Improving Business Process
Management Using Visio 2010
BPM Solution Summaries
Introduction
Northwind Traders is a distributor of fine grocery products and serves over 200 high-end grocery store customers
along the west coast of the United States. Northwind’s products include cheeses, local fresh fruits and vegetables,
coffee, teas, imported beer and wine, and fine ethnic food products. Northwind’s sales revenue exceeded $20
million in 200X, a 10% increase over the previous year. However, due to competitive price pressures and
operational inefficiencies, net income only increased by 2%.
Northwind’s Chief Operating Officer sought to determine the sources of Northwind’s operational inefficiencies.
The previous year, the company had hired an operations consultant to perform a cursory analysis into Northwind’s
operations. The consultant raised three issues:

Northwind’s Order Management System was antiquated and required a great deal of manual labor from
the sales staff to process and fill orders

The cycle time required to fill an order occasionally caused order backlogs, which led to customer
satisfaction issues and lost sales

Northwind was losing approximately $500,000 annually (2.5% of annual sales revenue) in write-offs of
expired perishable products
The COO decided to form a Business Process Management (BPM) team to quantify the business impacts of the
issues that the consultant raised. The team was comprised of several managers and staff who worked on the
project between their normally assigned tasks.
For the project, the team decided to use Microsoft Visio 2010 to perform the required process analysis and
modeling tasks.
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Solution Summary
1. Converting Static Process Diagrams to Visio 2010
As part of the deliverable, the consultant left the company with a number of process diagrams created in Microsoft
Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. The COO saw some value in these diagrams, since he believed the diagrams
accurately captured the workflow associated with each business process. However, in their native format, the
diagrams were not useful for in-depth business process analysis or process modeling since they were static and not
linked to any data source.
Importing Static Office Art into Visio for Analysis
The first step to move the project forward was to convert the existing process diagrams created in other Office
formats into Visio format so actual process analysis and modeling could be performed. At first this step seemed
daunting, since the BPM team was still becoming familiar with the Visio platform. The BPM team leader estimated
that recreating all of the diagrams in Visio could take two weeks or more. As the COO and the team leader debated
the value of recreating the diagrams, another team member discovered the free Flowchart Converter add-in that
enables Visio to import diagrams directly from other Office formats. Using the Flowchart Converter for Visio 2010,
the team quickly transferred all of the diagrams into Visio format in a matter of minutes.
Once the conversion to Visio 2010 format was complete, the team could quickly modify the diagrams. Using many
of the new features of Visio 2010, including the updated Ribbon user interface, the team made short work of
creating the business process diagrams. The new Mini Quick Toolbar feature with drag-out connectors allowed
members of the team to quickly model process diagrams. Team members automatically formatted the process
diagrams using the Visio 2010 Auto Align & Space features, and added swim-lanes to represent the process
stakeholder that performed a task. When a process map became too large, team members could automatically
create subprocesses using the Visio 2010 Subprocess feature, which cuts process shapes, pastes them onto a new
document page as subprocess, and creates a hyperlink, all with a single mouse click. Once the process diagrams
were completed, the BPM team confidently proceeded to the analysis portion of their project.
Figure 1: Order Fill Process Workflow - Converted to Visio 2010 from other Office Art Formats
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Solution Summary
Benefits of Converting Static Process Diagrams to Visio 2010
Using the new Flowchart Converter add-in in Visio, the BPM team saved an estimated 40 person-hours of labor
time in recreating the process diagrams within Visio. At an average rate of $50 per hour in direct labor costs, the
team saved $2000 through this add-in. More importantly, they saved an estimated two weeks in cycle time,
keeping their process improvement project ahead of schedule.
By using the Office import feature in Visio, the BPM team at Northwind was able to:
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Save valuable project time and effort
Reuse existing diagrams in other Office formats
Move static Office documents into Visio for actual process analysis and modeling
2. Discovering the Business Impacts of a Process
The team focused on Northwind’s Order Fill process, a process that the operations consultant had identified as
having the most potential improvement value for the least improvement cost.
