HR Process Efficiency for Dummies

by Lawrence Miller, CISSP
HRProcessEfficiency
K2® Special Edition

HR Process Efficiency For Dummies®
, K2®
Special Edition
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Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book......................................................................... 1
Foolish Assumptions.................................................................. 1
Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 2
Beyond the Book......................................................................... 2
Where to Go from Here.............................................................. 2
Chapter 1: Today’s HR Challenge: Managing a
Myriad of Manual Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Understanding How Manual, Paper‐Based Workflows and
Forms Can Hurt Your Company............................................ 5
Taking Inventory of All Your HR Processes............................ 7
Automating Workflows to Increase Efficiency........................ 8
Chapter 2: HR Process Improvements that Every
Company Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Recruiting................................................................................... 11
Onboarding................................................................................ 13
Training...................................................................................... 16
Performance Reviews............................................................... 17
Data Management..................................................................... 19
Travel Requests........................................................................ 20
Vacation Requests.................................................................... 21
Transfers.................................................................................... 22
Policy Management.................................................................. 22
Payroll........................................................................................ 22
Employee Surveys..................................................................... 24
Offboarding and Exit Interviews............................................. 24
Chapter 3: DIY Process‐Based Workflows. . . . . . . . . . . 25
Isn’t It IT’s Job to Build Applications for Us?........................ 25
Overhauling Your Workflows for the Mobile Age................. 26
Demand meets modernization...................................... 27
Empowering mobile users............................................. 28
Automating workflows to increase efficiency............. 28
The HR App Dream: Build Apps Fast, Run on
Any Device, and Access Data Anywhere............................ 29
Future‐Proofing with Scalable Applications
You Can Build Yourself........................................................ 30

HR Process Efficiency For Dummies, K2 Special Edition iv
These materials are © 2016 John Wiley Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Chapter 4: Getting Started with
HR Process Efficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Closing the Gap between Strategy and Execution................ 31
The Changing BPM Landscape................................................ 32
Identifying Processes............................................................... 33
Measuring “As‐Is” Processes................................................... 34
Determining “To‐Be” Processes.............................................. 35
Choosing a Methodology and Implementation Strategy...... 36
Gaining and Maintaining Business Buy‐In.............................. 37
Choosing a Solution for Process Excellence......................... 37
Chapter 5: Ten Key Components to Transform
Business Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Fast, Easy, Do‐It‐Yourself Forms and Workflows.................. 39
Secure Access to Forms, Workflows, and Data
from Any Device.................................................................... 40
Integration with Other Systems.............................................. 40
Provide Data Security............................................................... 40
Reusable Components.............................................................. 41
Advanced Analytics and Reporting........................................ 41
Standards for Building, Integrating, and Proliferating......... 42
Balance between Power and Simplicity................................. 42
Enable Process Improvement................................................. 42
Measurable Results.................................................................. 42

Introduction
HR departments have a myriad of processes that must
be managed to keep an organization running smoothly,
from recruiting and onboarding to training, performance
reviews, leave/vacation requests, and much more. With
more pressure than ever to keep operations as streamlined
as possible, it’s increasingly important for organizations
to automate their HR processes to improve efficiency and
produce measurable results. Furthermore, HR is under
increasing pressure to be a relevant, strategic partner to the
business. HR leaders in 2016 and beyond will need to leverage
technology to eliminate their manual processes and free up
time to focus on what the business needs.
About This Book
This book explores the challenge of how to manage manual
HR processes and the opportunities for HR process automa-
tion (Chapter 1), what HR processes to automate (Chapter 2),
how to deliver process efficiency with automated workflows,
forms, and data (Chapter 3), how to improve your business
processes by integrating your HR systems (Chapter 4), and
how to help drive business strategy with better HR processes
(Chapter 5).
Foolish Assumptions
It has been said that most assumptions have outlived their
uselessness, but I assume a few things nonetheless!
Mainly, I assume that you are an HR professional, manager,
or executive in a medium or large enterprise. Therefore, this
book is written primarily for nontechnical readers who don’t
necessarily work in an IT department. Of course, technical
readers are encouraged to read this book as well — after all,

understanding the HR challenges of your peers is essential for
identifying and delivering the right technical solution!
If any of the preceding assumptions describe you, this book is
for you!
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, I occasionally use special icons to call
attention to important information. Here’s what to expect:
This icon points out information that you should commit to
your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin —
along with anniversaries and birthdays!
You won’t find a map of the human genome here, but if you
seek to attain the seventh level of NERD‐vana, perk up! This
icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon.
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the book, please take
care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful
suggestions and useful nuggets of information.
This icon points out the stuff your mother warned you about.
Okay, probably not. But you should take heed nonetheless —
you might just save yourself some time and frustration.
Beyond the Book
There’s only so much I can cover in 48 short pages, so if you
find yourself at the end of this book thinking, “Gosh, this was
an amazing book, where can I learn more?” just go to www.
k2.com/HR.
Where to Go from Here
With my apologies to Lewis Carroll, Alice, and the Cheshire cat:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
HR Process Efficiency For Dummies, K2 Special Edition 2

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said
the Cat — er, the Dummies Man.
“I don’t much care where . . . ,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go!”
That’s certainly true of HR Process Efficiency for Dummies,
which, like Alice in Wonderland, is also destined to become a
timeless classic.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any chapter will get
you there — but Chapter 1 might be a good place to start.
However, if you see a particular topic that piques your inter-
est, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. Each chapter is
individually wrapped (but not packaged for individual sale)
and written to stand on its own, so feel free to start reading
anywhere and skip around to your heart’s content. Read this
book in any order that suits you (though I don’t recommend
upside down or backwards).
I promise you won’t get lost falling down the rabbit hole!
Introduction 3

Today’sHRChallenge:
ManagingaMyriadof
ManualProcesses
In This Chapter
▶▶ Considering the cost of manual processes and workflows
▶▶ Getting started with HR process automation
▶▶ Transforming your organization with business process automation
In this chapter, you look at how manual processes can hurt
your company, consider which HR processes you can auto-
mate in your company, and learn how to enable a digital work-
place with business process automation.
Understanding How Manual,
Paper‐Based Workflows and
Forms Can Hurt Your Company
Almost every part of a successful organization relies on
having information available to the right people at the right
time. For HR professionals, there is yet another facet to this
business imperative: Information must be available to the
right people at the right time in order to recruit and retain the
right people, as well as to support those you already have.
Chapter 1

