GIEOM

Software Firm Uses Process Diagrams to Speed Deployment by 50 Percent

Situation:

GIEOM was founded in 2008 by software professionals in the banking sector. The company’s product, Graphical Intelligent Electronic Operations Management (GIEOM), provides graphical frameworks to help streamline business transformation and enterprise change management. “We help customers implement more efficient ways of working, whether it’s introducing a core banking system, or standardizing process-based operations, or improving compliance,” says John Santhosh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at GIEOM.

Using Visio Professional 2013 coauthoring capabilities, we can develop and deploy business process diagrams that meet our customers’ needs in half the time that it took with other tools in the market.

– John Santhosh
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GIEOM

Customers use GIEOM in more than 35 countries. Consultants spend approximately three months documenting customers’ operations and goals for change. Then they develop new processes within the GIEOM product to achieve those goals. “Within GIEOM frameworks, or modules, we use business process visualization to help customers ‘see’ a better way of managing operations,” says Santhosh. “In niche consulting businesses like ours, we need professional-looking diagrams that simplify complex banking processes—between 300 and 400 in a typical bank—so customers can work toward business excellence.”

Communication across multiple time zones slowed down the collaboration necessary to ensure that the new business processes being developed were in line with customers’ expectations. GIEOM and its customers shared diagrams, spreadsheets, and documents as email attachments, but these asynchronous exchanges introduced delays. “We wanted an efficient way to exchange information with customers to hasten deployment and time-to-benefit,” says Santhosh.

GIEOM was researching a cloud-based solution model to deliver a hosted version of the GIEOM solution, which meant it needed a diagramming tool that works with cloud-based business productivity services such as Microsoft SharePoint Online, part of Microsoft Office 365. “Cloud computing will make it easier for customers to use our product, and we can scale our business without the cost of on-premises servers,” says Santhosh. “We want to offer customers convenient ways to access and review professional-looking diagrams without having diagramming software installed on their computers, and we want them to be able to use a variety of Windows-based, iOS, and Android devices.”

Solution

GIEOM learned about Microsoft Visio 2013 drawing and diagramming software from a Microsoft Premier Services Technical Account Manager. After attending a Visio 2010 demonstration at the Microsoft Technology Center in October 2011, and subsequently attending a Visio 2013 demonstration, GIEOM engaged Microsoft Services Premier Support to help it migrate from existing Visio 2010 diagrams to Visio Professional 2013. “As Microsoft technologies advance, we use our strong relationship with Microsoft Services Premier Support to increase our knowledge base and continuously enhance our product,” says Santhosh.

“Visio Professional 2013 has many features that we can use for coauthoring business process diagrams, solving our most pressing need for more efficient collaboration with customers,” says Santhosh. “You need Visio Professional 2013 to coauthor diagrams; however, you can use Visio Services to view and comment on diagrams stored in SharePoint Online as well as SharePoint servers on-premises. You can link diagrams to data stored in the cloud as well as on-premises systems. Visio Services works on a variety of mobile devices, and it’s easy to quickly create professional-looking diagrams.” (Figure 1.)

Figure 1 – GIEOM uses Visio Professional 2013 diagramming software to communicate well-designed business processes to enable business excellence.

Because Visio Professional 2013 includes a SharePoint 2013 workflow template that can be used to build SharePoint 2013 workflows—including stages, loops, and steps as logical building blocks—it’s easy for GIEOM consultants to create and deploy easy-to-follow visual workflows to enhance and automate the collaboration between the company and its customers with little to no coding. They can publish workflows to a SharePoint Online site for easy access by the customer via most browsers using Visio Services.

GIEOM is testing Visio 2013 with an existing customer, working with Microsoft Services Premier Support to update approximately 300 of its Visio 2010 business process diagrams. The teams used the Change Shape and e-Duplicate Page features in Visio 2013 to update shapes and reorder diagram pages without having to manually update the shape metadata and diagram layouts, saving time.

John Santhosh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GIEOM

Benefits:

GIEOM will improve customer service and add marketability to its flagship product by using easily edited Visio 2013 business process diagrams that are accessible online and on a variety of mobile devices. “Any way that we can expedite collaboration with our customers and improve the business process visualization component of GIEOM will benefit our business,” says Santhosh. “Visio 2013 has a lot of potential for fulfilling our goals for business process visualization within GIEOM.”

Expedites Time-to-Benefit for Customers
For GIEOM, the initial phase of a customer engagement had been a lengthy process of information exchange. The longer this took, the longer it was before the customer could begin benefiting from the GIEOM product.

“We can view and comment on diagrams simultaneously with customers in the cloud using Office 365, even commenting on individual shapes, and save drafts to SharePoint Online with all changes synced,” says Santhosh. “Using Visio Professional 2013 coauthoring capabilities, we can develop and deploy business processes that meet our customers’ needs in half the time that it took with other tools in the market. That’s good for business.”

Builds Competitive Advantage
GIEOM plans to use other features of Visio 2013 to improve the value of the GIEOM product and boost the company’s competitive advantage. Because Visio 2013 works well with Office 365 in the cloud, GIEOM sees enormous potential to scale its business and can make progress on its own cloud-computing initiatives by introducing Visio 2013 into the company’s “GIEOM in the Cloud” offering.

“The impressive new look and feel of Visio Professional 2013 sets GIEOM apart and will help us convert customers to our modules that use a more powerful data visualization tool,” concludes Santhosh.

Visio:

The new Visio makes it easier than ever to create and share professional, versatile diagrams that simplify complex information. It includes updated shapes, templates, and styles, as well as enhanced support for teams, including the ability for several people to work on a single diagram at the same time.

Source:

Microsoft Case Study: GIEOM