Business Analysis

Quantifying the benefit of Process Improvement

Michael Cousins, Managing Director

One of the key benefits of the Triaster business Some process exists that transforms an Input to an
improvement platform is that you can use it to model Output. In Version 1 of the process, this transformation
your organisation, simulate changes and predict the takes 8 days and costs £14,000. Through business
performance of the changed processes to find the most analysis, an improved process is developed, Version 2,
effective. and this costs £3,000 less and completes 1 day sooner.

In this article I set out the four steps involved in With Triaster, this improvement happens in four distinct
producing a quantified business case for process steps:
improvement, based on the outcome of a simulation
analysis of the As-Is process, when compared with one 1. Version one is mapped out and ring-fenced into
or more variants (its “To-Be’s”). a specific Business Analysis library so the analysis,
which might involve sensitive data, can be
Process Improvement performed discreetly. The metrics model for the
process is defined and attached to the process.
The overall process of change is illustrated below:
2. A Triaster Data Manager is created to enable easy
updates of the basic performance data.
3. The Triaster simulation engine is used to estimate
Version 1, costs £14,000
and takes 8 days the value of all quantitative metrics such as Cost,
Time and Effort.
INPUT OUTPUT 4. Version one is baselined and referred to as the “As-
Is”, and then cloned into a specific site for Version
two and as many other variants as the business
Version 2, costs £3,000 less and
finishes 1 day sooner analyst needs. These variants are referred to as the
“To-Be’s”. Each of the To-Be’s is simulated, and its
INPUT OUTPUT
performance compared with the As-Is. This is then
used as the basis for a quantified business case for
change.

Contents //
Step One: Create a Step Two: Create a Step Three: Simulate Step Four: Produce
Business Analysis Library Triaster Data Manager the baseline and a Business Case for
2 6 As-Is Process 8 process improvement 10
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Step One: Create a Business Analysis Library

The first step is to clone your existing process library into a ‘fenced-off area’ where you can carry out
simulation and analysis without modifying live processes. This is now considered in detail.

So that you can walk through the steps in this article, Triaster have an on-line demonstration library here:

AlphaChoco Library

This library was put together for the World Quality Day celebrations in 2015 and is a hypothetical
company with supply chain issues in the Chocolate industry.

However, it will work much better if you are able to clone a library on your own server. If you would like to
obtain the actual maps that are used in this example, please e-mail me personally
([email protected]) and I will supply them for you.

We have two choices, we can either clone the whole library including its Live, Draft and Sandpit sites, or
we can create a new site within the library. It really doesn’t matter at this stage which we go for, but I shall
clone the whole library in this article.

To do this, log into the Administration tool, click on Library Explorer at the left of the screen, and then
select the library you wish to clone (in my case ProcessLibrary).

On the right of the screen

click the option to Clone
the library.

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sites within MCBusinessAnalysis can be deleted along

with the corresponding Map Stores.

For Business Analysis purposes, the naming convention

is to create a baseline As-Is process in a site called AsIs,
and then for each To-Be, create a site called ToBe1,
ToBe2 etc. The string “AsIs” must be at the start of the
AsIs site for the automated comparison reports to work,
any name can be used for the To-Be’seach site.

Open the AsIs site, and perform a publish to ensure you

are viewing the most recent maps in the Library.

Your Map Store therefore looks similar to:

The Triaster platform enables a whole team of

Business Analysts to work independently on their own
end-to-end process improvement projects, so the
proposed naming convention for the cloned library is
a name identifier (my initials in this case) followed by
“BusinessAnalysis”. This convention is not compulsory
however and you may choose whatever works best for
you.

After you click Create Library, the product will:

1. Copy the process maps from the current Library into

a new folder in the Map Store

2. Create the web pages and menu structure of the new

Library itself

Once you have received the email notification that

the library has been cloned, the Library Explorer will
contain the new Library, MCBusinessAnalysis.

Unless somebody is an Administrator (or happens to and the Library Explorer view similar to:
know the name of the library you have created), there
is no way a person can get to your library from the
interface. Therefore, any changes you make to the maps
in this environment are for your eyes only. And because
you are working on a copy of the maps, you will not
inadvertently change the live library.

It also means that you can freely delete maps and sites
from the library that you are uninterested in.

So, using the Library Explorer again, the Live site can
be cloned to “AsIs”, and then the Live, Sandpit and Draft

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To attach a meta-data model to the process in the site is an advanced topic requiring detailed knowledge
of Triaster’s Properties.xml, Process Metrics.xml and Visio’s custom formulae. An overview of required
actions is explained here, and the technical detail of the implementation steps are omitted.

When using the simulation features in Triaster, certain Activity (and therefore Node) properties are
reserved for system use. These are referred to as System Properties.

Visio custom formulae can be used to define System Properties, and this gives a very powerful, very rich
modelling capability. For example, Cost can be redefined to include costs of postage and telephone calls if
this is required in your model, and entirely new calculated fields can be added to the meta-model.

The default Activity System Properties are contained in the sections Business Analysis, Non Conformances
and Triaster Calculated Process Metrics as shown below:

Note that some of the default System Properties are calculated, for example “Cost” is defined as “Cost per
Hour * Total Effort”.

The value of calculated properties need never be entered directly, rather the values of the referenced
properties should be entered.

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The Deliverable object also has default Simulation System Properties in the Simulation section
shown below:

There are 2 main considerations for using System Properties:

1. Define and standardise units of measurement (typically for time) and adjust Process Metrics.xml as
appropriate.

2. Identify and define changes to the System Properties themselves. For example, does Cost include items
such as supplier fees, or is it just internal costs? Does time include “down-time” or just processing time?