Nevertheless, information flow is hindered when manual busi-
ness processes are outdated, inefficient, and inflexible. This is
particularly true in departments (HR, IT, and others) that sup-
port other business functions and are not themselves profit
centers, thus often making return on investment (ROI) justifi-
cations less obvious to the business.
Imagine an employee onboarding nightmare. A new employee
arrives for her first day at a new company. The receptionist is
unaware that a new employee is starting today. She frantically
begins making phone calls trying to find out whom the new
employee is supposed to be meeting with first.
Eventually the receptionist reaches someone in HR, who
squirrels the new employee away in a vacant conference
room with a stack of photocopied new‐hire paperwork includ-
ing forms for payroll, taxes, regulatory compliance, benefits
enrollment, credit card applications, and various other
onboarding forms to be completed. The new employee busily
scribbles the required information on each form, trying to
recall all her personal information, and admits that she forgot
to bring her I‐9 documentation and a voided check. The HR
manager makes a mental note to follow up.
At 9 a.m., a small group of managers begins converging on the
conference room for a meeting. The HR manager hurriedly
roams the building in search of another vacant room to con-
tinue the onboarding process. The new employee spends the
next couple of hours manually filling out forms and reading
through policies and procedures — some of which are actu-
ally relevant and still current.
At the same time, an HR assistant is hastily getting a desk
ready while an IT technician scrambles to set up a temporary
computer and create network accounts for the new employee.
Around 11 a.m., the HR manager gives the new employee
a tour of the company. Most of the people the HR man-
ager introduces to the new employee had no idea that a
new employee was starting today, or don’t know what the
employee will be doing for the company. The HR manager
concludes the tour at the new employee’s desk, where the
HR manager leaves her to get settled in and to “get familiar”
with the network. At some point, the new employee’s manager
drops by to quickly say hello and welcome her aboard.

Chapter 1: Today’s HR Challenge 7
The HR manager returns to his office and gives the stack of
mostly completed new employee paperwork to the HR assis-
tant, who begins the lengthy process of reviewing the forms
for completion, entering data into separate payroll, benefits,
and HR systems, drafting half a dozen emails to alert other
departments about the new arrival, and finally creating a new
employee file. The HR assistant is interrupted multiple times
during this process by people asking when the new employee
will be available for a quick department orientation, what
cost center to use for payroll, what type of equipment the
employee needs, and other similar questions.
Meanwhile, after cleaning out her desk drawers — removing
old rubber bands, paper clips, and a few stale potato chip
crumbs — the new employee begins wandering the office
looking for basic office supplies. She then attempts to log in
to the network for the next half hour but can’t because the IT
technician didn’t have the new employee’s correct informa-
tion and misspelled her login name. She still hasn’t met with
her new manager, except as he rushed by on the way to his
next meeting. Frustrated, the new employee leaves for lunch
and doesn’t return — ever.
Later that afternoon, at about the same time that the HR assis-
tant is completing the new employee file and has just finished
ordering business cards, the new employee’s manager angrily
complains to the HR manager that a critical position that took
months to fill is now once again vacant — and the day isn’t
even over yet! Is this scenario an exaggeration? Or is it all too
familiar to you as an HR professional?
Taking Inventory of All
Your HR Processes
Of course, outdated, manual paper‐based processes and
forms can hurt your company well before a new employee’s
first day. Other critical HR workflows and processes that can
often be automated include:
✓✓ Recruiting
✓✓ Training

✓✓ Performance reviews
✓✓ Travel and vacation requests
✓✓ Transfers
✓✓ Policy management
✓✓ Payroll
✓✓ Off‐boarding and exit interviews
You look at how these HR processes can be automated and
examine some real‐world examples in Chapter 2.
Automating these processes and workflows can drive effi-
ciency throughout your company and free valuable HR staff to
focus on more complex human‐capital management issues.
Automating Workflows
to Increase Efficiency
Many organizations are well aware of the benefits of auto-
mating their business processes, but perhaps don’t fully
understand the real cost of manual, outdated processes or
the potential return on investment (ROI) justifying the busi-
ness case for automation. Manual, paper‐based processes
simply can’t keep pace with the modern digital workplace.
Automated workflows and forms can transform a business
into a more productive, responsive environment — but
business process automation must accommodate rapidly
changing business needs, a mobile workforce, and disparate
line‐of‐business (LOB) systems.
According to Gartner (https://www.gartner.com/
doc/2715219/ digital‐workplace‐key‐initiative‐
overview), a digital workplace leverages the technical lit-
eracy of cross‐generation employees — Millennials, Gen Xers,
and even Baby Boomers — to do the following:
✓✓ Enable new and more effective ways of working
✓✓ Improve employee engagement and agility
✓✓ Exploit consumer‐oriented styles and technologies

Chapter 1: Today’s HR Challenge 9
A study by Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work found
that companies are automating 25 to 40 percent of their work-
flows, and businesses that automate processes are reducing
costs by 15 percent year over year.
Yet many organizations are frequently frustrated by the high
costs and long timelines associated with the development of
custom workflows and forms to support automation. Those
costs can be especially discouraging for businesses that want
to extend workflows to their mobile users.
Modern business applications (“apps”) that support critical
workflows and forms must be:
✓✓ Automated
✓✓ Fast to implement
✓✓ Scalable
✓✓ Flexible
Paper‐based workflows are typically flexible, fast, and easy
to implement but do not scale well and are, by their nature,
manual (see Figure 1‐1).
Many businesses develop or purchase “one‐off” custom apps
for specific business workflows. Although such solutions can
be highly automated, they are not easily modified, do not
scale well, can take months or even years to implement or
integrate, and can be prohibitively expensive to develop and
maintain. As an HR leader, you may find this approach slow-
ing you down, leaving you yearning for an easier and faster
solution.
A low‐code business apps platform is an innovative solution
that provides automation, scalability, flexibility, and agil-
ity to support critical business workflows and forms. Plus,
this approach allows HR teams to create the tools they need
themselves, rather than have that task placed on an already
overtasked IT team’s “low priority to‐do” list.

Figure 1-1: Business‐workflow traits.

HRProcessImprovements
thatEveryCompanyNeeds
In This Chapter
▶▶ Attracting top talent
▶▶ Getting new employees started quickly
▶▶ Matching employees to training needs
▶▶ Evaluating performance
▶▶ Managing data and employee changes
▶▶ Going places: travel requests
▶▶ Taking care of vacation requests
▶▶ Moving employees around internally
▶▶ Keeping policies up‐to‐date
▶▶ Making sure that everyone gets paid!
▶▶ Measuring employee satisfaction
▶▶ Completing the employment life cycle
In this chapter, you consider various HR processes that
exist in every organization and explore the opportunities
for business process transformation and automation.
Recruiting
Recruiting processes vary from company to company. In
many companies, the recruiting process begins with a requisi-
tion for a new position being completed by a hiring manager.
In some cases, the hiring manager may have to search various
network drives looking for an old requisition template, update
Chapter 2

(or create) a job or position description, and finally post the
new position.
Many companies require new job positions to be posted inter-
nally before considering external candidates. If the hiring man-
ager is unfamiliar with the process and overlooks this step,
valuable time may be lost circling back with HR and repost-
ing the position internally. In the meantime, a job posting on
external job sites may go stale, recruiters may move on to
other “hot” leads, and highly qualified applicants may become
discouraged by the application process or lose interest.
When designing your recruiting process, consider the
following questions, among others:
✓✓ How will résumés and applications be screened, and by
whom?
✓✓ Who will contact the candidates and schedule the
interviews?
✓✓ Who will follow up with the candidates and provide them
with feedback?
✓✓ What data needs to be collected on candidates? Are there
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting require-
ments?
✓✓ Is your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) a fossil? Does
it integrate with your HR Information System (HRIS)
system? Payroll system? Accounting System?
✓✓ Do positions have to be posted internally before consid-
ering external candidates?
✓✓ Are phone, video, and/or in‐person interviews required?
✓✓ What is the interview format? Are there standard
questions that have to be answered during the interview?
✓✓ How are candidates evaluated?
✓✓ What is the process for sharing feedback between
interviewers and making a decision?
✓✓ Is HR involved in the interviews?
✓✓ What candidate testing is required?
✓✓ Is drug testing required?

