Published on the 19/05/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
New South Wales’ 19 forced council amalgamations could shave months off their merger timetables if they first map business processes…
New Zealand based Promapp has a growing footprint of users in local Government, and founder and CEO Ivan Seselj says that for those organisations which have properly mapped their process, the forced merger process will be faster and less painful.
He acknowledged though that the platform “could not work miracles” and to get most benefit users may have to not only document their processes, but reform them to get full advantage. He said that a series of communities had sprung up in specific sectors to share insights around best process with regard to process management. Local government is one such community.
In the case of the Queanbeyan-Palerange forced council merger, he said that both were users of Promapp systems and had been holding joint workshops in advance of this month’s council amalgamation announcement. “It’s a challenge they are looking forward to,” he said.
He said that amalgamations could be achieved months faster in situations where processes were already mapped out.
For councils which had not yet clearly mapped out their processes, it was an important first step prior to amalgamation according to Seselj. “You can’t change what you don’t know.”
However he acknowledged that at least initially merging councils would likely keep their processes intact so as not to overly disrupt residents.
The software house was established in New Zealand in 2002. There are now 400 users of the Promapp process mapping system – most in Australia and New Zealand, though there is a push underway to boost sales in Europe and the US.
Seselj said during an interview with iStart that the biggest competitor remains inertia with organisations still wedded to word documents and flow charts to document their processes.
But he said that such process manuals were often not used, leaving organisations vulnerable with regard to compliance.
He said process mapping systems – designed to step people through a business process online – delivered “greater control over how teams operate and not exposed to uncertainties”.
That he said reduced the risk of non compliance with regulations and legislation.
ASX listed insurance company ClearView is a convert. Realising that its process guidelines were not always followed, the company implemented the cloud based Promapp to capture processes and steer workflow. The platform also provides what Seselj describes as a “living breathing dashboard” that reveals who in an organisation has accessed what process management guidelines when.
