faq

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1. Getting started

1.1 About the BPM Capability Benchmark and Planning tool

What is the purpose of the tool?

This BPM Capability Benchmark and Planning tool is designed to help you gauge your organisation's current level of competency regarding BPM initiatives (whether you have already started with BPM or not), and its ability to get the most value out of BPM. Through the use of an interactive self-assessment, it assesses your organisation's capabilities in five key dimensions:

• Lifecycle – the degree to which your BPM initiative practices different stages of the BPM lifecycle - discovery and analysis, design, implementation, deployment and operation, and monitoring and optimisation.
• Organisation – the extent to which your organisation is ready to support the needs of a broad BPM initiative. It explores the participation of key business and IT stakeholders in the initiative, establishes the role of a centre of excellence (CoE), examines the availability of skills necessary to support the initiative, and assesses how well the organisation is set up to manage and secure the benefits of change.
• Governance – your organisation's approach to creating a framework for the management of your BPM initiative throughout the lifecycle, and the participants in governance processes.
• Architecture – the degree to which architecture practices are used in the development of your BPM initiative to drive consistency of outcomes, and minimise costs and risks.
• Technology – your organisation's use of the technology underpinnings for a BPM initiative, and the degree to which technology components are able to be used together efficiently to support the promise of BPM across its lifecycle.

Following completion of the self-assessment, we analyse your responses to the questionnaire and provide you with an online scoresheet that presents your score in the different dimensions on a spider diagram to provide you with an overall perspective on your BPM competency levels.

You then have the option to continue and purchase a high-quality PDF report. This personalised action plan report will analyse your self-assessment information to provide you with a plan that will advise you on next steps to improve your maturity; as well as providing a detailed analysis of your competency levels benchmarked against other organisations of a similar size, in the same industry, and in the same geographical region.

What does the tool provide?

Yes. The free-of-charge tool takes the assessment data that you provide about aspects of your BPM readiness and capabilities and produces a scoring chart.

Why would I use this tool, rather than tools provided by vendors?

Some BPM technology suppliers offer free self-assessment tools. In many cases, these tools are primarily focused on assessment and although they will help you to understand your level of BPM maturity, they do not offer the actionable advice to help you plan your BPM initiative given your level of maturity. In other cases, the assessment tool also includes a planning element. However, in such cases the tools are likely to be oriented to the supplier's offerings.

Our tool combines assessment and planning, and provides a vendor-independent and holistic perspective on BPM which considers the broad range of capabilities and technologies required to maximise the value of your BPM capability investment. In addition, of course, you can carry out the self-assessment exercise at no charge. It's only access to a personalised action plan and set of industry benchmarks which costs money.

Do I need to download and install any software?

No. The tool is completely browser-based. If you purchase access to the BPM Action Plan report you will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to read your report. The Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from Adobe here.

Is there any limit on how long I can use the tool?

No. There is no time limit on free-of-charge or premium access to the tool. Once you have set up your free Guest Pass account and completed the self-assessment survey you can revisit it and re-generate the results as many times as you like. Similarly, once you have purchased premium access you can re-visit the questionnaire and generate a new benchmark report whenever you like. In fact, with new users adding benchmark data to the tool all the time, we actively encourage you to re-run your report to take advantage of this expanding benchmark data set.

We commit to making the tool available for at least 24 months from launch (until December 2013), and we will update the tool as and when improvements become necessary. If for any reason we have to discontinue the tool, we will provide prior written notice to everyone who has purchased premium access.

Who has produced the tool?

The tool has been produced exclusively by MWD Advisors (see here for more details).

1.2. Signing Up, Signing In, and Managing Your Account

Will I have to sign up to use the BPM Capability Benchmark and Planning tool?

Yes, you need to register with us in order to use the BPM Capability Benchmark and Planning tool. To register, just click the "register" link at the top right of any page on the MWD website.

You can also sign in using your LinkedIn account. Using your LinkedIn account to access content on the MWD website means that you don't have to remember yet another user ID and password. Your privacy is secure: we don't have access to your LinkedIn password or any of your personal account details. Should you ever wish to cancel your access to MWD's Guest Pass content, simply log into your LinkedIn account to revoke the connection between your account and the MWD website.

Please note, though, that if you choose to revoke your authorisation for the MWD website to use your LinkedIn credentials, the MWD website won't be notified of this – so if you have elected to receive news and updates from MWD, you will continue to receive these until you explicitly tell us.