Chapter 2: HR Process Improvements that Every Company Needs 13
✓✓ What background checks are required? Criminal? Credit?
Employment history? References?
✓✓ How are offers of employment extended to candidates,
and by whom?
A business automation platform can facilitate a more efficient
and organized recruiting process with automated workflows
that help hiring managers navigate the process and eliminate
potential errors. A well‐designed application might integrate
with the employment section of the organization’s website
and ATS, as well as schedule software, third‐party drug
testing, and other systems and applications. An accepted
employment offer might then trigger the onboarding process,
described in the next section.
Onboarding
Onboarding a new employee is a complex process involving
many people across many departments. An efficient onboard-
ing process is critical to getting a new employee off to a good
start (see the example “nightmare” scenario in Chapter 1),
and up and running as quickly as possible.
Thinking purely in terms of cost, consider the following
scenario. If the average fully loaded employee cost (salary
and benefits) for a particular midmarket business with 300
employees is $83,000 per year, or $40 per hour, the company’s
average turnover rate is 10 percent and the onboarding pro-
cess for each employee takes two days, then onboarding
process costs this company $19,200 in lost productivity cost
alone.
Another method to calculate the cost is to consider employee
contribution. If the same company annually generates $100
million in revenues, the average employee contribution is
$333,333, or $160 per hour. Thus, the cost of the onboarding
process in terms of employee contribution is $76,923.
A well‐designed onboarding application might work as fol-
lows:
✓✓ Upon notification of an accepted employment offer, the
hiring or HR manager enters a start date into the ATS for
the new employee.

✓✓ After entering a start date, a “welcome letter” template
for the new employee is generated with important infor-
mation, such as documents to bring on the first day,
where to park, dress code, time to report, first‐day itin-
erary, and other information. After it’s completed, the
personalized welcome letter is automatically emailed
to the new employee, along with electronic versions of
all required new‐hire, tax, and government forms. These
forms are a breeze for the new employee to complete
because they are already prepopulated with the data the
employee entered when applying for the position.
✓✓ After new‐hire forms are completed by the new
employee, information is automatically routed into the
HRIS, payroll, and benefits enrollment platforms. An
email is generated, prompting the employee to enroll in
benefits on the benefits platform. After enrollment, a con-
firmation of benefits is sent to the employee, providing
information about the employee’s new benefits, and the
HR manager is notified.
✓✓ Meetings with various managers are automatically sched-
uled based on their availability (through integration with
their calendars) and a conference room is automatically
booked for orientation. The meeting invite tells the man-
agers a little about the new employee so that they can
prepare for the meeting.
✓✓ Integration with a ticketing system notifies IT of the new
employee’s name, job title, and other needed informa-
tion so that appropriate equipment can be ordered and
prepared, and system and network accounts can be auto-
matically created, requiring only verification and activa-
tion by an IT security administrator.
✓✓ The ticketing system also notifies facilities management
so that furniture and supplies can be ordered and pre-
pared, business cards and nameplates ordered, and park-
ing and security badges assigned.
✓✓ An electronic employee file is automatically created as
a repository for pertinent forms, such as completed tax
and I‐9 forms and emergency contact information. Other
documents that may be added to the file in the future
include training, performance reviews, vacation requests,
and more (all discussed in the following sections).

Webroot uses K2 to get new employees
up and running fast
Webroot provides industry‐leading
Internet security solutions for con
sumers, enterprises, and small
and medium businesses world
wide. Webroot products consis
tently receive top review ratings by
respected third parties and have
been adopted by millions of users
worldwide.
Webroot’s manual system for
onboarding each of its new hires
was poorly defined and lacked pro
cess visibility. Bringing on multiple
new employees at the same time
only added to the complexity. Just
keeping track of paper‐based forms
took considerable time and effort,
and even worse, the manual proce
dures left the door open for errors
and compliance issues.
Webroot had been using Microsoft
SharePoint for basic content man
agement and collaboration, but it
had never built or implemented a
workflow.
“The driver was that Webroot
needed to have a process that
ensured 100‐percent, day‐one readi
ness for a new employee,” said Fabio
Casti, principal at Caprivi Solutions,
a Toronto‐based K2 partner. “We
talked about what we could do within
SharePoint and how we could get to
where it wanted to go. That’s where
Caprivi and K2 came in.”
Solution
After an evaluation of other systems,
Webroot selected the K2 employee
onboarding solution developed by
Caprivi Solutions.
“We needed a better tool, something
we could use repeatedly and some
thing we could manage in‐house.
We weren’t in the market for a pro
prietary solution that would lock us
in,” said John Reading, manager of
IT business systems at Webroot.
Based on SharePoint and the K2 plat
form for business apps, the new, fully
automated system is kicked off when
Webroot’s hiring manager makes a
request for a new employee on an
electronic InfoPath form. At every
step, the system creates tasks and
sets workflows in motion. For exam
ple, it launches background checks
that go to HR for approval; it prompts
facilities to prepare a nametag, desk,
computer, and chair; then it prompts
IT to set up an email account and
create permissions. Orientation
meetings with HR and relevant line
managers are also automatically
scheduled well before the employee
arrives, ensuring maximum produc
tivity from day one.
Rules and policies prevent errors
and guarantee that information and
approvals are routed to the right
(continued)

Training
By automating the submission of training request forms
and approval workflows, organizations can manage training
throughout the organization more efficiently. This, in turn,
ensures that the organization is able to maximize the efficient
use of department training budgets to drive skills improve-
ment, better workplace safety, and greater productivity.
Integration with performance management systems can help
ensure that skills deficiencies and individual goals identified
in employee performance reviews (discussed in the next
section) are matched to appropriate training opportunities
and measured for effectiveness in future performance reviews.
people at the right time. Escalations
ensure that the process never gets
stalled. A complete audit trail is kept
on all activity, and full, real‐time vis
ibility offers valuable insight and
allows Webroot managers to make
better decisions.
“It really makes people think about
their processes, define them bet
ter, and set expectations right and
according to schedules,” Reading
said.
After spending a day with users
early in the consulting phase, Caprivi
mapped out the processes and then
handled the solution installation and
configuration. It demonstrated the
system for users, implemented the
final iteration, and provided training
on how to reuse the tools and man
age the process.
“We got out of it exactly what we
hoped to, both from the K2 tools and
from Caprivi,” Reading said. “They
were genuinely knowledgeable,
gave us reasonable time frames,
then met them and provided great
support.”
Webroot is now reusing K2 compo
nents to streamline some of its legal
processes.
“We can use K2 not just for one
solution, but to build new solutions
as needs arise,” Reading said.
“Potentially, we could reuse the K2
software and Caprivi’s best prac
tices in all areas of the business for
all kinds of needs.”
Benefits
✓✓ Employees 100 percent
onboarded before their first day
✓✓ Enhancements to existing Share
Point and InfoPath investments
✓✓ Reporting and visibility
✓✓ Full audit trail
✓✓ Reusable workflows and tools
✓✓ Error elimination
(continued)

