Why BPM modeling can help streamline processes in the IT sector

How Cardanit helped changing procedures in a software company

If you’re a business consultant or analyst working in Information Technology, or even if you’re a small IT business owner, you know you’re facing some pain when you’re trying to restructure processes that have been in place for years. "We've always done it this way", it’s the most common answer. But this doesn't mean "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Your internal or external clients, or even yourself, may want a change of gear and get rid of bottlenecks and silos. You’re mentally set to implement these changes, but you don’t know where to start from.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standards could be the right answer for you. When joined together in a Business Process Management software like Cardanit, allowing ease of use and several helpful sharing functionalities, they become the norm for successful projects. We’ve teamed up with Quin, an Italian consultancy firm, to work on a project with the goal of streamlining the processes within an IT company that needed to optimize their time and resource management.

The ContextProviding a consultancy to an IT company

Quin is a consultancy working on business engineering and innovative technical solutions. One of Quin’s clients, an IT company, develops their own software, but also works with other companies, providing them with their software and support service.

The Project Management office of Quin's client runs about 200 projects a year. They also have an Enterprise Architecture (EA) Department managing software development procedures, their data architecture, applications and infrastructure. Demand Managers collect requests from their internal and external clients to work on new projects, including software redesign, and transform them into solutions. When working with external customers, these requests become proposals to start a new project.

The ChallengeDisregarding guidelines may affect results

As Quin’s client grew, all procedures remained more or less unaltered. Throughout the years, their Enterprise Architecture Department deployed some guidelines on data architecture and its procedures. After an internal audit, it was clear that the projects didn’t follow these guidelines.

Project Managers wished they could receive clearer information on projects’ interdependencies upon taking new work. They often realized that a project result may be related to the results of another project, whether they were positive or negative.

The SolutionUsing Cardanit BPM software to implement business processes and decisions

Upon starting its consultancy work, Quin assessed their clients’ processes showing that the major issue that needed to be addressed were the actual projects portfolio management process. To help do so, Quin gave their client a set of milestones including the use of business process modeling.

By adopting BPMN, Quin introduced the usage of a flexible editor to design the models, Cardanit. Cardanit is a user-friendly tool that enables fast communication among all the stakeholders. This meant streamlining and speeding up all the procedures set by Quin. This was also achieved with Versioning, which helps compare the different stages of the project. Furthermore, Cardanit, as a more general Business Process Management (BPM) software enables the use of another standard, Decision Model and Notation (DMN), a modeling notation for decisions that supports decision management and business rules. One of Cardanit main features is the possibility of downloading automated reports presenting the results for both BPMN and DMN models so they can be easily understood by stakeholders not familiar with the standards.

The BenefitsBPMN/DMN modeling to improve IT processes and decisions

When a consultancy implements new solutions in IT, adopting a web-based collaborative platform for BPMN/DMN modeling can make all the difference. Especially if the provider of the platform can offer customized solutions and quality support.

As a matter of fact, the modeling stage was pretty quick and fast thanks to Cardanit flexibility and ease of use. The working group was pleased with the results and found the approach to this type of analysis gratifying.

“It’s never been that easy to draw BPMN processes and share the results with our clients. Cardanit made re-engineering processes faster and more agile”, says Francesco Falcolini, Business Analytics Consultant at Quin.

A year after the start of the implementation of the project, KPIs showed an overall improvement, meeting and exceeding all the set objectives, specifically in the Enterprise Architecture Department, which was more in need of a change in pace.

The DMN model drawn with Cardanit also allowed to efficiently streamline and improve the decision model and it has now become the business rule for automation software.

Want to find out how to streamline your IT Business processes and decisions? Use Quin’s BPMN and DMN templates to start your journey towards a perfect modeling.

Further reading

Interview with Francesco Falcolini, Business Analytics Consultant at Quin

Project Portfolio Management in the IT sector with BPMN and DMN templates

Quin and Cardanit synergy: Digital Business Processes Design with BPMN

About Quin

Quin is a business consultancy, based in Italy working on business engineering and innovative technical solutions in Operations & Supply Chain Management, Business & Data Analytics, Project & Innovation Management. Quin mission is to lead and support growth and digitization for big companies and small and medium enterprises thanks to strategy planning and change management. Quin is part of Quid Informatica Group, an ICT company with a strong presence in the Financial Services sector, established in 1987.