Sudden disruption is a challenge - ARIS helps to run your business as unusual
We live in uncertain and challenging times right now. For most organizations the top priority is to ensure business continuity at any price, even if that means going down unusual paths. As Software AG we want to help you keep on track with your business, so we have created a powerful, packaged ARIS solution including best practices, standard reports, easy modeling and communication tools.
This special ARIS A4 solution gives you the right base for process management - completely for free for a 6-month period.
The ARIS A4 Solution consists of 4 main building blocks that help you get through business as unusual.
A4 stands for Analyze the business situation, Act with appropriate countermeasures such as emergency processes or policies, Adapt back to normal business and Achieve resilience by establishing future-proof business continuity management. Here is how it works.
Step 1: Analyze
It is key to know what is critical to your business. Gaining an overview of your business situation, analyzing the impacts and prioritizing risks are your number one priority.
The ARIS A4 Solution delivers reference contents in the form of an enterprise process map, value chains, and BPMN 2.0 process diagram so you can start from scratch in identifying your critical business areas.
It’s as simple:
- Enter your Business as Unusual use case in ARIS Elements
- Navigate through the process structure starting with the enterprise process map
- Check if the management, core, and supporting processes’ pre-defined contents fit your company structure and adapt where necessary. Here you can add some new process areas with drag-and-drop - name the functional areas as needed or even delete irrelevant functions. If they do fit, you just need to assess the criticality of the different elements of your value chain.
- If one business area is critical, then simply select the function object within the value chain, click on details, properties and select the “risk”. Here you can maintain risks for this specific business function and define its criticality (impact and probability). ARIS A4 includes 5 designers to help you work in parallel to fasten impact analysis times.
- You can then deep-dive into the available BPMN 2.0 process model and adapt the process to your needs with the necessary changes to support business continuity. You can either directly change the reference process or make a copy and adapt the new process. Click on edit and add or remove process steps and/or decisions with the smart modeling functionality of ARIS elements. You can also enrich the reference content with additional relevant information such as the required resources such as people and IT. If you need further tips on how to model, make sure to check our cheat sheet
- Once you are done with the impact analysis, available reports will help you to move forward. For example, process weak points are analyzed and reported into Excel, encompassing functions with, and their risks incl. impact and probability. This report will allow you to focus on the most critical functions and highest risks before proceeding with solutions. This report can be handed over to the manager.
- All this is creating the basis of the action plan for your task force.
Step 2: Act
Now that you have assessed the business impact, it's time to act. First of all, you need to design possible counter-measures for the most critical activities with the highest risks.
- ARIS A4 solution delivers a dedicated report to help you decide and prioritize. It includes all information required for decision-making such as "implementation status" or “priority”. Each risk information set shows key data and the proposed solution plus an area where notes can be added. With that, you can get your manager’s approval with the date and signature. Now you can start to act! These actions can be completely separate depending on your specific business situation - such as acquiring temporary staff, establishing a home office policy or introducing an emergency process.
- ARIS gives you the right tool to detail the counter-measures that need to be implemented in your organization. This can be done directly in ARIS, based on dedicated modeling conventions. Just create a new model and model it directly including resources (such as needed IT applications or supporting roles).
- Once you’ve modeled the counter-measures a simple view will help you communicate the them along with new processes to your stakeholders. 200 viewers are included so that you’ll be able to roll out the information to everyone who needs it.
- Counter-measures are now defined and communicated. It’s time to continuously monitor what needs to be done additionally - and how the progress of your continuity program looks. You are now running your business as unusual.
Step 3: Adapt back
At some point, you’ll be able to adapt back to business as usual - here, you need a recovery strategy. Therefore, it is essential to continuously reassess the actual risk situation. If everything is under control you might decide to return to the normal business. You can now implement the usual processes, policies and resources, communicate them to the employees and again, monitor the progress to keep on track. Finally, you can run your business as usual again. This building block will take you through steps 1 and 2 again but with a different goal: getting back to normality.
Step 4: Achieve resilience
Once the tough times are over, you will surely recognize that business continuity is key. It's time to focus on learning. Don’t just overcome the crisis - learn from it and think ahead. ARIS supports your business continuity strategy in:
- Defining a business continuity strategy
- Setting up business continuity management including corresponding processes, risks, policies, emergency plans and more, for future robustness
- Planning to digitize and automate key process areas to secure business continuity in all cases by continuously digitalizing and automating your processes.
And now, what’s next? To keep your business on track with ARIS A4:
- Get hands-on and watch the explainer video. It will give a detailed view on how it looks like in ARIS.
- Get your free 6-month access to the ARIS A4 Solution with the discount coupon “ARIS4Free” here. Be fast – it is only until May 31st.
- If you need additional support, Software AG professional services and ARIS partners are here to help.
- And last but not least, if you already have ARIS in place and want to get the reference contents and accelerator reports for free, simply contact BT-Support@softwareag.com.
Stay safe and keep on track with ARIS!
PS: If you want to impress your boss, make sure to read our 10 business continuity tips for leading your company through the chaos and share it with him or her!