Finally, data analytics can help HR managers ensure that lim-
ited training resources are equitably allocated throughout the
organization and provide valuable insights for compliance and
management reporting.
Performance Reviews
Managers often struggle to write meaningful and objective
performance reviews for their employees — and to meet HR
deadlines for completing those reviews!
A business process automation platform can help managers
regularly document employee performance throughout the
year to largely drive an automated performance review at
year’s end, greatly simplifying this often dreaded management
responsibility. In addition, gaining leadership approvals for
incentives and annual salary increases can be automatically
processed to support the performance reviews.
A well‐designed application can also facilitate peer or 360‐
degree reviews, other management input, rankings, approvals,
and other potentially unique business requirements.
North Yorkshire Council saves more
than £200,000 with K2‐based
HR processes
North Yorkshire County Council is
one of 27 county councils in England
and covers the largest geographic
area of any local authority in England.
It is responsible for providing a wide
range of public services, such as
education, social care, transport,
waste management, street lighting,
and minerals and waste planning,
to around 600,000 people and has in
excess of 23,000 employees, includ
ing teaching staff, who are based at
170 council offices and 300 school
sites. Many of the council’s busi
ness processes had changed little
since the 1970s and, as a result, a lot
of paper forms and documents were
exchanged between departments
and sites.
This was a challenge for the council’s
HR professionals, who were spread
out across multiple locations. Every
week, they processed thousands of
paper documents covering every
thing from new appointments to
(continued)

maternity leave and dismissals.
These manual HR processes were
time consuming, and the council
believed that it could make substan
tial efficiency savings by using work
flow automation software to simplify
and standardize them.
Solution
The council opted to use automated
workflows from K2 to facilitate the
transformation of its HR processes,
including:
✓✓ Induction for new employees
✓✓ Leavers
✓✓ Attendance monitoring
✓✓ Occupational health referrals
✓✓ Pay scale regrade requests
✓✓ Flexible working requests
✓✓ Disclosure and Baring Service
(DBS) checks
✓✓ Capability referrals
✓✓ Retirement
✓✓ Disciplinary procedures
✓✓ Maternity leave
With just a little initial guidance and
training from K2, the council was
able to design and implement 11
separate workflows by itself, each
corresponding to a specific HR pro
cess, such as making a referral to
occupational health or arranging an
employee’s retirement.
“K2 was really easy to use,” said
Nick Smith, lead developer at North
Yorkshire Council. “Every time we
designed a new process, we took
it to the HR team and showed them
exactly how it would work. They
could then check it and sign it off
before it went live.”
The deployment of K2 processes
formed part of a wider transforma
tion of the council’s HR function.
As such, it required a substantial
investment in time for change man
agement and employee communica
tion. However, the project achieved
excellent results.
The introduction of process auto
mation allowed the council to
make its business managers more
self‐sufficient. Rather than rely on
HR professionals for every small
request, they now use K2 workflows
to initiate and manage the majority of
routine HR procedures themselves.
Although the council has 2,000
business managers, the structured
nature of the K2‐based processes
ensures that HR policies are applied
consistently across the organization.
“Managers now take far greater
ownership of HR issues,” says Jon
Learoyd, head of ICT Architecture
at North Yorkshire County Council.
“K2 not only streamlines the process
but also guides managers through it
so that they know exactly what they
have to do at every stage.”
By automating and simplifying its
processes and moving routine HR
tasks to business managers, the
council was able to significantly
streamline its HR function. This
created a new centralized HR
department where HR profession
als can now focus on more complex
(continued)

Data Management
Your employees are busy and their time is valuable. Printing
forms (if they can even be found on the company intranet!) to
update personal information, or emailing HR to ensure that
addresses, direct deposit, W‐4 forms, emergency contacts, or
phone numbers are set up correctly in a gamut of disparate
systems, are all frustrating tasks that waste time and resources.
All these manual processes can be automated to relieve
both your employees and HR of this administrative burden.
Employees should be able to view, edit, and manage this infor-
mation in a quick and easy way. Picture this: An employee fills
out a form, it kicks off a workflow, and the change is routed to
the appropriate individual for any necessary further process-
ing. The workflow can even be designed so that the change
is applied automatically to any and all other line‐of‐business
(LOB) systems. All changes and requests are organized,
saved, and able to be reported on.
scenarios that demand specialized
HR expertise and knowledge.
“Our deployment of K2 facilitated
business changes that enabled us
to make a cost saving of £200,000
per year on staffing costs,” said
Kelly Hanna, HR manager at North
Yorkshire County Council. “Business
managers have embraced their
new HR responsibility — and that’s
down to the simplicity of the K2
processes.”
K2 integrates with the company’s
electronic records system, so when
letters and other documents are
generated by the K2‐based HR pro
cesses, they are now automatically
stored electronically in the relevant
employee’s file. Around 70 percent
of the documents in an employee file
are generated by HR policies, so by
eliminating the production of all this
unnecessary paper, the council is
making further cost savings.
Hanna explained: “Administrators no
longer have to file physical copies of
letters and documents away in filing
cabinets, so they save time, while
the council saves storage space and
costs. K2 is a large contributing fac
tor in an additional £180,000 savings
on employment administration.”
Benefits
✓✓ £200,000 per year savings on HR
staff costs
✓✓ Additional cost savings on
employee administration
✓✓ More time freed up so that HR
professionals can focus on more
complex issues
✓✓ Improved self‐serve facility for
routine HR processes

Travel Requests
Manually processing travel requests has become more com-
plex, error prone, and costly in recent years.
Employees have many options such as which airline, depar-
ture and arrival times they want, and various seating and meal
preferences, for example. Flexible rental car options and a
myriad of hotel accommodations add to this complexity.
Booking errors can also be costly, with many airlines charging
rebooking or cancellation fees. Even a simple typo, such as
a missing letter in a name or the wrong birth date, can cause
major headaches.
Many organizations handle travel bookings through third‐party
websites. A business automation platform can eliminate many
errors resulting from manual processes and forms that don’t
integrate with these websites.
K2 helps Sysmex save time and gain
visibility across the organization
Sysmex Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., a sub
sidiary of Sysmex Corporation of
Japan, is a market leader in the deliv
ery and implementation of clinical in
vitro diagnostic (IVD) and health IT
products and services for labora
tories, hospitals, and health care
organizations.
Sysmex relied on complex expense
claim and travel request processes
that were time consuming and
involved multiple systems.
To submit a request, Sysmex employ
ees used an interface that was
difficult to navigate without consid
erable training. Information had to
be entered in a very specific manner
for the process to work correctly.
However, so many finance codes
and abbreviations were being used
that mistakes were frequently made,
and employees were spending too
much time learning their meanings or
reworking the submission instead of
moving the process along and focus
ing on more important work.
This system was not integrated into
SAP,soafterarequestwasapproved,
the information had to be manually
reentered and then approved again
to create a purchase order.
Further adding to the frustrations,
poor visibility and reporting capa
bilities prevented Sysmex employees
from accessing the status or history
of any process.

