As last part of this series I have looked into the enhancement of using tabs in Corporate Publisher (CP). Since over 20 years Casewise developing  modeling tools that is leading markets in Enterprise Architecture (EA), Business Process Analysis (BPA), Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Business Process Management (BPM). The reason for this is the very strong capability to visualize content of the Corporate Exchange (Corporate Modeler Database on SQL or Oracle). Its flexibility makes is possible to use all kind of new technology, this post tries to show some possiblities. I have looked mainly into Google Technology like:

• Google Maps
• Google Charts
• YouTube Players

The graphical representation of textual information is very important in order to attract project members, stakeholders, and so on. Especially  the top management CEO, CFO, CTO, .. is looking for charts, dashboards on enterprise wide information. So why not make your content more attractive?

Google Maps with Corporate Publisher (CP)

As consultant I am using Google Maps nearly every day, to find my clients or to plan trips, so I was thinking how could I use the maps as part of an enterprise wide model? Since many years the Please Login or Register to see the link.model is around (watch here the full story)  the “L” stands for Location. So I have simple linked Corporate Modeler data with Google Map API (Please Login or Register to see the link.) and Corporate Publisher is displaying this in a very neat fashion on the HTML web site.

Google Maps with Corporate Publisher (CP)

As you can see in the image above the Corporate Modeler properties of the object type Location is on the left hand side and the different colour coded areas are showing where this data is used in the HTML output of Corporate Publisher. The great flexibly of this this solution is that it is complete customizable and e.g. the white info window can be filled with any data of Corporate Modeler!

Google Charts with Corporate Publisher (CP)

Google Charts is an amazing library of various charts, e.g. Line Charts, Bar Charts, Pie Charts, Venn Diagrams, Scatter plots, Maps, Goole-o-meters, QR codes. You can find here the full specification of these charts (Please Login or Register to see the link.). In my example I have used a bar chart and the google-o-meter.

Google Chart with Corporate Publisher (CP)

Similar to the previous example I have used the properties of the object type Applicaton (its the A of POLDAT). For the “number of licenses” I have used the bar chart, coloured in red. For visualizing the “System Uptime” I have used the Google-o-meter. Also here pretty much everything customizable on Google site but also in Corporate Modeler or in Corporate Publisher. With CP Scripting you can define the exact place of each HTML item.

YouTube Players with Corporate Publisher (CP)

I am using YouTube for publishing Please Login or Register to see the link. around Please Login or Register to see the link. – Please Login or Register to see the link. – Please Login or Register to see the link. – Please Login or Register to see the link.. The practical use for an enterprise wide modeling exercise  is to distribute knowledge to the stakeholders (team members, project sponsors, end users,..). It could be used as manuals for applications, guidance or “How to guides”, and so on.

You Tube with Corporate Publisher (CP)

In my example I have used the “user defined video player” of You Tube and used CP scripting to place the video player in a specific tab on the main index page of this HTML publication. You can also create your own player with You Tube API that allows you programatically load videos (Please Login or Register to see the link.) I hope you can apply these ideas to your own project and would appreciate your feedback.

Many organisations building models in order to understand their enterprise. Different stakeholders, teams working together in central repositories to be prepared for solving future problems.

This presentation is focusing on Business Intelligence (BI) for Enterprise Architecture models/projects. Most important are the impact analysis reports, what happens if an application will be retired, or who is affected if an IT centre is no longer working are just a few possible questions to answer for an EA team.

Long time ago I started to develop reporting solutions embedded into application, to bring me up to speed with the latest reporting technology i studied the following books.

My video is focusing around reporting based on Enterprise Architecture (EA) data as i think it’s not quite common but a few of my clients start now exploring the benefits of impact analysis within their model.

An EA model has relationships between different information objects like Process, Organisation Unit, Location, Data, Applications, Technology these object are called POLDAT objects. But your repository needs to be extensible to add your user defined objects like Compliance Requirements to fulfil their requirements for e.g. SOX, Mifid, Basel, or other ISO systems.

