Rethinking and Redesigning Business Processes to Accelerate Digital Transformation

Digital transformation efforts generally begin with a view of the business processes, workflows, and systems that enable an institution to more efficiently conduct business. “Oftentimes, institutions are approaching the concept of digital transformation backwards and look for the software to solve a business problem, when in fact, the approach should be the other way around,” explains Samuel Conn, Ph.D, President and Chief Executive Officer, Edge. “When you talk about the concept of enterprise information systems architecture, you first align and optimize your business processes, and then once those are documented, that documentation of your business processes is used to select and configure the appropriate software to enable those processes.”

One potential approach to lowering an institution’s operating expenses is to implement business process management practices—strategies which for-profit businesses have successfully used to lower operational expenses for decades. “Higher education lags behind traditional for-profit businesses in deploying business process management,” says Mark Meara, Ed.D., Vice President of Technical Operations and Chief Information Officer. “The practice of business process management seeks to improve or change these processes to enhance an organization’s products, services, effectiveness, and efficiency,”

“In the digital economy,” Meara continues, “Organizations experienced significant pressures from both economic and competition perspectives. These challenges are forcing organizations that wish to not only survive, but also thrive, to evaluate and improve their business processes. Historically, there was less pressure on institutions of higher education to be profitable; therefore, they only began evaluating the performance and improvement of their business processes around the year 2000, much after the business sector. Higher education institutions may not have business process modeling and notation skill sets readily available on staff, but they can leverage organizations such as Edge to provide such resources.”

Assessing Current and Future State Processes
Edge has recently enhanced their EdgeDx Professional Services to better help member institutions optimize their business processes and achieve operational efficiency at every level of the student lifecycle. “EdgeDx has shifted toward a stronger focus on digital transformation and reengineering topologies that have better integration and interoperability with cloud services,” explains Conn. “EdgeDx combines four of our services: professional, security, digital learning, and cloud services, and we have experts available who are well versed in business process modeling. We can help model how things are being done currently and present this in a visual format on an engineering diagram. By thoroughly mapping out processes, we can see where the opportunities exist to eliminate redundancy, increase efficiency, and optimize the process so that it’s working smoothly and at the lowest level of friction within the organization.”

Meara adds, “Edge can also assist CIOs to be strategic within their institutions and transform themselves as business experts who specialize in IT, not as IT experts who position themselves as business experts. Edge can partner with its member CIOs to expedite and manage change by conducting various assessments (e.g., E360, Cloud readiness, cybersecurity, Business Process Improvement, etc.), but it doesn’t end there. We can also provide the resources necessary to leverage the assessments and fuel the necessary changes to achieve true digital transformation on the institutional level.”

Reviewing Complex Business Processes
Edge recently partnered with the New Jersey President’s Council (NJPC) Academic Issues Committee (AIC) to review and optimize their business processes to improve operational efficiency. The Committee helps address educational, research, and administrative issues within the education community and reviews proposals for new academic programs that could be beneficial to colleges and universities within the State. They ensure a proposed program is not redundant or conflicting with other programs and that the features and functions meet the demands of the marketplace. Throughout the articulated workflow and complex business process, the NJPC shares the collected data across the Council to determine if the program can advance to the next steps in the process.

Like any procedure with many moving parts that evolve over time, inefficiencies arose and the need for a more coordinated approach was necessary. The NJPC/AIC chair reached out to Edge to discuss their important review process and how they could improve the overall efficiency, while addressing current pain points. “The NJPC/AIC was aware of Edge’s expertise in business process redesign and reengineering efforts and was interested in fully documenting the process as it is today, and then creating a suggested future state process,” explains recently-retired Ed Chapel, Ph.D., Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Edge. “The goal would be to re-document and create a more streamlined and efficient process that was more time and cost effective.”

Redesigning Business Processes
Since the NJPC business process had some disconnects and there was no automation, institutions were submitting program proposals to the AIC via email. Without a consistent contact list, managing the process was very difficult and time consuming, there was no consistency in how programs were submitted, and not all institutions were getting notified when a new program was announced. The NJPC wanted to organize and standardize a process where all institutions were submitting forms and getting notified in a systematic way. To assist the AIC, Edge convened a committee that consisted of Dr. Chapel, Donna Rogalski, Ed.D., Assistant Director for Academic Programs: Office of the Secretary of Higher Education, and Allison Samay, Executive Director at New Jersey Presidents’ Council. “Donna and Allison provided important input on all the moving parts of the process and would reach into their organizations to clarify the finer points,” says Chapel. “A consultant for Edge, Stephanie Thomas, is also part of the committee and leads the business process redesign efforts. She documented the current state process and then added components where areas could be improved. She is second to none and has been an outstanding member of the team.”

To gain all the necessary, in-depth details of an institution’s process, Stephanie met with the stakeholders to map out every single step in as much detail as possible. “I get to meet with the people who are in the trenches doing the day-to-day work,” says Thomas. “We create a workflow diagram providing all details and technology notation in a universal language. Over multiple meetings, we then map out each individual task with all the different stakeholders. This helps us visually document all of the pieces and allows us to see the different perspectives and where they’re connected. I always tell an institution that they’re the brains and I’m just the hands. I facilitate and guide them through the process while they tell the story. This is an extremely visual process and you will be able to see it take shape and create an end product that delivers the automation and technology needed to serve your needs.”