Vacation Requests
Vacation requests are often delayed because managers must
log in to different systems, such as a payroll system to verify
that the employee has vacation time available, and schedul-
ing systems to ensure sufficient work coverage during the
requested vacation period.
Sysmex knew it needed a workflow
solution, but the out‐of‐the‐box tools
in SharePoint weren’t sufficient for
the solution the company envisioned.
Solution
MUU Consulting built the K2‐based
TREK System that gave Sysmex users
a simple interface for managing
travel requests and expense claims.
The SharePoint‐integrated ASP.NET
web application pulls data from and
pushes data to Sysmex’s SAP and
other systems, the tricky finance
codes are replaced with user‐
friendly descriptions, and all infor
mation is submitted in easy‐to‐use
electronic forms.
“Another one of the great benefits is
thatweareabletoeasilycaptureaddi
tional information for specific codes,
such as ‘guest list’ under entertain
ment expenses,” said Jason Chuang,
Manager of Regional IT Systems at
Sysmex. “This would not have been
possible before without significant
customization work in SAP.”
The TREK System also gives Sysmex
visibility into each process and
request. K2 provides a list view of
all claims and requests, View Flow
for real‐time status of any process,
easy‐to use reporting and budget‐
tracking tools, and search and filters
so that employees get exactly the
kind of information they need — fast.
“Before, when using the SAP inter
face, it could take up to one full
day to compile the reports,” said
Lawrence Tay, Sysmex Senior
Systems Administrator. “With the
new system, generating the report is
almost instantaneous. All they need
to do is filter the report to what is
needed and they can run and get the
result on the fly.”
After the success of the TREK
System, Sysmex recently went live
with a quality management system
that streamlines the handling of
documentation, routing, and approv
als. MUU is also working on a new
K2‐based purchase request solution
for Sysmex.
Benefits
✓✓ Streamlined processes that save
time
✓✓ Easy‐to‐use interface
✓✓ Greater visibility
✓✓ Solution integrated across line‐
of‐business (LOB) systems, like
SAP and SharePoint

Transfers
Employee transfers between departments and locations often
require various manual changes that may be overlooked. A
poorly documented or manual process can lead to costly
errors. For example, various system and network permissions
may need to be changed, commensurate with an employee’s
new role. Delays can be costly and cause frustration for the
employee, the employee’s new supervisor and peers, and the
IT department. Failure to remove system permissions that are
no longer needed can cause serious security and compliance
issues for the organization.
Policy Management
In many organizations, HR policies are maintained on a shared
network drive. This can lead to issues with policies not being
regularly updated or obsolete policies not being properly
removed from the network, potentially causing confusion and
frustration for employees.
A policy management system can ensure that appropriate man-
agers are notified when policies need to be updated. Workflows
can be built to escalate policy updates throughout the entire
process, all the way through approval and publication.
Certain policies that may require employee acknowledgment
and signature, such as an Internet acceptable use policy or a
harassment policy, can be automatically routed throughout
the organization, tracked for completion, and stored in indi-
vidual employee files.
Payroll
Many organizations utilize third‐party payroll services. The
ability to integrate with a business automation platform helps
to ensure that payroll information is always kept up‐to‐date
and reduces the need for manual, error‐prone data entry.
Additionally, the capability to extract certain information
from payroll systems, such as available vacation time, can
help managers to more efficiently process vacation requests
(discussed earlier in this chapter).

PT Petrosea Tbk uses K2 blackpearl
to streamline HR processes
PT Petrosea Tbk is a multidisci
plinary mining, infrastructure, and
oil and gas services company that
has been serving Indonesia since
1972. PT Petrosea provides com
plete pit‐to‐port mining solutions,
supported by integrated engineering
and construction capabilities and
logistic support, and also provides
services for the oil and gas indus
try in Indonesia through Petrosea
Offshore Supply Base (POSB).
With more than 4,000 employees
worldwide, basic HR processes,
such as time sheet reports and
leave requests, generated a mas
sive amount of paperwork for PT
Petrosea’s HR staff. These pro
cesses were labor intensive, poorly
defined, and prone to failure.
Without a proper way to model and
document the processes, the only
person who knew what steps were
needed to complete each task was
the process owner.
Creating new electronic processes,
or updating existing ones, also
posed problems. Because each of
PT Petrosea’s processes was cre
ated as a custom solution, different
web applications were in use, with
numerous forms and distributed busi
ness rules. There was no easy way
to get an overview of all the elec
tronic processes in the organization,
and when changes were required,
recoding work was needed.
Solution
PT Petrosea began deploying K2
software in its local office and
developers began the requirements
gathering process with business
users. Petrosea successfully rolled
out two new electronic processes
for the HR department, covering the
submission of time sheets and leave
applications.
With K2 blackpearl, PT Petrosea has
also automated its processes for
business travel arrangements, new
business card requests, stationery
requests, personnel requests, and
change management requests.
Now work is completed in just a frac
tion of the time, processes are exe
cuted consistently, rules and policies
prevent errors, and PT Petrosea has
full visibility into all these processes.
“Some processes used to take
around one to three days for a full
approval cycle using manual forms.
With K2, it takes as little as two hours
for that same process to complete,”
said MIS Manager William Prakasa
Lingga.
Processes and portions of processes
can be reused to build new ones,
and end users can participate in the
development and the improvement of
processes — so development time is
reduced and IT resources are freed
to concentrate on other projects and
priorities.
(continued)

Employee Surveys
Various employee surveys are often conducted via email or
third‐party services such as SurveyMonkey. Building surveys
in a business automation platform can help organizations
to better customize surveys for their specific needs, collate
results, and identify and analyze long‐term trends.
Offboarding and Exit Interviews
Offboarding and exit interviews often include manual check-
lists to ensure that equipment, keys and security badges are
returned, system and network accounts are disabled, and
other important information is documented.
Manual processes can delay these processes, which in some
instances (such as terminations) can be vital to the safety and
security of the organization and its employees.
Automating the offboarding and exit interview process helps
to ensure that these task‐based processes are completed
in a timely and accurate manner, allowing the HR manager
to focus on the more value‐added responsibility of actually
conducting the exit interview. This, in turn, may forestall any
negative publicity for the company from a disgruntled former
employee who wasn’t able to “get a few things off his chest”
before leaving the company.
Benefits
✓✓ Drastic time savings
✓✓ Rules and policies that prevent
errors
✓✓ Reduced IT costs
✓✓ Full visibility
✓✓ Reusable assets, such as forms,
reports, and processes
(continued)

