Beware of analysis paralysis when you process inventory. Triage first, then prescribe a solution.

When doing analysis on a large number of business processes, trying to do an end-to-end analysis for each process, one by one, is not advisable. You should balance the time and effort with the benefit to be effective. In this section, we provide several guidelines for bulk analysis and how to do two levels of business analysis in Blueworks Live.

Level 1 analysis should focus on looking at symptoms and leading indicators of opportunities for improvement. Level 1 analysis seeks to categorize each process in the inventory within the Process Improvement Tactics matrix. The categorization paves the way for Level 2 analysis.

The Process Improvement Tactics matrix represents the high-level generic recommendation that the process is likely to benefit from. The matrix also implies the type of Level 2 analysis that should be performed to obtain specific recommendations for each category.

As a part of doing Level 1 analysis, we suggest that the following attributes be recorded (as detail fields if using Blueworks Live) for each process model in the inventory:

• Process level attributes
  Table 3.2.6/1
  

  Process attribute	Description
  Volume	On average, the number of instances of this process that are started per year
  Total Cost	On average, the activity cost of each instance of the business (hard cost, opportunity cost, rework cost, risk exposure costed average)
  Total Benefit	On average, the dollar value of the benefit per instance to the business; for example, revenue, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty
  % Rework in the process	Amount of time that some or all of the process needs to be redone to have an acceptable outcome.
  Potential Automation Benefit	Whether this process benefits from automation. The analyst can quickly provide an instinctive answer to this question without extensive calculation or statistical analysis. Answers include high, medium, low, or none.
  Confidence in Analysis	The confidence level of the analyst that the values provided for the fields reflect reality. Questions to ask are: Were you talking to the correct people? Are they biased? Did you spend sufficient time validating? Are you extrapolating too much? Answers include high, medium, low, or none.

• Activity level attributes
  Table 3.2.6/2
  

  Activity attribute	Description
  Volume	On average, the number of instances of this process that are started per year
  Total Cost	On average, the activity cost of each instance of the business (hard cost, opportunity cost, rework cost, risk exposure costed average)
  Total Benefit	On average, the dollar value of the benefit per instance of this activity to the business; for example, revenue, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty
  Integration Effort	To automate this activity, whether a significant effort is needed to build an integration to a system outside the BPM platform. Answers include high, medium, low, or none.
  Value Added	Whether this activity is beneficial in any material way to the process itself or other dependent processes. Answers include high, medium, low, or none.
  Potential Automation Benefit	Whether this activity can benefit from automation. The analyst can quickly provide an instinctive answer to this question without extensive number crunching or statistical analysis. Answers include high, medium, low, or none.

Level 1 analysis can be done by categorizing permutations of the values of four basic fields (Volume, Cost, Benefit, Automation Effort) from the above set of activities, against the Process Improvement Tactics matrix.

If you captured these fields in your Blueworks Live space, export your space to a tool such as Microsoft Excel to generate the type of analysis shown in the following section.

A good way to think of the levels is as follows:

• Level 1 analysis is as an initial diagnostic and triage tool for processes.
• Level 2 analysis is the subsequent prescriptive solution that can alleviate the foremost detrimental symptoms in the process.
• Level 2 Analysis should focus on building a business case and specific process improvement recommendations.

Table 3.2.6/4