Lock it in – iGrafx 17.8: Making your Processes Audit-Proof

If you have ever been through a process audit, you know what a challenge it can be to gather all the necessary documentation. Not only are you required to show what documentation looks like in its current state, but there also needs to be an accounting for all the various changes that may have happened since the last audit. This includes but is not limited to when the processes were changed, who approved them, and when and for how long they were effective.  Many knowledge management systems have begun to include capabilities that will version the various changes and provide an approval workflow. Unfortunately, this is where they fall short.

When it comes to Process Knowledge Management, you need a solution which blends the benefits of the “Ease of Collaborative” change with the rock solid locked down certainty of the “Approved-Only” change state across your entire Process Knowledge repository.  When you can guarantee that the right people see the right information at the right time, and you can jump in your figurative “time machine” to view any historical state, then passing audits becomes a Snap!  Let us look deeper…

When documentation lives in a platform where relationships to business architecture are included, those architecture objects live outside of the context of the document itself. They are free to change or be updated, without those changes being noted in the processes and documentation that they effect. For example, a Call Center process may currently have a relationship to an identified Performance Indicator that tracks “Call Volume Rate”.  The process is owned by our Customer Support Manager. If it is decided to update the owner to the Chief Operations Officer, when viewing the process, you may see the current owner, but you have no visibility that this is a change or when it was effective. If that new owner decided to change the performance measures to “Call Resolution Rate” and “Call Hold Times”, and that there was also a risk of “Calls Abandoned”, again you would see this reflected in context of the current process, but those additions and deletions would not be captured in the timeline of the process documentation.  Why is this important? Let us consider this from three different points of view:

1. Content Consumers / Viewers: These are individuals that need to have access only to the current approved version of the processes and documentation. If changes that are in draft or being proposed are visible, this causes confusion over what actions should be taken to complete the process correctly and creates the risk of falling out of process compliance.
2. Content Mangers / Editors: These individuals are individuals working on identifying new process improvements or updating processes for new or coming regulatory requirements. They must not only see the process as it exists, but also be able to collaborate across multiple teams to view any and all proposed changes for approval.
3. Process Auditors: These individuals need to have access to review not only the current state of the process at the time of the audit but ensure that all changes since the previous audit have been captured, documented, and approved. They need proof that content consumers are working with and have access only to the current approved version of documentation.

iGrafx has always provided the most comprehensive approval workflow of any BPM Platform by including not only Approval, but also cycles for Review, Endorsement, and Acknowledgement. We also ensure that process updates are always available to the right people at the right time with our one-of-a-kind ability to define process effective dates so that process changes can be made and not published until a future date or are only visible between specific defined dates.

With the latest 17.8 release of iGrafx, we are now pleased to announce we are the only solution that also captures and locks in the relationships to the business architecture at the time of check-in and approval, ensuring that Content Consumers have current state visibility, but also allowing Content Managers & Editors to have visibility into to proposed changes. Additionally, we now can save organizations countless hours of time preparing audit documentation and meeting various compliance, audit, and quality management standards.

If you would like more information, or to see these new capabilities in action, we would be happy to show you how iGrafx can help you audit proof your process landscape.