DIYProcess‐Based
Workflows
In This Chapter
▶▶ Moving past the IT software development bottleneck
▶▶ Supporting employees anywhere and on any device
▶▶ Building the “dream” HR application
▶▶ Replacing “shadow IT” applications and processes with scalable
solutions
In this chapter, you explore how a do‐it‐yourself (DIY)
business process automation platform can help jump‐
start your HR process improvement and process excellence
initiatives (discussed in Chapter 2).
Isn’t It IT’s Job to Build
Applications for Us?
Many organizations have traditionally viewed application
(“app”) development as an IT function. However, today’s
digital workplace (see Chapter 1) requires employers to
leverage an ever‐expanding base of individual technical skills
throughout the organization.
The reality is that IT department resources are seriously
constrained and can become bottlenecks for process
improvement and process excellence initiatives, even with
the best of intentions. Many IT departments are locked
into rigid software development life cycles that can take
Chapter 3

months to deliver even relatively simple business apps. From
requirements definition to coding, testing, and maintenance,
such formal processes — even those labeled as “agile” — can
be too slow and inflexible to keep up with the dynamic and
rapidly evolving needs of the business. Teams of developers,
business analysts, and project managers add to the cost and
complexity of such projects.
But what if you had powerful, easy‐to‐use, drag‐and‐drop tools
that enabled you to access the data and build the workflows
and processes you need yourself? A business process
automation platform — that requires little or no software
coding — can empower you to automate and optimize your
workflows and forms in a fraction of the time and at a fraction
of the cost required for traditional IT development efforts.
Overhauling Your Workflows
for the Mobile Age
Companies today are under more pressure than ever to iden-
tify process and workflow inefficiencies and eliminate them
through automation. Manual workflows and paper‐based
forms are a great starting point because they are cumber-
some, error prone, time consuming, and can’t easily accom-
modate today’s mobile workforce.
Business process automation can breathe new life into tired,
manual workflows. It can streamline processes and connect
disparate line‐of‐business (LOB) systems so that employees
can work smarter and perform tasks faster. And when busi-
ness apps are supported on mobile devices, employees can
work more efficiently wherever they go. However, it can
be challenging for resource‐constrained IT departments to
quickly design and update apps that work with multiple plat-
forms, such as tablets, smartphones, and email.
Business process automation simplifies the design and rollout
of process‐based workflow apps for a mobile workforce.

Chapter 3: DIY Process‐Based Workflows 27
Demand meets modernization
The bring your own apps (BYOA) trend — an extension of
the consumerization of IT and bring your own device (BYOD)
trends — is hard evidence of what your employees already
know: Current business processes are not fully meeting their
needs. If they were, employees wouldn’t feel compelled to find
their own solutions from outside sources.
You’ve probably already felt the impact of these trends in your
organization. According to IDG’s Enterprise Consumerization of
IT in the Enterprise Study 2014:
✓✓ Ninety percent of employees use consumer‐oriented,
cloud‐based services, like Skype and LinkedIn, for their
work.
✓✓ Seventy‐nine percent use cloud‐based file sharing and
collaboration tools, such as Dropbox or Microsoft
OneDrive.
✓✓ Forty percent of employees use their own smartphones
for work.
More and more businesses are embracing the move to a
mobile, digital work style. They need to support workers who
are on the go, working online and off. Yet many IT leaders feel
that productivity gains and other benefits of mobility remain
out of reach because outdated manual processes hinder prog-
ress toward modernization.
Companies embracing mobility
Mobile devices may have started as
a BYOD challenge for companies, but
they have now found a permanent
home as a productivity boost. Cloud‐
based storage and applications
expand the limits of what employees
can do with a handheld device.
According to the Intel IT Center,
“Employees report saving an average
of 57 minutes a day using mobile
devices — that’s nearly an hour
of productivity gained each day by
simply providing a different way
to work. Think of the productivity
benefits you could gain by scaling
this flexibility across your entire
organization, ultimately reducing the
cost of doing business.”

Empowering mobile users
What if a sales representative on an extended business trip
needed to add a few new destinations to her travel itiner-
ary? Rather than email her assistant the details, who in turn
completes the appropriate travel request forms and manually
routes them to the corporate travel coordinator, the sales
rep could access an app on her mobile phone and submit the
travel request herself for immediate processing.
Her new itinerary also takes her through Atlanta, so she
decides to take a few days off to visit her sister while there.
Within the same app, she verifies that she has the vacation
time available and automatically submits the vacation request
to her manager and the HR department.
When she returns from her trip, she uses the same app to
submit her expense reimbursement forms. The payroll and
finance departments are able to quickly and easily access her
approved travel itinerary and vacation request in the same
app from their desktop computers in order to correlate and
classify the appropriate expenses and dates.
Automating workflows
to increase efficiency
How can you quickly and affordably make your organization
mobile? Before answering that question, consider what a
transformed, modernized business process might look like.
A modern business application:
✓✓ Automates workflows and forms, increasing productivity
and reducing errors
✓✓ Eliminates manual processes and costly delays
✓✓ Empowers employees to work smarter and faster by
providing all the information they need, in context, on
any device

Chapter 3: DIY Process‐Based Workflows 29
The HR App Dream: Build Apps
Fast, Run on Any Device, and
Access Data Anywhere
Many companies have found process nirvana with custom,
easy‐to‐use business apps that can run on any device — from
a browser to a smartphone. These apps address specific
needs, such as the onboarding of new employees, in a way
that can dramatically increase efficiency.
The promised, transformative results include
✓✓ Streamlined processes
✓✓ Empowered mobile workers
✓✓ Powerful insight into business trends
✓✓ Better, data‐driven decision making
No doubt, organizations are always looking for ways to work
smarter and faster. They need tools that allow them to quickly
create system‐spanning forms, and they need reliable work-
flows to securely deliver information to the right people at the
right time.
For example, onboarding apps might need to use data from
across services and systems whether on premises or in the
cloud. To be effective, business apps should accommodate
any system that employees rely on and should not require
complex coding.
Most companies can’t afford to design and maintain mul-
tiple, customized versions of every app for different form
factors. Every small update would require another round of
development changes, testing, and distribution. So companies
are turning to low‐code, drag‐and‐drop software platforms,
and tools that support fast, responsive app design; as a result,
these organizations are able to roll out new or updated apps
rapidly, for all form factors.

Responsive design is an approach to web design that opti-
mizes a website or web‐based application for optimal viewing
and navigation on any device or form factor, such as a
smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer.
Managing and reporting capabilities are in high demand as
well. A good management dashboard allows managers to
view and act on all tasks from a central location, and detailed
out‐of‐the‐box reporting displays how their processes are
performing and helps them identify trends or efficiency gaps
that can improve risk management and forecasting.
A business process automation platform with these charac-
teristics delivers value to businesses and their employees
in days or weeks, instead of months, and companies report
drastic reductions in their development costs.
Future‐Proofing with Scalable
Applications You Can
Build Yourself
As organizations grow, their business applications must scale
easily to support new and emerging needs. Current “shadow
IT” applications and processes — which exist in organiza-
tions far too frequently — can be critical to everyday business
workflows, but are unknown to, and therefore unsupported
by, corporate IT departments. These applications and pro-
cesses may consist of elaborate spreadsheets that have been
built, maintained, and “password‐protected” by individual
employees over the years, or they’re cloud‐based services
and applications such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
Deploying a low‐code business process automation platform
empowers employees in every department to replace these
shadow IT applications and processes with scalable front‐end
applications that integrate easily with complex, disparate
backend systems — that they can build themselves!