Known Process Pains
Within this process, the team was especially concerned with two known process pains:


The cycle time to fill an order
The labor cost to fill an order
The team knew that the cycle time to fill an order was excessive. Northwind prided itself on a quick order
turnaround, but around 20% of orders were not filled in a single day. During periods of high sales volume, the long
cycle time caused order backlogs, delaying shipments and forcing the sales department to decline potential orders.
The lost sales and customer satisfaction issues represented a substantial opportunity cost for the company.
The labor time and cost to fill an order was thought to exceed benchmarked industry standards. This was partially
due to Northwind’s antiquated Order Management System, which did not interface well Northwind’s sophisticated
Inventory Management System and required unnecessary labor from the sales staff.
Analyzing the Business Impacts of the Current State Process
While the process pains were quite obvious, the business impacts of the pains were not. In order to determine the
true business impacts of the Order Fill process, the team turned to the Order Fill process maps that they had
imported into Visio. The team sought to quantify the total labor cost and cycle time of a single process iteration.
Using this data, they would then be able to calculate the full business impact of the current process.
The team collected process performance data for each step in the process. The observational data they collected
included:
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Average cycle time to complete a process step
Average labor time to complete a process step
Average number of staff to complete a process step
The team began adding observed data to the process diagram using the Shape Data feature. The team then
exported the data to Excel using a custom built Visio Report template so that they could determine the aggregate
business impact of the current state process performance.
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Solution Summary
Using the Visio process model in conjunction with the Excel report, the team calculated that the Order Fill process
took on average 6.5 hours of cycle time to complete. The excessive cycle time meant that 20% of all orders were
shipped late. The team also found that during times of high backlog in the Order Fill process, sales activity was
halted and new orders were declined, leading to $1 million in lost sales annually.
The team multiplied the average labor time for each step by the staff labor rate and number of staff to determine
the labor cost for each step. Summing these costs yielded a total process labor cost of $300 per iteration.
Considering that the company processed 16 orders a day, or over 4000 orders a year, this equated to an estimated
$1.2 million in labor cost associated with the Order Fill process.
Figure 2: Using the Feature Shape Data to Discover the Business Impacts of a Process
Benefits of Discovering the Business Impacts of a Process
By using Visio as a process analysis surface, the BPM team at Northwind was able to:
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
Discover the business impacts of Northwind’s current state processes
Quickly communicate process issues both internally and to external consultants in order to foster
innovation
Support important initiatives for process improvements using detailed data and analysis
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Solution Summary
3. Customizing and Standardizing the Visio BPA Environment
The visibility of the Order Fill process improvement project led to greater interest in Visio as a Business Process
Analysis (BPA) tool in other parts of the company. Unfortunately, different working groups within the company
used different methods to present data using Visio. This led to inconsistent formats for diagrams and duplicated
efforts to create Data Graphics, report templates, and custom shapes for diagrams. Northwind’s management
sought to standardize the way Visio documents were created, and turned to the original BPM team for guidance.
The BPM team discovered that a large amount of the effort to build their original process diagrams could be
captured and stored within the Visio environment itself, giving future process improvement teams a head start
when they began preparing their own Visio documents.
The team began by creating a custom stencil of diagram shapes exclusively for Northwind’s processes analysis and
process monitoring tasks. The team had invested hours in determining which process data metrics to capture using
the Shape Data feature in Visio. They customized the Process shape – part of the Basic Flow Chart Shapes stencil –
to include data inputs for the observations they collected. A team member added this shape to the Northwind
stencil simply by dragging the shape from the completed Order Fill diagram onto the stencil.
Next the team created a custom process analysis template, called “Northwind BPA Template”, from the original
Order Fill process Visio document. The template contained all of the distinct formatting the team had used in the
original Order Fill process improvement project. When a new drawing was created from the template, the
Northwind stencil and all of the Data Graphics associated with the stencil shapes were automatically loaded.
The team saved the report template that they had used to transfer data from Visio to Excel. The report, which the
team named “Northwind BPA Report”, contained all of the settings required to quickly generate process analysis
reports in Excel using the Visio shape data in the Northwind BPA Template.