Once defined, adjust Process Metrics.xml (if implementation requires custom formulae).

Any adjustments to the default set of System Properties are encoded in Process Metrics.xml and these
will override the behaviour of the default System Properties and replace any conflicting definition in
Properties.xml.

That completes the first step towards quantifying the benefit of Process Improvement.

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Step two: Create a Triaster Data Manager

Having set up a work area where the maps we need As the plan is to let the Triaster software simulate the
to analyse can be safely modified and published, the process and automatically aggregate the data, it is only
second step is to create a Data Manager so we can the seabed Activities for which I want to maintain the
easily modify the data. Using Process Navigator, attach data.
to the maps and create a new Data Manager with all of
the files selected:

And finally the conflict resolution can be set to the

options shown by the image below:
For the purposes of this exercise, it is solely the Cost
property we are interested in (which is calculated), so I
am only going to select Cost Per Hour and Total Effort
on the Objects and Properties tab:

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This will set-up for me a two-way sync with Excel that will enable me to experiment with different values
in my seabed Activities as I design a new end-to-end ‘to-be’ process.

The seabed objects are:

and from this Data Manager appropriate values can be entered to give a baseline on the process (I have
used random values in this example).

Once these values are synchronised into the maps you are able to estimate process performance through
process simulation.

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Step three: Simulate and baseline the As-Is process

Now we can simulate the process to get an indication of the overall end-to-end cost. In order to do this,
Back in Process Navigator, press CTRL+L to load all maps, then Multi-Map > Generate Process Metrics.

The simulation will automatically aggregate the data off the seabed into the higher level maps, taking
into account the likelihood of occurrence of each Activity in the process.

The simulation produces two standard output files that by default are stored in \My Documents\Process
Navigator\Process Metrics. These are:

• PSR.pdf and PSR.docx (PSR short for Process Status Report), a detailed report containing the following
sections for each end-to-end process:
• End-to-End Process Components
• Cost, Time, Effort, Resources & Lean Six Sigma
• Referenced Documents, External Hyperlinks and E-mail Links
• Risks
• Non-Conformances
• Cost Detail Breakdown
• Value Stream Analysis
• Execution Checklist
• Improvement Opportunities
• How Triaster View Your Maps as Pathways
• Metrics Model.xlsx, a compiled spreadsheet model providing a comparison of each end-to-end
process in the library with the aggregable metrics.

To see the content of a sample PSR, click “Home” in the Process Library and the report is the
bottom left link.

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In addition, for every end-to-end process, there is a detailed Microsoft Excel file produced showing the
50 most frequently executed pathways through the end-to-end process and all of the metrics associated
with each pathway.

At this stage, you have:

• Isolated out a Business Analysis library to analyse the recruitment process, and attached a meta-
model
• Baselined the As-Is in a specific site
• Attached data to the seabed corresponding to the unit costs of each seabed activity
• Synchronised the data back into the maps
• Simulated the process
• Generated the first set of standard reports

Your brief is to reduce the cost, so the next step is to examine alternative versions of this process to see if
a more cost-effective process can be produced.

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Step four: Produce a business case for

improvement
To analyse the process and reduce its cost, let’s create a site for each variant of the process we want to
look at. It is very similar to the step used earlier to clone the library, but this time we are going to clone
the AsIs site itself to make a new site within this library.

I’ll call it ToBe1, and following the clone the Library Explorer will show as follows:

Clearly, by making repeated clones of the Live site, several “to-be’s” of the same process can be developed,
simulated and compared one with the other.

With the ToBe sites cloned, any changes to the process maps in these sites will update the PSR of that site.

In addition, the simulation engine automatically creates a PCR.pdf (Process Comparison Report) for you
which tabulates a comparison of each process in the As-Is site compared with the corresponding process
in each of the To-Be sites.

To produce the PCR:

• Attach to the Multi-Map Root which is the container folder for *all* the sites. For example, if there is a
library called “Business Analysis” containing “Maps for As-Is”, “Maps for To-Be1” and “Maps for To-Be2”,
attach to “Business Analysis”.
• Select Multi-Map > Generate As-Is to To-Be Report

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Triaster will then attach to each site in turn, perform a simulation, and finally produce the comparison
report. An example excerpt is shown below:

Cost, Cost of Failure, Time, Effort And Resources

As-Is To-Be-1 To-Be-2

Cost £1,522.28 £1,042.20 £2,609.80

Cost Of Failure £17,700.00 £0.00 £0.00

Cycle Time 241.50 156.45 385.20

Total Effort 50.70 35.05 86.50

Resources 6.40 6.40 13.40

Lean 6 Sigma

As-Is To-Be-1 To-Be-2

Cycle Time 241.50 156.45 385.20

Value Added 25.35 13.90 39.05

Non-Value Added 49.20 40.80 101.00

Necessary Non-Value Added 166.95 77.15 171.35

Process Cycle Efficiency 10.50% 8.88% 10.14%

Costed Business Case for Change

As-Is To-Be-1 To-Be-2

Cost (per process execution) £1,522.28 £1,042.20 £2,609.80

Annual Cost £22,834.20 £15,633.00 £39,147.00

Annual Cost of Failure £17,700.00 £0.00 £0.00

Total Annual Cost £40,534.20 £15,633.00 £39,147.00

A sample PCR report is also available from the Home page of the example library.

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In conclusion
This series of articles has shown how, using multiple libraries and sites, data managers and the Triaster
simulation engine, it is possible to build a business case for change and allow stakeholders and managers
to view the detail of the as-is and to-be process.

Several significant enhancements of the Triaster simulation engine are underway and I look forward to
sharing these with you in future.

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