. For example, banks have different ways of managing and documenting transactions depending upon state regulations, customer types and branch systems. “You’ve got to not only consistently perform processes but have a lot of different flavors,” said CEO Ivan Seselj (@IvanSeselj). “This is an objective way of managing that.”

Seselj developed the software after watching organizations repeatedly fail at process improvement. “I would sit in meetings and watch people draw flow charts and maps on walls, and I knew by Monday no one would remember it,” he said. “Great improvements often get locked away forever and we go back to business as usual.”

Promapp is intended to make that impossible. Once organizations document and formalize processes, they can create flowcharts and individualized profiles for each participant. Dashboards show each team member the status of a given project and his or her to-do items. Reminders, instructions and forms can be sent by multiple messaging means to users in the office or the in field via a mobile app written in HTML5. Users can customize activities and manage service delivery for individual customers.

Promapp augments existing tools like enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management systems. “We don’t automate. We formulate the human communication layer,” Seselj said. “We’re the library they use to automate. It’s one language for all teams.”

The company, which is bootstrapped and has taken no outside funding, entered the U.S. market two years ago and encountered a surprising lack of process discipline, Seselj said. “I was expecting to find a really advanced process maturity environment. That hasn’t been the case,” he said. “There are still a lot of world-leading organizations that are using procedures defined in Word docs that have been ignored for 20 years.”

Process improvement often fails because people don’t have the time or patience to read large documents, or simply because of organizational inertia, he said. Steven Stanton, managing director of process improvement consultancy FCB Partners LLC, estimates that 90 percent of organizations fail at process standardization.

The software is licensed on a subscription basis according to the size of the company, with midsized firms typically paying $2,000 to $3,000 per month.

Photo by andraberila via Pixabay

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