How to use your Triaster Business Process Management (BPM) System to transfer business knowledge

Joel Evans

With over 20 years’ experience in the Business Process Management (BPM) and improvement industry, we have a great deal of experience in implementing, maintaining and improving business process management systems.

We understand that one of the main reasons businesses require such a system is to transfer knowledge around the organisation and educate the workforce. So to make sure that you are enabling knowledge transfer and the education of the workforce with your Triaster Business Process Management System, there are certain features you’ll want to ensure you are using.

Record a RACI Matrix within your Triaster BPM System to transfer business knowledge

We recommend that a RACI Matrix is recorded within your Triaster system. This data can take your business process maps to the next level, and make them so much more useful, useable and used.

Not only can the entire business see what Activities need to be carried out to transform inputs into outputs within the process maps, but recording the RACI Matrix enables the whole organisation to see who is Responsible for, who is Accountable for, who could be Consulted on and who needs to be Informed about each Activity.

It is best practice to record Responsibility, Accountability, Consulted and Informed on all of the business Activities. Some of our customers dilute this slightly, as obtaining all of this data initially can be quite onerous, and decide to record Responsibility and Accountability only to start with.

This is still very useful, as when looking at a process map, it is clear what task is to be done, and who should be carrying out the task and who is accountable for ensuring that the task is completed.

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The image below shows how your Triaster system can display who is responsible for carrying out an activity beneath the shape:

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The rest of the RACI Matrix is recorded behind Activities in what we call a “Properties File,” this is accessed by right clicking the Activity and clicking Properties. The Properties can also be updated in bulk using Microsoft Excel.

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Recording the RACI Matrix behind Activities enables RACI searching and RACI reporting capabilities within your Triaster BPM system.

You can, for example, choose a job role within the organisation, and search all process maps within the system to find out what Activities that specific job role is Responsible for, Accountable for, could be Consulted on or needs to be Informed about.

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You can also view a full RACI Matrix for the whole organisation by running the RACI Analysis report. It will display every Activity within the Triaster BPM system along with its RACI data. This can also be exported to Excel to further interrogate and manipulate.

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We’d recommend using job roles rather than personal names when recording the RACI Matrix, therefore when people move on and up within and outside the organisation, there is not a requirement to update this data each time.

Record Process Management Data within your Triaster BPM System to transfer business knowledge

Similar to the RACI Matrix we’ve touched upon, you can record process management data within your Triaster system to help transfer knowledge throughout the organisation.

Process management data being: Process Owner, Author, Approvers, Reviewers, Version, Revision, Change Data and Change Description.

This data is very useful when recorded in and reported on the process maps within your Triaster system for many reasons.

Process Owner

Each process map within your Triaster system should have a Process Owner recorded. This can be filled in within the Properties File of the Node (frame). Just as with the RACI Matrix, Process Owner information should be recorded as a job role, and Triaster’s definition of a Process Owner is “a person who has the authority to change a process.”  

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Recording Process Owner information within the process maps within your Triaster BPM system will help to transfer knowledge throughout the organisation as it is now clear who to approach to make improvement suggestions or amendments to the process.

You can search all of the process maps within your Triaster system for Process Owner, in the same way as described above for the RACI Matrix. Choose a job role in the Process Owner list, click “Go” and a table will display showing all process maps owned by the specified Process Owner. This is very useful when, for example, there is a new member of the management team within your organisation. They can quickly see which business processes they own throughout the business.

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Doing more with Process Management Data within your Triaster Business Process Management System to transfer business knowledge

We’ve discussed how recording and reporting on the Process Owner data within your process maps can help with knowledge transfer within the organisation, but there are many more ways that you can make use of other types of process management data. Author, Approvers, Reviewers, Version, Revision, Business Function, Change Data and Change Description are all useful pieces of data to include within the process maps in your Triaster system, and all can be reported on in various ways to help transfer knowledge within the organisation.

Use Alerts in your Triaster Business Process Management System to transfer business knowledge

Some of the properties mentioned above (Business Function, Approvers, Authors, Reviewers) can be linked to an automated alert. For example, if you populate the process maps with Business Function Data, a whole team/function/department within the organisation can receive an email notification when a new process map relating to their team/function/department is produced.

Likewise, an Author can be alerted when their map has been either approved and published into the Live process library, or rejected and sent back for rework by the Approver.

To ensure you are making the most of the Alerts functionality within your Triaster system, contact us!

Set up a Process Council for your Triaster Business Process Management System to transfer business knowledge

Many of our customers find that setting up a Process Council helps with the knowledge transfer within their organisations. We tend to find that this is a hierarchical structure with the Library Administrator organising and coordinating key stakeholders throughout the businesses to meet at a designated interval to discuss business process management initiatives.

This helps to create a culture of business process management within the organisation and provides the Library Administrator with a great opportunity to ensure that the stakeholders are communicating all of your good work throughout their teams and departments. Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you to set this up. One of our customers elects to hold their process council meetings at the Triaster headquarters, that way they are guaranteed to get access to a meeting room!

We hope that you have found this article helpful, if you would like to find out how you can use the Triaster system to transfer business knowledge within your organisation, register for one of our regular 'Why Triaster?' webinars.

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Related articles:

Process Mapping: Who does it and why?

How to share your process maps in an interactive and engaging way

7 key questions to ask when shopping for a Business Process Management (BPM) system

Problems with Business Process Management (BPM): Getting employees to follow the process

Written by Joel Evans

Joel joined Triaster in June 2014 and spent several years delivering consultancy and training services on site with customers, helping them to achieve many different business improvement objectives, in many different corners of the world. He left Triaster in November 2016 in order to move back closer to family.