Finally, the BPM team placed all of the documents in a shared folder on the corporate intranet so that teams
across the organization could use the files in their own process analysis projects.
Benefits of Customizing and Standardizing the Visio BPA Environment
By customizing and standardizing the Visio process analysis environment, Northwind was able to save valuable
project time. Process improvement teams were able to spend less time creating and formatting documents and
more time analyzing and improving processes.
By customizing the Visio environment, the BPM team at Northwind was able to:
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Capture the customization effort the team had invested through a custom shape stencil with company
specific shapes and Data Graphics
Capture the formatting effort the team had invested through a custom drawing template
Capture the reporting and analysis effort the team had invested through a custom report template
Reduce future process improvement project effort through reuse of custom Visio stencils and templates
Standardize the way BPM projects were conducted and reported to management by disseminating
custom Visio stencils and templates throughout the organization
4. Enabling Business Process Improvements
The next phase of the process improvement project was to recommend impactful business process improvements
and support those improvements through greater process awareness and visibility at the staff level.
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Solution Summary
Simulating Improvements to the Order Fill Process
The COO and the BPM team met with a sales consultant from an Order Management System vendor to discuss
potential improvements to Northwind’s Order Fill process. The team was able to quickly communicate the process
pains to the sales consultant using the Visio process models with Shape Data that they had developed.
Working with the sales consultant, the team quickly modeled how the process would change if Northwind
upgraded its current Order Management System to one that better integrated with the company’s modern
Inventory Management System. Labor time for certain process steps was reduced, while the step to manually
query Northwind’s inventory on-hand was removed altogether.
The team modified the Visio model and generated a future state report in Excel using the Northwind BPA Report
template. Comparing the future state to the current state, the team calculated that labor costs would decrease by
$70 for each process iteration once the new Order Management System was in place. Extrapolated over the 4000
orders Northwind processed each year, the process labor cost savings equated to an annual reduction in labor cost
of $280,000. Using this cost savings alone, the team created a business case to justify the $400,000 upfront cost in
hardware, software, and services to install and deploy the new system. Their business case based on labor savings
alone showed a net present value of $194,000 and a rate of return of 36% after three years, and a payoff period of
a little over two years.
Next, the team used the Visio process model to estimate the impacts of hiring additional warehouse staff. Using
the same process model, the team updated the Shape Data to reflect the increase in productivity of different
staffing scenarios. Again, the team created Excel reports in order to analyze the results of the different scenarios.
They found that it was optimal to hire one additional warehouse staff. This staff level would further reduce the
Order Fill process cycle time by 1.15 hours, saving an estimated $100,000 in opportunity costs from lost sales while
only adding $60,000 in wages and benefits to the company’s expenses.
Promoting Process Performance Awareness throughout the Company
The COO charged the BPM team with addressing how Northwind managed their perishable product inventory.
With Northwind’s existing Inventory Management System, Northwind had powerful tools at its disposal to track
the expiration dates of products in its inventory, but pushing that valuable information out to decision makers
proved complicated. Northwind’s staff and managers lacked the time and skills necessary to use the inventory data
in impactful ways.
The BPM team sought to develop a means to quickly disseminate important inventory information to both sales
and warehouse staff. Presenting the data to sales staff in a clear and concise way would allow representatives to
quickly make product promotion decisions and sell more products that were nearing expiration. Likewise,
providing the data in a usable form to the warehouse staff would allow workers to better select older products to
fill orders, further reducing the percentage of products that expired while in inventory.
The BPM team relied on Visio to create a Perishable Product Inventory Dashboard that was hosted on the
corporate intranet and available to all Northwind staff. Within Visio, the team prepared a Pivot Diagram that
pulled data from an Excel workbook and graphically displayed the data in a format which was immediately
discernable. Business rules, like the recommended product discount rates for sales staff and product picking rules
for the warehouse staff, were built directly into the diagram and further reduced staff decision time.
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Solution Summary
The dashboard data was automatically refreshed daily so that decisions were based on the most current data
available. Using the dashboard, Northwind was able to reduce inventory write-offs by over 50%, or $125,000
annually.