Thomas continues, “In the end, we have a beautiful blueprint schematic diagram that shows the entire process including where technical intervention is required. For example, where a form is introduced in the process, what elements are included on that form, any communication that follows up on that form, and the kind of response that is sent to the user once the form is submitted. Edge can then take the blueprint diagram to a vendor showing the current and future state process with every step documented. On this project, after just a one-hour meeting with the vendor, they were able to create an in-depth demo based on the diagram and were able to start programming.”

Selecting Software Solutions
The streamlined process was shared with all of the NJPC stakeholders who affirmed that the new method met all their goals and objectives. They also used the insights to revise the user’s manual for generating an academic program proposal. During the business process redesign, several of the issues that were identified could be remedied with a software-based workflow automation solution. “The two-tiered effort of the AIC was to revise the process and then select a software solution that everyone could use to complete the process, while maintaining a proper communications protocol and providing access to managed lists stored in a common repository,” explains Chapel. “This ensures no missed steps in the collection of information, whether it is uploaded, downloaded, printed, or distributed.”

A current software partner of Edge, GRM Information Management, is a leading provider of information management systems and their solution, VisualVault^® content services platform, is a cloud-based configurable workflow automation tool. VisualVault solutions automate inefficient manual processes and transform data and document-intensive processes to deliver dramatic increases in efficiency and valuable data-based insights via an advanced analytics suite. “Edge on behalf of the AIC is currently working with GRM to clarify the non-recurring costs of the implementation, as well as the recurring cost of the subscriptions for this program as it rolls out to the broader community of users,” says Chapel. “Through this process, the NJPC project team received a crash course in business process reengineering and quickly came to appreciate the value of reviewing every minute detail and identifying all of the places that were illogical, inefficient, or ineffective. This gives the opportunity to take a step back and look at the process that has been conducted for many years and find ways to make valuable improvements.”

Since Edge understands the process involved in digital transformation and the business process re-engineering, the cultural aspects of change management, and the role of business process modeling and notation in doing so, member institutions can tap into this expertise to make changes at their own organizations. “I believe seeing the end result of an automated improved workflow will resonate with organizations and make very clear the value of a business process redesign informed digital transformation,” shares Chapel. “In particular, this business process redesign can be very impactful when examining the prospect to enrolled student process for new full-time students and transfers and can help improve the overall student experience of this process.”

Successfully Migrating to the Cloud
An important EdgeDx service that helps organizations improve operational efficiency includes cloud assessments and creating an effective cloud migration strategy. These assessments can help an institution simplify cloud migration and management by evaluating existing infrastructure and developing a strategy for migrating workloads and applications to the public and private clouds, as well as software as a service (SaaS) solutions. “Edge has the ability to help institutions digitally transform through the business reengineering process into seamless cloud technology that is multi-cloud and has interoperability between those clouds,” says Conn. “The world is changing quickly and the technology that allows institutions to run virtualized servers on campus is moving to the Cloud, and since it is a SaaS, will be a service model and will require a subscription. There is a sense of urgency where every institution should be evaluating if they are ready to successfully move to the Cloud and determining if they have all the elements in place.”

“Cloud Architecture involves using on-demand cloud components in lieu of traditional IT paradigms,” adds Polina Smirnova, Network Engineer, Edge. “The benefits to a consumer include very low upfront cost, on-demand scalability, and a potential for IT topology simplification. Creating an effective cloud migration plan involves assessing current IT topology (i.e. compute and storage needs). Assistance from an experienced cloud architecture team is vital in ensuring that the proposed cloud solution meets the institution’s immediate and future needs, and that the migration goes smoothly. While all cloud platforms offer services which aim to replicate on-prem services in a more scalable way, the creation and management of resources within these services always involves cloud-specific nuances the navigation of which an experienced cloud architect is a huge value add in.”

To determine the state of readiness and to create a cloud migration strategy, Conn says organizations must evaluate several elements. “You must review your data governance, information systems architecture, the level of virtualization you have with your servers and data, the location of your identity and access management and system, and the architecture needs to be re-architected into multi-cloud topology. In addition, it’s important to note that an organization’s disaster recovery strategy will be replaced because data protection will now occur in the Cloud. Edge provides all of these services, as well as having certified web architects, solution engineers, project planning experts, and vendor relationships that can help streamline the entire process.”

Helping Drive Cultural Change
Moving to the Cloud and updating business processes is a cultural change that is required across an entire institution; leading to a new way of thinking and doing business. “Taking this journey leads to fundamental changes in the planning process, so how an institution budgets, how they plan their time, and how they organize support will all evolve,” says Conn. “These changes can occur rapidly too, so we encourage organizations to take advantage of our cloud migration readiness assessment. Over three to four days, we meet with key stakeholders and collect data, and come back with a report on the state of readiness for cloud migration and can offer recommendations for improvements. Even if an institution does not have a plan in place, Edge can help create a strategy that will get them successfully to the Cloud within one to two years.”

EdgeDx assessments employ a results-driven methodology designed to maximize efficiency and enable digital transformation within an institution. The E360 assessment provides a 360-degree view of an institution’s current-state technology program and will map how the IT strategy should evolve to accomplish the mission and vision of the organization. “The Edge team will support your organization’s digital transformation, enabling you to optimize processes and create positive student and staff experiences,” says Conn. “By augmenting your team with a variety of resources, we can help you drive cultural change within your organization, boost cloud migration readiness, and help your institution remain competitive well into the future.”

Is your institution in the process of rethinking and redesigning its business processes to accelerate digital transformation? Edge’s Michelle Ferraro, Member Engagement Manager, can help! Contact Michelle via michelle.ferraro@njedge.net or 732. 740.5092 to determine the best solution(s) for your institution.