GettingStartedwithHR
ProcessEfficiency
In This Chapter
▶▶ Working across organizational boundaries
▶▶ Recognizing the benefits of a low‐code solution
▶▶ Reaching out to subject matter experts (SMEs)
▶▶ Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs)
▶▶ Redesigning workflows and processes
▶▶ Adopting a methodology
▶▶ Getting support for your initiative
▶▶ Selecting a business process automation solution
In this chapter, I help you get started with a process excel-
lence initiative for your organization. (See Chapter 2 for
some ideas on which of your HR processes you might want to
automate.
Closing the Gap between
Strategy and Execution
When driving any major change within an organization,
strategy and execution are intrinsic to a project’s success.
Nevertheless, closing the gap between strategy and execution
remains a challenge for many organizations. Companies tend
to focus more on execution than strategy for quick results
instead of taking the time needed to understand the parts that
make up the whole.
Chapter 4

A large part of closing this gap is understanding that business
processes and workflows don’t fit neatly within the traditional
organizational hierarchy. Business processes are often messy,
collaborative efforts that span people, departments, and
systems, making them difficult to manage within a hierarchi-
cal structure. Business process management (BPM) helps by
redefining an organization according to its end‐to‐end needs,
so opportunities for improvement can be identified and pro-
cesses streamlined for efficiency, growth, and transformation.
The Changing BPM Landscape
Agile BPM solutions need to streamline the untamed pro-
cesses that hold an organization’s core processes together,
which often involves a mix of unstructured content sources,
such as emails, collaboration portals like SharePoint, and
social media. Agile BPM solutions need to be able to integrate
with these collaboration points, in addition to line‐of‐business
(LOB) systems like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM,
and Oracle, as well as cloud services like Box, Dropbox, and
Google Drive.
Today’s workers also interact more with products and ser-
vices through software. With easier access to the Internet
from tablets and mobile devices, they are more apt than pre-
vious generations to look for solutions that meet their needs,
giving rise to popular trends such as Bring Your Own Device
(BYOD), Bring Your Own Apps (BYOA), and the consumeriza-
tion of IT (discussed in Chapter 3). As a result, companies
experience more pressure to lower costs and provide better
services as well as faster development and delivery cycles.
Companies can no longer afford to wait a year or two before
seeing a return on their investment. Organizations need agile,
integrated solutions that can deliver fast results.
Finally, BPM needs to include a way to rapidly build custom
applications that can be IT led or driven by process owners to
solve specific workflow‐ and process‐based challenges.
To meet these needs, low‐code business application platforms
are emerging as an alternative to BPM suites. According
to a recent Forrester report, “Predictions 2015: The Age of
the Customer Is Set to Disrupt the BPM Market,” low‐code

Chapter 4: Getting Started with HR Process Efficiency 33
platforms are one of several alternative approaches to BPM
suites that will “disrupt and reshape the BPM market.”
Business process applications minimize software coding and
speed up development and delivery cycles with visual tools
that can be utilized by business users and developers alike.
Applications are delivered through a test, learn, and pivot
approach in which requirements, design, development, and
deployment are condensed into a single platform, allowing
organizations to deliver solutions more quickly. If changes
need to be made, business users and/or developers can pivot
and make adjustments within hours or days, compared to a
custom‐developed and custom‐coded solution that could take
months to redesign.
K2 provides a comprehensive, low‐code business process
application platform that supports the full range of business
needs, from top‐down, standardization initiatives to smart
process applications that incorporate information from vari-
ous sources, including LOB systems, collaboration platforms,
social streams, email, and cloud file‐storing services.
Regardless of the initiative, K2 drives efficiency, growth, and
transformation through business process applications that
automate business processes and workflows with minimal dis-
ruption, while providing immediate value.
Identifying Processes
When evaluating and identifying processes that can be
improved, mapping out all the end‐to‐end processes that exist
in your organization can be difficult. Subject matter experts
(SMEs) from different departments and areas throughout the
organization can help identify core and value‐chain processes
that would be good candidates for automation. SMEs look for
processes that are manual, repetitive, error prone, or have
other characteristics that make them ideal to automate.
Read Chapter 2 to help you identify HR processes that may be
ideal candidates for business process automation.
The ability to rapidly build and run business process applica-
tions with a low‐code business process automation solution

makes it easy to test candidate processes that have been
identified for automation, and at a low risk and cost. Visual,
no‐code tools make it possible to build applications within
hours, as opposed to the lengthy development cycles of
manually coded software solutions. This allows for feedback
and adjustments in a very short period of time. If it seems
better to keep a process manual, the resources that have
been spent to test the process are minimal compared to a
similar effort with a custom‐developed solution. Sometimes,
just attempting to improve a process can bring about positive
changes by putting a stop to “it’s always been done this way”
kind of thinking.
To help people understand the value that automation adds
to a process, look for robust reporting capabilities that let
you derive all kinds of data to monitor, measure outputs, and
clearly see how each process is performing in comparison to
the original process. This makes it easy to maintain visibility
into the more detailed aspects of the business and identify
further opportunities for improvement.
Measuring “As‐Is” Processes
After you have identified the processes that will be auto-
mated, you have many different ways to measure these pro-
cesses and identify key performance indicators (KPIs), so you
have something to measure against after the new processes
are in place. Possible ways to measure processes include
looking at cycle times, the number of resources allocated to a
process, and the time each resource spends to complete the
process life cycle.
KPIs should align with overarching organizational strategies
and goals. A clear vision of how KPIs tie into organizational
strategies can make a big difference in gaining and maintain-
ing buy‐in from the business to ensure your project’s success.
It’s important to understand that business process automa-
tion is not about automating people out of processes but
eliminating the time‐consuming, redundant components that
slow employees down. Understanding where there is value in
automating and where there is value in maintaining a manual

process is an important but sometimes difficult discernment
to make.
When the automated process is live, dashboards and reports
can be used to measure the new process against the original.
With K2, you can streamline processes and gain deeper
insights to help eliminate bottlenecks and gain critical insights
into trends and activities across your business with high‐level
or detailed reports that measure information, such as overall
process time or number of process instances.
Determining “To‐Be” Processes
After processes have been measured and KPIs determined,
the to‐be processes need to be mapped out. Before this step
is taken, making sure that all process requirements are under-
stood is vital. Business owners, sponsors, stakeholders, SMEs,
analysts, and architects all play a pivotal role in working
together to understand and map each process.
A build‐and‐run design approach can support rapid process
automation with visual, executable process apps that give you
the flexibility to quickly make updates to a business process
or solve individual process needs.
When mapping out processes, looking at how system
capabilities can optimize and shorten process life cycles is
important.
K2 provides an array of advanced features that make it
possible to support complex business scenarios, such as:
✓✓ Multiple approvers needing to review a task at the same
time
✓✓ A business rule specifying that if a claim is over a certain
dollar amount, it is routed to higher‐level management
for approval before processing
✓✓ Alerting a manager or rerouting tasks when someone
is sick, on vacation, or has not responded to a request
within a specific time frame