Figure 3: Using a Dashboard to Provide Process Awareness and Improve Decision Making
Benefits of Enabling Business Process Improvements
Using the Visio process models, the COO was able to build internal support for both the Order Management
System software acquisition and for hiring an additional warehouse worker. Together, these initiatives saved the
company nearly $300,000 annually in real costs and allowed Northwind’s sales representatives to pursue new sales
even during high volume periods. The Perishable Product Inventory Dashboard saved the company an additional
$125,000 in inventory write-off expenses, and Northwind’s customers responded well to the new product
promotions.
By using Visio as a process modeling and monitoring surface, the BPM team at Northwind was able to:
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Quickly model process improvements and determine the business impacts of proposed solutions
Monitor important business processes through data connected diagrams
Provide process performance visibility throughout the organization
Enhance business decision making
8. Providing Organizational Visibility into Critical Business Processes
As an international trader, Northwind’s supply chain operations (SCO) staff had to carefully manage orders,
shipments and frequent customs delays, and coordinate with third party logistics (3PL) providers. Mismanagement
of any stage along the supply chain often meant that orders were not filled on time or products spoiled en route.
To better manage the complex supply chain, the BPM group at Northwind began to investigate whether Visio 2010
could help the SCO group to more quickly identify and fix problems. After all, the company’s 3PL providers already
were already equipped with state of the art geographical information systems that could track shipments along
their route, and the company’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) brokers at each port of entry updated a real
time database of processing delays or issues. The BPM group decided to pool these data sources into a dashboard
to give the SCO staff an overview of their entire supply chain.
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Solution Summary
However, one problem remained – the SCO group lacked the appropriate user licenses for Visio 2010 for each of
the workers. To overcome this deficiency, the BPM group decided to build their dashboard and then upload the
dashboard to Visio Services for SharePoint, a new feature of Visio 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. With Visio
Services, anyone with access to Northwind’s SharePoint site could view the dashboard with a web browser.
The BPM group programmed the dashboard to automatically refresh regularly from data stored in an Access
database, also hosted on SharePoint. The Access database, in turn, collected information from other sources, such
as the 3PL shipment tracking services, and the CBP broker service, creating a true service oriented architecture
layer for vital SCO data.
Rather than sending out a Visio file, and having to manage subsequent revisions, the BPM team only had to email
the dashboard’s hyperlink to stakeholders within the SCO group. As suppliers, logistics providers, and customers
changed, the BPM group was able to quickly update the dashboard and repost it to SharePoint, where the changes
were instantly visible to the SCO users. The centrally managed solution saved labor costs of avoiding version
control problems within both the BPM and SCO groups.
Figure 4: Hosting a Dashboard on Visio Services for SharePoint Improves Organization Wide Visibility into Key Processes
Benefits of Providing Organizational Visibility into Critical Business Processes
By giving the SCO group at Northwind visibility into their critical business process using Visio Services in Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010, the group was able to more quickly act to resolve shipping issues. The net impact to the
company was a 10% reduction in late orders, a 5% reduction in product spoilage en route, and a 20% reduction in
labor effort to manage the company’s supply chain. These benefits yielded a total annual savings of over $250,000.
By providing organizational visibility into critical business processes with Visio Services in Microsoft SharePoint
Server 2010, the BPM team at Northwind was able to:
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Reduce late orders
Reduce product spoilage en route
Reduce annual supply chain operations labor cost
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Solution Summary
About the Author
Value Prism Consulting, LLC is a management consulting and financial analysis firm located in Atlanta, GA, and
Seattle, WA, specializing in the area of Business Process Improvement (BPI). Value Prism’s BPI Services are
designed to help companies assess and redesign their business processes to take full advantage of current and
future technology investments. Effective alignment of technology with business processes empowers organizations
to reduce costs, increase productivity, and derive more business value from technology investments.
Value Prism Consulting also provides 1- and 2- day workshops to help businesses identify and improve BPM with
Microsoft Office Visio 2010. These workshops demonstrate how Visio 2010 can be leveraged to quickly design,
communicate, monitor and revise important business processes.
For more information about Value Prism, please visit their website at www.valueprism.com.
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