Microsoft Visio 2010
Customer Solution Case Study
Energy Company Improves Process Standardization Using Visio 2010’s
New Process Management Features
Florida’s TECO Energy Saves 300 Business Days Annually using a Custom Add-On
for Visio Premium 2010 to Standardize Process Documentation and Management
Overview
Country or region: United States
Industry: Power Utilities Industries
Customer Profile
TECO Energy is a Fortune 1000 energy
company headquartered in Tampa,
Florida. Its business units include Tampa
Electric, Peoples Gas System, TECO Coal,
and TECO Guatemala.
“Our Visio Premium 2010 solution will make it easy for
executives and users to really understand the process
diagrams, and communication and collaboration will be
much better as we start creating thousands of process
diagrams.”
Thomas Lord, Director of Enterprise Architecture, TECO Energy
Business Situation
The Information Systems (IS) group
wanted to develop comprehensive
process documentation to better
support business unit operations.
However, TECO’s process
documentation approach was very
manual in nature and limited the
group’s efficiency.
Solution
TECO engaged a Microsoft certified
partner, Visibilty.biz, Inc., to design a
Microsoft Visio Premium 2010-based
solution to automate and reduce a
number of low value manual activities
associated with their process
diagramming.
Benefits
300 days labor savings across
business units annually
 Approximately 32 days business
analyst labor savings annually
 Increased standardization across
process documentation
 Increased overall visual quality of the
process diagrams

Overview
TECO Energy is headquartered in Tampa, Florida whose business units include
Tampa Electric, Peoples Gas System, TECO Coal, and TECO Guatemala. TECO’s
Information Systems (IS) group, within the Information Technology (IT) department,
provides TECO’s business units with IT applications, services and support. The IS
group is responsible for the management of business unit system functionality
requests, and wanted to develop comprehensive process documentation to support
these requests. TECO engaged Visibility.biz, Inc. to design a solution using
Microsoft® Visio® Premium 2010 that would reduce manual process diagramming
activities and require limited end-user training. Through their Visio Premium 2010
solution, the IS group was able to increase productivity, improve process
standardization and visual process display, and realize annual savings of 300
business days for TECO’s employees.
“Each business unit thought they
“Quote.”
were unique. Though what they
did was similar, how they did it was
Name, Title, Company
different.”
Thomas Lord, Director of Enterprise
Architecture & Information Systems, TECO
Energy
Situation
TECO Energy is a Fortune 1000 energy
company headquartered in Tampa,
Florida. TECO Energy's business units
include Tampa Electric, a regulated
electric utility serving nearly 667,000
customers in West Central Florida;
Peoples Gas System, Florida's largest
natural gas distribution utility; TECO
Coal, producer of coal in Kentucky and
Virginia; and TECO Guatemala, which
owns two power plants and has an
interest in Guatemala's largest
distribution utility.
TECO’s Information Systems (IS) group
provides TECO and its business units
with IT applications services and support
across 250+ applications. One of the
group’s key responsibilities is the
evaluation and management of system
or application functionality requests from
TECO’s different business units and
identifying opportunities for
standardization where possible.
The IS group found that across TECO’s
different business units, many teams had
very similar business processes, though
each team felt their needs were unique.
Often different teams around TECO were
unaware of the processes and activities
underway within units. As described by
Thomas Lord, Director of Enterprise
Architecture & Information Systems,
“Each business unit thought they were
unique. Though what they did was
similar, how they did it was different.”
Current Challenge
To better understand business unit
operations, the IS group wanted to
develop a comprehensive picture of
TECO’s business processes. This would
enable the team to develop business
models to compare business units,
identify similarities and differences, and
develop solutions that apply across
business units to address their needs.
Visio 2010 - TECO Energy Case Study | Page 2
As the group began to document the
dozen or more of TECO’s business
processes across each unit, the team
quickly found the act of documenting
and reviewing process diagrams to be
very manually intensive. Though the
team was using an earlier version of
Microsoft® Visio®, it was still a challenge
to manually develop the diagrams, draw
process activity boxes and lines, and
format the diagrams for multiple
stakeholder reviews. Any time required
to manually format and adjust the
diagrams did not add direct value to the
process analysis. As Lord put it, “I want to
spend the maximum amount of time on
the discussion with the stakeholder, not
just documenting the process.”