Choosing a Methodology and
Implementation Strategy
As process requirements are captured and you draw closer
to execution, you have many methodologies to choose from
that will define the approach you take in carrying out your
BPM initiative. Some of the better known approaches include
Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, Waterfall, and Change
Management. The size of your company and the training of
your employees can make a big difference as to which meth-
odology you choose.
Although some companies adopt a single methodology and
implement it across the organization, other companies prefer
a more flexible approach, with methodologies and approaches
varying widely depending on employee and departmental
needs.
In alignment with modern BPM practices, an incremental
approach is usually recommended when undertaking a large
BPM initiative for a variety of reasons. Large “big bang”
projects inherently have a higher rate of failure because test-
ing can be difficult prior to implementation, and a failure to
account for a single interdependency can cause setbacks
that impact the entire project. This approach also has a
higher learning curve and creates more pressure on employ-
ees to “sink or swim” when adopting new technologies. If
the organization simply isn’t ready for the new technology
and takes longer than expected to adjust, performance can
decline, which can have a detrimental effect on the business.
Accounting for, or responding to, any business needs changes
can be expensive and time consuming.
With an incremental approach, development and delivery
leaders can quickly develop, deliver, and gain feedback, so
processes can be fine‐tuned to best suit the unique needs
and practices of the organization. The first process should be
something that is small enough to implement in a short time
frame but big enough to make a difference in terms of how it
will benefit the organization to demonstrate its value to the
management team.

Gaining and Maintaining
Business Buy‐In
Gaining and maintaining business buy‐in is critical to the
success of any initiative. A key element in this regard that
many organizations lack is making sure that solutions align
with business requirements. SMEs are extremely experienced
and knowledgeable within their area of expertise and can tell
you what they wish they had in terms of access to data, better
systems, and so forth, but they can’t necessarily draw you a
picture of exactly what they’re looking for.
Traditionally, when creating custom applications, questions
about rules, data, and integration points are asked up front.
Developers then go off to build the application, and when it
is completed, they bring back the finished project for busi-
ness review. The development effort can take months to
complete, and if missing elements are identified during the
review period, this can mean that part of the project needs to
be completely scrapped and redone, resulting in several more
months of work.
Choosing a Solution for
Process Excellence
When it comes to choosing a platform for continuous excel-
lence, companies are interested in sustainable technolo-
gies that will become an integral part of the organization. In
Chapter 5, you learn about some important features and func-
tionality to look for in a business process automation platform
to support process excellence in your organization.

TenKeyComponents
toTransform
Business Processes
In This Chapter
▶▶ Evaluating business process automation solutions
▶▶ Empowering users and supporting changing needs
▶▶ Integrating tools easily and ensuring accessibility
▶▶ Allowing for standardization, mobility, and measurable results
In this chapter, I present eight important evaluation crite-
ria for you to consider when choosing a business process
automation solution for your organization.
Fast, Easy, Do‐It‐Yourself
Forms and Workflows
A low‐code business process automation solution must
provide easy‐to‐use, visual design tools that enable subject
matter experts (SMEs) and business users to build automated
forms and workflows themselves, without extensive — and
expensive — IT development.
Chapter 5

Secure Access to Forms,
Workflows, and Data
from Any Device
Today’s business users expect to be able to work from any-
where, at any time, on any device — whether it’s a laptop
computer, smartphone, or tablet.
Beyond simply downloading a printable form from Box or
Google Drive, a business automation solution should enable
users to quickly and easily complete an online form, such as a
travel request, on their mobile phone, and automatically route
it to the appropriate managers for approval.
Integration with Other Systems
The solution must give employees a way to easily access
data from multiple sources, thereby eliminating the need to
have lots of technical knowledge to access source systems
of record, such as HR information systems (HRIS), payroll
software systems, and human capital management (HCM)
applications.
Provide Data Security
The solution should integrate with external LOB data in a
way that is secure, such as by providing a conduit to where
the data is stored rather than storing the data directly in an
application. Ideally, applications that you build will adopt the
security parameters of the underlying systems of record so
that data adheres to the company security measures already
in place. Data security is one of the most important issues to
think about when considering any new technology. Ensuring
that your business process automation technologies will keep
your data secure before buying can save a lot of headaches
further down the road.

Chapter 5: Ten Key Components to Transform Business Processes 41
Reusable Components
Reusable building blocks help with standardization. For
example, K2’s SmartObject technology ensures that after
a connection to an external system, like SAP or Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, has been established, that integration point
can be reused across any number of interfaces and pro-
cesses, instead of developers having to build a new integra-
tion point every time a new application is built that requires
access to that particular system. This makes it quick and
easy to pull together information from disparate systems
into a single view for easy approval, analysis, and decision
making.
Another advantage of reusable building blocks is that all
integration points with external systems look and behave
in the same way, making it easy to utilize data from disparate
systems — such as SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft
CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce, Oracle, Box, Google
Drive, and more — without having to learn the nuances that
pertain to a particular technology. Business users can then
access critical information from these systems without ever
having to access them or learn how these systems operate.
Interfaces and process designs can be reused across multiple
applications as well, ensuring that as technical assets are
developed, applications become faster and easier to build.
Advanced Analytics
and Reporting
“HR is the new frontier for data science applications in busi-
ness,” says Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder. A business
process automation solution should connect disparate sys-
tems, applications, and data throughout the organization and
in the cloud to enable powerful insights and better decision
making. Intuitive, graphical dashboards and reporting capa-
bilities are a must. “Word of mouth” referrals can be your best
recruiting asset: The happier your employees are, the better
your future hiring prospects!

Standards for Building,
Integrating, and
Proliferating
The solution should be scalable in a way that allows standard-
ization across departments and regions. It should also be
agile and flexible enough to allow processes across the busi-
ness to be automated in a short amount of time and updated
just as easily.
Balance between Power
and Simplicity
A solution doesn’t need to be massive or complicated and
long drawn to be successful; it just needs to solve the chal-
lenges faced by the business. A business solution should be
able to handle a wide variety of process‐workflows and com-
plex event handling and rules, as well as manage data across
disparate sources.
Enable Process Improvement
Automating a poorly designed manual process won’t fix exist-
ing process problems, but finding a solution that gives you
insight into bottlenecks and other process pitfalls and ineffi-
ciencies will. Choose a business process automation solution
that provides metrics and reporting dashboards that you can
use to look for opportunities to improve all your processes.
Measurable Results
The platform should be able to provide real process improve-
ment that can be measured. The platform should also provide
visibility into the process itself, enable immediate insight
into the cause of roadblocks, and be able to actually measure
how instances are performing in terms of cycle time, data

Chapter 5: Ten Key Components to Transform Business Processes 43
expectations,and consistent use, enabling companies to make
objective judgment calls and decisions with regard to change.
The K2 platform meets all these requirements. The K2 plat-
form can not only provide the business process improve-
ments that organizations need, but also provide businesses
with a continuous innovation capability that allows them to
easily change processes in the future. The K2 platform has
a set of easy drag‐and‐drop tools that companies can use
to build low‐code, scalable applications composed of work-
flows and forms that automate business processes and easily
integrate with industry‐leading IT systems. The K2 platform
allows process management to become what it should be: an
integral part of knowledge capture, process improvement,
compliance management, and business agility.

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