Those operational risks can lead to costly errors and impact reputation. While there are many solutions available for enterprise such as Customer Relationship Management or Enterprise Resource Planning, there is a void for tracking business process. Business Process Management solutions attempt to fill that void but they are complex to use and implement. They try to do to many things. I Follow focus solely on tracking business process. Consequently, iFollow is simple to deploy and to use. At the same time iFollow is scalable to the complex demand of modern enterprise.

What are the key criteria to consider when choosing a business process management system?

First, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are you? Are you a manager, an analyst or an IT specialist?
• What do you do? Are you running an operation, or are you an analyst doing modeling and optimization?
• What type of organization do you have? A small business, a department or a large enterprise.
• Are your processes changing rapidly?
• Do you have training capability?

1. If you have management responsibilities, you need a business process management system that is specialized in tracking and monitoring business processes. iFollow is the leader in the market to track business process. iFollow is extremely easy to set up and the user interface is intuitive and visual. With iFollow, managers have a feel of control like never before.
2. If you are an analyst and need to model and optimize business processes, you need to use Business process modeling tools.  The leader in the market is vizio from Microsoft. In that market, there are other good tools such as TIBCO and Smartdraw. In fact, any good drawing tools are also ok for business process modeling.

The best of both worlds for most organization is:

• iFollow for business process tracking
• Vizio for business process modelling.

In fact instead of using a tools that does everything poorly, you are better off up using tools that do few things well.

If you are an IT department in a large organization, you are compelled by the contrary; you prefer to select one tool that does everything even if it is costly and complex. In that case, you could be tempted to select PegaSystem, Sappian, Oracle or Microsoft. Expect those projects to be complex, to last many months and cost above millions of dollars.

Our recommendation is to stay away from those complex systems and to focus on meeting business needs and stay away from the temptation of having one system for all your needs. Instead, use specialized tools that are light and that do few things but extremely well.

Our recommendation is:

1. Ifollow for those who manage business process
2. Vizio is enough for business process modeling,

Some lawyer and other legal professional use Microsoft Outlook, Google calendar, or spreadsheets to keep track of their activities. Others use Project Management or Customer Relationship Management software to manage their relationships with clients and track their activities. The disadvantages of using those applications are the following:

• Spreadsheets and calendars do not give holistic picture of all activities, do not allow assigning tasks to colleagues or assistants and do not permit seeing all those activities on one screen.
• Project management software packages are cumbersome to use and unreliable for managing day-to-day operations.

iFollow helps to simplify the work of law firms. It allows lawyers to dynamically track day-to-day operations using a powerful and easy to use interface.

Legal cases include steps of actions to be performed. In most of the cases those are standard steps. With iFollow legal lawyers create a sequence of steps for Legal Proceedings and they activate those steps for each client with a single click. They can easily modify the sequence for each client: for example add or delete steps and change due dates, reminders, email notifications, assigned people, etc.

Using iFollow helps bankruptcy lawyers to easily arrange a sequence of steps to file a bankruptcy (for example steps to be done for Chapter 7, Chapter 11 or 13). For example, the Law offices of Eric Gravel (http://ericgravel.com) organized their sequences comprising six or nine steps and some of those steps include form fills.

The sequence of steps is activated for each client with a single click, helping lawyers to save time, reduce the workload and at the same time keeping them alert for all their activities. They seamlessly navigate through time (day, week, month, quarter, year) in a timeline-based dashboard: they can see all their activities for each client and instantly recognize the task status (done, not done or tasks to be done).

Paper is written in collaboration with Prof. Jean-Marc Robert (École Polytechnique of Montreal) and Tigran Atoyan, MSc. (University of Oxford).

Decision makers should put a major effort in understanding a product’s potential usefulness before deciding to invest in it. The challenge is: How to define usefulness of a product, how to measure it? The paper discusses those issues, the relation between the commercial success or failure of a product and its usefulness.

The paper reveals that usefulness of product is related to ability of that product to support users to do their fundamental activities saving time and energy. Other criteria in usefulness of a product are safety, quality of outcome, etc.

The main challenge in measuring product’s usefulness is in determining the right set of specific activities that it will be used for and their relative weights in the user’s overall decision-making process in the given context. This requires a deep understanding of the target audience, its behavior, and the context in which the product is used. Next step is to compare the product’s usefulness with one or more alternatives. And this comparison is based on its performance in terms of criteria such as time and energy used, how safe it is and its overall quality.

The paper provides a formula to determine the relative usefulness of a variety of products in different contexts and discusses the formula by real examples. It compares usefulness of products using existing products, namely it compares smart-phones (Blackberry and iPhone) and web-browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer).

While a product’s usefulness alone does not explain commercial success or failure, measuring it allows one to put its relative advantages in perspective.

Each month, a series of reports has to be done on regular basis for the upper management. Those reports comprise quality control, status and compliance information on the current situation of operations.

Each team member has to produce reports at a certain business day of the month, and those reports should be done every month.

For the manager it is time consuming to ensure that all reports are done timely by the team members. It also is rather annoying to have to remind the team members about their reports, do that by emails or by phone.

iFollow helps to organize the task distribution between the team members quickly and easily. Using iFollow, the manager is now aware on the status of those reports at all times. All the manager needed to do was to define the sequence of reports. The setup was simple and only took 30 minutes to complete. For these task management operations the manager created  a template of sequence consisting of 11 reports. Each one has its due date and is assigned to different person(s). Once the sequence template is built, with a single click the manager activates 11 reports to be repeated every month.

If any of the due reports is not completed timely, the person responsible for that task and the manager receive instant alerts through emails.