To further compound the problem, each
member of the team was developing
business process diagrams using their
own graphics, templates, and formatting,
making it difficult to compare one
diagram to the next and decreasing
standardization across the group.
Need for a Solution
To facilitate the process documentation
and standardization effort, the IS group
needed to capture both the process
steps and the broader process context,
identify and address variations where
applicable, and drive stakeholder
consensus around identified needs and
proposed challenges. "What we really
needed was a very quick way to
complete and capture our process
models in order to share them with our
stakeholders," explained Lord. “There
were many comprehensive process
documentation and analysis tools on the
market, but most were very expensive on
a per seat basis.”
Solution
The IS group wanted a solution that
would enable its business process
analysts to work more effectively, both
with internal groups and with TECO’s
“Data Validation Functionality in
Visio Premium 2010 provides TECO
with a great way to quickly and
easily drive standardization across
process diagrams using custom
rules.”
business unit stakeholders. Key needs
identified were the ability to
automatically arrange process nodes,
view models at varying levels of detail,
quickly expand a process to another
page, easily integrate multiple process
models, and increase standardization
across process modelling engagements.
Daniel Rohwer, CEO & Consulting Engagement
Manager, Visibility.biz
To address these challenges, the IS
group turned to Microsoft Visio Premium
2010. TECO engaged an award winning
Microsoft certified partner, Visibility.biz,
Inc., to design a solution using Visio
Premium 2010 to reduce the amount of
low value manual activities associated
with their process diagramming, and
require limited end-user training. “We
looked at Visio Premium 2010 as a
solution that would simplify a lot of the
work we were trying to do,” explained
Lord.
Daniel Rohwer, CEO & Consulting
Engagement Manager of Visibility.biz,
and his team worked with TECO to
define the requirements for a custom
Visio Premium 2010 solution for the
Information Service group. They started
by creating a detailed functional
specification for the solution to serve as
a roadmap for the project. The final
specification included the following
functionality:

Customized Visio Ribbon User
Interface: Custom Process Modelling
tab added to the Visio 2010 Ribbon
to simplify diagram and model
creation, show/hide levels of process
depth, and drive diagram validation.





Process Diagram Validation:
Validate process diagrams based
on a set of customized business
rules using Visio 2010 Validation
feature (e.g., all connectors glued
to two shapes, no nodes have
more than one parent, etc.). As
explained by Rohwer, “Validation
in Visio 2010 provides a great way
to easily drive standardization
across process diagrams using
custom rules.”
Drill-Down Levels of Process
Detail using Subprocess:
Leverages the Visio 2010
Subprocess functionality adding a
custom Subprocess shape and
code to include the descendants
of the selected shape as well as
support for double-click
navigation.
Manual Task Automation: The
Visio 2010 auto-connector allows
fast and efficient creation of
process model diagrams. Added
custom Visio formulas and layout
algorithms that support TECO
desire for drag-and-drop
manipulation and automatic
process node numbering.
Standardization: Standardized
font, color, header, footers, and
layout driven across process
diagrams throughout the
enterprise
Themes: Solution process
modelling shapes were designed
to support Visio 2010 themes with
Live Preview so that users can
apply both color and effects and
see the impact before applying
them to the process diagram.
Figure 1 Custom TECO Process Modelling Ribbon Tab in Visio Premium 2010
Visio 2010 - TECO Energy Case Study | Page 3
Figure 2: Hierarchical Process Diagram in Visio Premium 2010


Page Formatting: Added ability to
auto-size the page to fit the process
model as well as a variety of printing
options, from 8.5”by 11” to
significantly larger formats (e.g., wallsized process diagrams).
Shape Data Integration: The TECO
shapes have associated Visio 2010
shape data fields with formulas that
drive the shape text, color, and
geometry.
Developing the detailed functional
specification took approximately 15
business days between TECO and the
Visbility.biz team. “Once we had the
highly detailed functional specification in
place, then the development of the Visio
solution fell into place fairly quickly,”
explained Rohwer. Visibility.biz then set
out to develop the custom solution using
Visio Premium 2010 and facilitated the
design, testing, refinement, and delivery
of an Alpha, Beta, and Final release of the
solution with TECO stakeholders in about
38 days.
