USER GROUP

T.U.G. News - December 2017

Linda Spinks presents the latest news from the User Group

User Group meeting in October

We were delighted to see some new faces at the User Group meeting in October. Many thanks go to Eva at Equifax UK for hosting the meeting at their Leeds offices. As per usual, we had some interesting conversations and it was an excellent day. We hope to see even more new faces at the next meeting.

people in business dress sitting around a large desk looking at a presentation on screen

Presentation by Eva Newberry – Equifax UK

Eva explained how Equifax adopted the Triaster solution in 2016 and that they are now going out to the much wider business globally. Eva talked through their new User Guide for HUB as this shows all the new features of the system and how she is communicating across the business. She provided some background of the BPM challenge and why systems often end up unused, then elaborated on the fact that Equifax do already use IBM Blueworks in the US, however working within such a heavily regulated environment and with stricter UK requirements, this is just not suitable.

The structure of the Equifax system needed to change in line with GDPR requirements, which is why Eva has recently worked with Triaster’s web designer to get a new overall design that would work for everyone. Originally built for Global Customer Services, the new design incorporates a high level entry page to the separate libraries – one for each country, meaning that they can have country specific content and be managed locally.

Eva’s presentation slides are currently unavailable due to security restrictions.

To see Eva’s webinar given at PEX BPM Live 2017: Equifax UK: Improvement at the centre of our business please click here: tinyurl.com/tri-pex

Workshop 1 - Process Improvement – who uses Triaster for this?

This subject was raised by me as I wanted to know if anyone is using Triaster as a platform for Process Improvement activities rather than just a QMS. I talked about how I’ve just started running a Lean course internally within the Operations office and so far have trained 40 people. Within this course I have been showing a video example of process improvement within Western Union and so showed part of it, to set the scene for this workshop, as it clearly allows you to see how some processes are far too lengthy and tedious considering what could be done. The example shown following improvement activities went from taking 19 days to 22 minutes!

There were many discussion points following this but the most prominent was from Emma Woodrow at New Charter who confirmed they run two process libraries, one for business as usual - which hosts the 'To Be' maps once they are approved - and then a more detailed Business Improvement Library that the team use for streamlining projects.

Update from Triaster

Jo Dolton and Carma Evans provided a short update from Triaster.

Jo talked through the fact that Triaster’s team is changing slightly, but services to customers essentially continue as before. All Design, stencil and technical assistance will come directly from Triaster’s Customer Success team and it is only onsite services that will be provided by Paul who is now employed directly by Libreea; Triaster’s services partner lead by Victoria who then spoke of the origins of the company and what she is looking to achieve.

Carma talked through the current status of Development and the Feature Requests due to be reviewed shortly. Also functionality coming soon - V17.2 is now in testing:

  • Hyperlink integrity report
  • Faster publish times

Next round of Development likely to include:

  • Web interface (GUI) on Properties.xml
  • Identify new maps that have been published to a site in the publication e-mail and in the Menu Editor

Workshop 2 - Ratio of mappers within an organisation

Damian from Menzies Aviation explained that he was just coming up to budget time and wanted to get an idea from everyone on the numbers of mappers they have access to within their organisations.

Some key points were:

  • The University of Cambridge has 9 in total but none of them are full time. We try to ensure they go through some internal training and then when possible attend the 2 day Triaster course.
  • At NG Bailey, Steve is really the only user mapping/administering the system. Although it’s not the mapping itself that takes time it’s the thinking through a process.
  • Mick from Galliford Try suggested that it helps to know what money the business is losing before you can justify the time/resources required to map processes.
  • A common point raised was that there usually needs to be a business case for people to attend workshops and be given the time to work around the business.
  • I mentioned how I now create a 2-pager to show what is required and who is required for any project and ask the stakeholders what the target is, then I can scope the BA time required.
  • In many circumstances it was discussed how often money is not spent on quality until something goes wrong.

If you would like to host a meeting, or have any questions about the User Group please drop us an e-mail to user.group@triaster.co.uk

Linda Spinks' signature in blue

user.group@triaster.co.uk