The important part is that with the analysis of indirect relationships you can achieve amazing reports for Business Continuity Planning (BCP) or other business impact analysis.

Hopefully you found my video informative and if you need the presentation material please Login or Register below.

Companies are burden with multiple compliance regimes. Different project teams dealing independent and not using an integrated approach, where the enterprise could benefit from reusing information and saving cost by having a central repository.

There are plenty of books helping you to understand GRC from different angels, here my recommendations:

This video explaining first tackles the continuous improvement based on the PDCA cycle from Deming, afterwards I explain the theoretical approach on how to implement an integrated compliance regime with the C3 approach (Construct, Compliance, Control).

Construct -- C3
As the centre of a compliance regime is the the process description the presentation and the practical exercise is focusing on process flow and their POLDAT objects (Process, Organisation Unit, Data, Application and Technology).

Compliance -- C3
This part of the presentation is dealing with harmonizing multiple compliance regimes, e.g. ISO 20000, SOX, MiFID, Basel II,..
This is not always an easy task as multiple stakeholders and project teams are involved, but the benefit of having a centralized repository is huge for the whole enterprise.

Control -- C3
T he control topic is dealing with assigning tasks, audit questions to people in order to ensure your compliance assessment will be performed. This is explained based on ISO/IEC 20000.

Hopefully you found my video informative and if you need the presentation material please Login or Register below.

Looking forward to your comments.

Since many years I am implementing compliance regimes and the most common one is ISO/IEC 9001 and ISO/IEC 14001 as an Integrated Management System (IMS).
The system described in this article was implemented over 60 times in different organizations all with passing the initial certification audit in the first run!

1.0 Objective

The clear goal was to implement and achieve the certification of ISO/IEC 9001 (Quality Management) in all branches and ISO/IEC 14001 (Environmental Management) in the UK office until the end of 2007.
As there was no formal management system in place we had to start from scratch; completely from scratch? Of course not we used Best Practice Frameworks and different Casewise Software components to accelerate our implementation in order to achieve this challenging goal within 3 months.
Because we needed more guidance we have used the ISO/IEC 9004 and ISO/IEC 14004 standard requirements, it’s the same set of requirements as the ISO/IEC 9001 and ISO/IEC 14001 but has more explanations and examples of how to implement. Of course both Frameworks have associated audit question to support our initial assessment and surveillance assessment as well.

2.0 Challenges

The initial time scale was 2 months but because of the Christmas break we couldn’t get a date for our certification in 2007 so we had to extend to 3 months
Geographical spread – All offices (USA, France, UK) should be certified against ISO/IEC 9001 and UK office against ISO/IEC 14001. Time differences and differences in performing specific processes differently made the project even more challenging.
As it was the end of the year the
• business shouldn’t be distracted too much as end of year business needs to be closed
• Christmas holiday break needs to be considered in project plan

No formal management system was in place, so we had to start with our IMS System from scratch.
We decided that during the implementation we need to assign and train our IMS Manager as part of the implementation. A formal internal auditor training should be performed later.
Get the whole company up to speed with the ISO/IEC requirements. Train people, document and improve processes, assess the whole company.

3.0 Solution

3.1 Preparation

Like any project we have started to outline the IMS implementation in a project plan to make sure we haven’t forgotten any important tasks

IMS Project Plan

Every management system needs a certain amount of forms to show evidence of certain approvals, reviews or Audits.

Further preparations needed to be done
• We created a shared folder on our Server and assigned access right to its sub folders, so that manager could update their own forms.
• We installed different Casewise Software components
• We created Word template saved them on our Server and linked these documents to Corporate Modeler and to our process descriptions.
• We started with importing the APQC model, afterwards we imported the ISO/IEC 9004 and the ISO/IEC 14004 into the same model.
• We created new styles or adopted existing ones; we also defined the diagram levels and the different object palettes.
• Our managers got write access to the model to ensure each manager (process owner) can adapt, change and improve their processes after the initial process workshop has finished.