Benefits
By implementing the Visio Premium 2010
solution, TECO’s IS group was able to
realize a number of important benefits
across productivity, process
standardization, and visual process
depiction.
Visio 2010 - TECO Energy Case Study | Page 4
Improved Productivity
One of the immediate benefits of the
Visio Premium 2010 solution was an
increase in productivity, both for the IS
group as well as TECO business unit
stakeholders. The new solution enabled
the business analysts to develop
standardized process diagrams much
more quickly and efficiently. Previously,
business analysts would work with
business unit stakeholders to draw a
process model on a whiteboard, and
subsequently dedicate up to 90 minutes
capturing the process in Visio, manually
drawing boxes and aligning shapes to
prepare for the next day’s review
meeting. With the new Visio Premium
2010 solution, business analysts can
complete the same tasks over the course
of 15 minutes. TECO estimates that the
time savings across analysts will amount
to approximately 5 hours a week, or
approximately 32 days per year.
In addition to direct business analyst
productivity improvements, the Visio
Premium 2010 solution has enabled the
IS group to work more effectively with its
business unit counterparts, reducing the
overall time required to document,
review, and agree upon a process
diagram. Previously, the team’s process
documentation workshops would
generally run two days in length and
involve an average of 20 business-unit
stakeholders. The first day focused on
capturing the process on the whiteboard,
and the second day focused on
reviewing and finalizing the diagram with
the full group. TECO estimates that
productivity enhancements in the Visio
Premium 2010 solution will enable
business analysts to illustrate changes in
real-time to participants on the first day,
reducing review loops and shortening
each two-day workshop by a full halfday. Applied to the roughly 30
workshops conducted per year, this will
save each workshop participant 15
business days annually. Applied to all 20
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World Wide Web, go to:
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For more information about TECO Energy
products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.tecoenergy.com
For more information about Visibility.biz, Inc.
products and services, call 952-223-1293 or
visit the Web site at: www.visibility.biz
workshop participants, the Visio
Premium 2010 solution will save TECO’s
employees 300 business days annually.
Increased Standardization
Through the application of diagram
validation, subprocesses, uniform
themes, and process layouts in Visio
Premium 2010, the IS group was able to
standardize process diagram layout and
the application of functional shapes
within the templates, making it easier to
review and collaborate with TECO’s
business units. Increased standardization
across process models “will make it easy
for executives and users to really
understand the process diagrams, and
communication and collaboration will be
much better as we start creating
thousands of process diagrams,”
according to Lord.
Better Visual Depiction
Another benefit of the Visio Premium
2010 solution is the increased overall
visual quality of the process diagrams
developed by the IS group business
analysts. As Lord described it, “You could
have developed the best content, but if it
is difficult to follow or not aesthetically
pleasing, no one will ever read it,
particularly at the executive level.” With
Visio Premium 2010, business analysts
can quickly develop something that
looks crisp, which immediately confers a
level of credibility with the intended
audience.
Microsoft Visio 2010
Legal Disclaimer
This case study is for informational purposes
only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY. Document published May 2010.
The advanced diagramming tools of
Microsoft® Visio® 2010 help you
simplify complexity with dynamic, datadriven visuals and new ways to share on
the Web in real-time. Start by building
your diagram with a diverse set of
professional-looking templates and
modern, pre-drawn shapes. Then, easily
link your diagram to popular data
sources (such as Microsoft® Office
Excel®). You’ll see data automatically
Visio 2010 - TECO Energy Case Study | Page 5
refresh right within your diagram,
reflected in vibrant visuals such as icons,
symbols, colors, and bar graphs. Finally,
with just a few clicks, publish your datalinked diagram to Microsoft®
SharePoint® Server 2010, and provide
access to others on the Web, even if they
don’t have Visio. Together, simplicity,
data-driven shapes, and Web sharing
make Visio one of the most powerful
ways to see and understand important
information.
For more information about Microsoft
Visio 2010, go to:
www.visio.com
Software and Services
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Microsoft Visio Premium 2010
Partner
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Visibility.biz, Inc.