How can Higher Education providers deliver cost-effective IT services and prove better value for money? What are the key factors to implementing successful workflow solutions within the highly regulated academic sector? And what are the best ways to achieve employee buy-in as you strive towards a Center of Excellence? This Case study: Achieve Operational Excellence through BPM - explains how Birkbeck, University of London, utilized BPMS to significantly streamline administration processes and improve student services. With help from Bizagi, Birkbeck improved the timely application of student loans and sped up its Student Status Amendment Program by 90%. Hear the story from BPM advocate James Smith, Director of Process Improvement & Corporate Information Systems, at Birkbeck, University of London. First presented at London's Ovum BPM Forum 2014.

1. Achieving Operational Excellence
through BPM
James Smith & Roberto Biondini

2. Introduction
Birkbeck Case Study
About Bizagi
Q & A
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3. About Birkbeck
London’s only
specialist
provider of
evening higher
education
Birkbeck was founded
in 1823 as the London
Mechanics Institute
Birkbeck counts four
Nobel prize winners
and a British Prime
Minister among its
former students and
staff

4. Drivers for change
Birkbeck Knows about change!...
2007 ELQ funding changes (c. 40% drop in HEFCE teaching-grant)
Strategic Review
2012 Fees & Funding Changes
Downturn in part-time student numbers
HEFCE Catalyst Funding

5. Welcome to Silo-land
Staff & Students
Schools
Estates Finance HR Registry Library

6. Objectives
Implement an Operational Excellence Programme through BPM
Define high-volume processes to be automated and implement them quickly
Increase speed and quality of data
Reduce complexity, duplication and errors
Build cross-functional processes across many university units
Empower business users to implement their own small-scale process
improvements
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7. What did we do?
Work with an external facilitation partner to run
business process improvement workshops – to
discover and identify opportunities for process
improvement
Look to procure a software solution to help us
manage and orchestrate our processes – and we
procured Bizagi
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8. Why Bizagi?
Basic modeling
Providing a common utility for process diagramming, using
BPMN standard
…narrowing the gap to technical developers, leading to…
Full managed process execution
Executing process
Providing case routing & work-lists
Integration with existing corporate systems via web services
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9. Bizagi Modeler
…create simple diagrams

10. Bizagi Studio (Executable)
…which can be refined to become the
basis for executable processes

11. Bizagi Studio (Executable)
Define abstracted data models…
…and user interfaces for process
participants…
…and business
rules, assignment
rules, data
integrations…

12. Our first Bizagi process
Student Status Amendment
This is the process by which our students:
Tell us they want to change mode of attendance
Tell us they want to change programme of study
Tell us they want to interrupt / suspend studies (take a break)
Tell us they want to leave (withdraw)
Historically a paper request, which turned into a series of email
exchanges, orchestrating a series of decisions and records
updates across a number of departments

13. Our first Bizagi process
Process discovery and improvement
Workshop to understand current process… …and how it performs
Why that is...
…and how we aspire to improve it
Agree a ‘to be process’
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14. Our first Bizagi process
Student Status Amendment:
Initiation
Creates case in Bizagi, routed to Web service call
users to complete first task

15. Our first Bizagi process
Student Status Amendment: Process Execution
Managed process is 90% faster than previous paper process!

16. Achievements
Student Status Amendment process 90% faster
Proportion of student debt resulting from ‘Promise to Apply’ is down 16%
3 processes deployed in under 12 months
"Fastfix" initiative to empower staff to instigate their own small scale process
improvements is operational
"My Birkbeck Profile" portal enables students to action their request online
Accessible to 18,000 students; average 3,000 cases closed per year
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17. A bright new world?...
Staff & Students
Schools
Estates Finance HR Registry Library
Corporate Information Systems Infrastructure
Self-Service: My Birkbeck Framework
Other common services: Identity Database, Reporting
Get Data
?
Do something
Update
something
Send Email
OWN & MANAGE BUSINESS PROCESS
Do another
something
BPM: Bizagi

18. Best Practice
Involve all business owners in the BPM technology selection
Enlist support from external facilitator to define the first processes
Map processes, define workflows and share tasks with the business team
Promote and share your aims for Operational Excellence
Support and mentor colleagues’ process modeling efforts
Recognize that BPM does not reside in IT but should be a shared business tool
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19. Easy
350+ customers globally
& more…
Process Automation
Intuitive
Fast
Flexible

20. Business IT
Interface Form Process Rules XML REST SOAP Data
 Profit
 Speed to Market
 ROI
 QTR Analyst Calls
 Enterprise Architecture
 Authentication
 Scalability

21. Unique Architecture

22. Bizagi binds Business and IT together
IT
XML REST SOAP Data
Business
Interface Form Process Rules

23. Clean, intuitive…
Bizagi is the ‘Apple’
of BPM software
Head of BPM Practice, Mars Canada