3.1 Select the certification body

There are plenty of those companies around, and it depends entirely up to your organization to choose a certification body and an appropriate auditor that suits you or that has specific knowledge in your industry.
We have spoken with two different auditors and have chosen Lloyds register afterwards. The contract is for 3 years and contains a certification audit and two surveillance audits.
As we have an IMS we have two auditors one for our Quality Management System and one for our Environmental management System. As there are huge similarities between those systems our auditors haven’t audited the same requirements twice, e.g. Management Review, IMS-Policy and so on.

3.2 QMS / EMS Forms

We used existing forms from my previous ISO implementations and updated them according to our requirements. We saved them all on our Server and linked them to Corporate Modeler repository where we are managing the version control that is necessary for both management systems.

IMS Documents

Some documents are listed twice as they are represented as document and as record.
The big advantage of linking documents to the process is that the process owner or new starters can explore the process and get the relevant forms straight away out of the system.

The necessary system documents are also cross referenced to the standard requirement which makes the maintenance easier.

Another advantage is the centrally stored documents, so none gets lost when we updated them in between the different audits (internal/external)

After the documents were completed and cross referenced we started to fill the forms out, e.g. Audit Plan, Management Review Form, ..

Other forms were transformed directly into Corporate Modeler, e.g. Business Continuity Plan/Assessment. So we have tried to reduce forms as much as we can and embed this information within Corporate modeler.

3.3. Process Modeling

IMS Process Map

As a high level “entrance” diagram we have chosen a value chain differentiating the core- and support processes of Casewise. All other processes and diagrams are accessible from this page.

We haven’t started from scratch as we used the AQPC Framework. Based on this framework we went through their framework during our process modeling workshops and we identified similarities and gaps, which we have modeled straight away during the workshops.

After the workshop people have added more description to the processes or associated documents or other information to their process maps.

Some of our departments have already drawn process maps or written procedures in Word and to embed this information we have chosen two approaches
• If it was an important process we have modeled it in Corporate Modeler.
• If the process was just “nice to have” we have linked the document to a higher level process.

After visualizing our process maps we could now start to link the ISO requirements to the appropriate processes. This shows us and our auditors how we fulfill the different compliance requirements. In addition to this we have also cross referenced the audit questions to the

IMS 9001 Requirements

different processes to make sure we can schedule the Audit Questions/Controls to the responsible people.

In the screen shot above you can see the visualized ISO 9004 requirements, on the left hand side you see the properties of requirement “6.2.2 …” and also the associations to processes, external documents and Audit Questions.
We ended up with consistent process model, clear responsibilities and transparency regards the compliance requirements.

Obviously there were a few iterations in quality check, of the modeled processes, especially if they are fulfilling system requirements such as “audit process”, “Management Review process” and so on.

3.4 IMS Optimization

As part of the continuous improvement you need to make sure you get feedback from your colleagues regarding process improvements, customer problems, supplier issues and so on.
Because of our tight time scale we started with a paper based system but we got already new ideas of how this could be embedded better in our IMS.
A very good source for process improvement is the starter process, as new starter needs to be introduced to their process we found possible improvement which we have done in our IMS.

3.5 IMS external revision and certification (audit)

A very valuable source for improvements is the internal and external audit. One reason why it’s so valuable is the fact that you can actually block some time from your normal job responsibility and focus only on the audit process itself. Just focusing on other processes opens your mind and let you ask the right questions, e.g. why are we doing this in this way?
After the external audit we got an audit report that acts as task list for our next audit and we got at the end the certificate for ISO/IEC 9001 and ISO/IEC 14001.

4.0 Lessons Learned

• Implementing a Management System or even two of them as in our IMS is NOT rocket science
• Following a structured, systematic approach reduces implementation time and guarantees a consistent documentation
• Having a collaborative solution helps to overcome resistance to change and get peoples buy-in
• Working in a repository based tool makes the maintenance extremely easy as you can easily share responsibilities with your process owners without losing control of the overall model.

2 years after the first certification audit the system is still in place and helps the organization to improve their efficiency and effectiveness by keeping the overhead of maintaining a standard as low as possible.