One can easily modify each report: the name of the report, the assigned person or the due dates.

Sequence of steps saves time and is easy to use. iFollow sequences are a powerful tool for managers when they have repeated operations, which are common in the financial world. This increases the efficiency by both saving time and reducing the risk of omission. Every missed step can become a financial loss for the institution. Meanwhile, with iFollow  the manger feels in control of operations, he is aware of the status of ongoing operations at all times.

View all task related information in one place in a chronological order

iFollow improved the user interface of the History screen providing visibility of all task activities: deadline, delegated people, status, comments, attachments. Simply click on History and see everything in a glance. You don’t need to go back and forth through several screens to find the information related to the task: it’s all on one place. 

What you can see in History screen?

Get real-time visibility and traceability of every task/project, follow how things are really going and make the right decision.

• History allows managers instantly to see
• Task deadline
• Task status

Every activity related to the task. For example, you can see date and time and by whom the task has been:

• Created
• Modified
• Commented
• Commented and file is attached
• Completed
• Deadline and who is delegated to it.

What you can do in History screen?

You can filter tasks, export files and edit tasks.

iFollow History screen allows to filter the information based on:

• People assigned to the task (e.g. see all tasks for only one employee)
• Status of the task (e.g. see the history for only past due task)
• For one track (e.g. track can be connected with one project).

You can collapse of expand the list of History for the given task and view only the information you need.

Export all task related date to Microsoft Excel /CSV.

You can get the reports for:

• All tasks and tracks
• Selected tasks and projects
• Tasks of a specific team or employee,
• Etc.

Easily edit the task in History screen.

IFollow allows you to access your task from both from History and Dashboard screens.

History screen helps you to save your time, get quick and easy situation awareness about the tasks and projects of your company.

Task management with iFollow will allow you to track all your operations: with your team, your clients, etc. You can:

• Have a real time overview: see in a glance what is done, what is not done and what needs to be done.
• Get instant alerts if something is not done or is not done correctly.
• Have share workspace for groups who work together: who can share all information in one place and collaborate.
• Track everything in real-time
• Create tracks in real-time dashboard and organize it as you wish. It could be track for a project, for a specific event, for sales, etc.
• See all information for one task at one place.
• Get flexibility to update information about the tasks from any location.

Track numbers with iFollow

You want to track certain numbers (e.g. number of deliveries, sales amount,  any environmental measurements, etc.)?

It is easy to define with iFollow: define your numbers directly in the task to be done and get alerts when the entry numbers is exceeded. Example of it could be:

• Your employee should enter
• Number of delivered products
• Current ratios of financial statements of clients
• Number of processed files
• Etc.

Repeated Sequence of tasks

Do you have operations that consist of many tasks and should be repeated in timely bases?

All you need to do in iFollow is to create those steps one after another and keep as a template. In the template you can assign tasks to people, define the order of assignment, add reminders, enter notes.

When needed, you can activate this sequence of steps with a single click. You can activate it on timely bases as well: e.g. every month, quarter, etc.

• Order the catering and transportation service three days before the flight.
• Confirm trip sheet with the vendor two days before the flight.
• Track the aircraft two days before the flight.
• Confirm the ground.
• Confirm the catering one day before the flight.
• Etc.

Different people are responsible for each of those steps. Any missed step can cost the company money and can lead to a loss of clientele, resulting in significant financial losses. The cost of missed steps per year could reach 150.000$.

V1 Private Jets (http://www.jetcharter.com) now uses iFollow to follow the steps.

They built a sequence of steps for departures, arrivals, and few other procedures. Each time they have a flight booked, they just have to activate the created sequence of steps for that flight in the track for that client. They then have a complete view of everything: who is assigned to each step, when is the due date for of that assignment, and which steps are completed. If something is not done, the manager of operations sees it on the dashboard in a glance and, additionally, receives an email alert.

In addition, the system allows activating the sequence of steps on a periodic basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.). Mangers can also add reminders for each step, attach files, and enter notes.

Since using iFollow, V1 Private Jets has not had issues with missed steps. V1 Private Jets now feels secure and confident about not missing steps in their operations. In addition, the management saves time by activating the sequence of steps (for example the pre-flight preparation includes 11 steps to be completed) in the dashboard by one click.

Situation: For some operations the managers need to be proactive. They need to ensure that the data entered in the system by their team is compliant with the required data and want to get an instant alert if there is a breach or out of order situation.

For example, you may have to ensure that:

• Financial ratios for money lending are compliant with the defined values (for example, that the debt service coverage is over 4).
• Your employees process not less than the pre-defined number of agreements per week or per month.
• The drinking water pH level is within the range 6.5 – 8.5.
• Any values measured and entered in the system by the team of your inspectors are within the pre-defined range of values.
• The amount of delivered products is compliant with expected amount.
• Amount of available employees for the given period of time is compliant with the amount needed to complete the job.
• Etc.

When you create a task in iFollow dashboard, in the same window you just need to enter the value or values with which you want to be compliant. It could be:

• Threshold value (critical value that cannot be crossed, called in iFollow “Breach value”) and Early Warning Signal (value is becoming closer to the threshold value)
• Range of values which needs to be respected.

In the previous design, users could define the Breach and Range values only in the screen “Sequence of Steps”.

Improvement after usability test: Now you can do it directly in the “Add Assignment” screen by clicking on “Add Breach” or “Add range” and entering the values in the fields. You can also easily edit the value in the “Edit Assignment” screen.

Sync your tasks or tasks of your team with  your calendar and always be aware of the tasks to be completed.