How do I sign in and sign out?

From any page on the MWD website, type your username and password details into the login box at the top right of the page. When you're signed in, you can sign out at any time by clicking on the "sign out" link in the menu bar.

Why do I need to provide an email address to sign up?

We use that information to provide you a more personalised online experience and to process orders. This information will not be shared with any third party. Please see our privacy policy for more details.

I have lost my account username and/or password. Can I get a new one?

Just visit the Forgotten your details? page. You'll need to provide us with the email address you registered with: if it matches a customer record in our database we'll email your username and password to that email address.

Can I change my password?

Yes. First, log in (if you’ve forgotten your password, request a reminder as above). Then follow the my mwd link, and you can change your password and other details here.

Why do I need to provide details about my geography, organisation size and industry?

We use this information to benchmark your organisation against others in the same geography, industry and of a similar size, which you can see if you purchase premium access.

1.3. Privacy and Security

Who can see my information?

The information you provide for the BPM Capability Benchmark and Planning tool information is only available to you. Please see our privacy policy for more details.

Is the tool anonymous?

When calculating industry or geographic benchmark reports, the data provided to customers is completely anonymous. All reports and analyses work from anonymised, aggregated data.

2. Working with the Tool

2.1. Creating, Editing, Saving, and Restoring an Assessment

How do I create a new assessment?

Once you have signed in, select [take the assessment] from the tool homepage. If you have completed any part of the survey before you will see an option to clear the data and start the survey again.

How long does it take to finish the assessment?

The self-assessment has around 100 questions, split into five dimensions: Lifecycle, Organisation, Governance, Architecture and Technology. Assuming you have all the information available for these five dimensions, it should take no more than one hour to complete. Don't worry if you do not have all the information to hand: you can save your work at any time and return to it at a later date, once you have the information to complete unanswered questions.

How do I calculate my assessment score?

Calculate your assessment score at any time by selecting the [get your results] link at the bottom of each section of the assessment survey. Your results will be generated automatically, and will tell you which parts of the survey have not been completed, if applicable.

How do I get the Action Plan report?

Once you have generated the results of the assessment survey, you will see a section on the results page called [taking further action]. From here you can click to download your detailed BPM assessment report. At this point you will be asked to purchase premium access to this report (see section 1.1 on this page).

Can I update my answers to the questionnaire?

Yes, you can amend your answers to the questionnaire and, if you have purchased premium access, generate multiple versions of your personalised report.

What happens if I make a mistake? Do I have to undo all of my changes?

If you make a mistake, the tool provides a couple of features to make it easy to correct things:

• If you want to correct an answer to a specific question (i.e. select completely agree instead of partially disagree, for example), just click on the corresponding radio button.
• If you want to change a complete section, just press the [reset this section] button associated with that assessment section. All your answers in that section will be reset.
• If you want to undo all your changes since you last saved your work, go to the start of the assessment and use the [click here to clear the data and start again] link in the yellow box.

2.2. Using the tool

How can I get help on answering the questions in the assessment?

The tool’s assessment section offers context-sensitive help, in the form of popups which are provided for each section and subsection of the assessment. Just click on the [?] links next to section headings and subsection headings within the assessment.

Is any other help available?

The [Help] tab on the tool menu provides useful information about the tool. It also includes a link to this FAQ document, as details of how to contact us by email with any questions.

How is the BPM Action Plan report created?

The personalised action plan is produced using a model which maps your scores in each assessment section and subsection to a database of actions. The model also understands dependencies and relationships between sections, subsections and questions, and takes those into account when generating the action plan.

3. Purchasing premium access

What is the personalised BPM Action Plan?

For a modest fee (£49), you gain access to a premium "personalised action plan" report. This professionally formatted report includes a personalised BPM Action Plan, which includes:

• the scores from the online report
• detailed benchmark comparisons for your industry, company size and geography
• (most importantly) a personalised action plan based on your responses to the self-assessment.

If you purchase access to the personalised action plan, the PDF report becomes available to you as an integral part of your own personalised research library on the MWD Advisors website – but unlike other reports in our research library, it’s dynamically generated from your most recent self-assessment data each time you access it. This means you can work through the tool once, download the report, and then – some time later, as you progress through your BPM initiative – re-run the tool's assessment and obtain an updated report. There’s no additional cost for this.

A sample of the personalised BPM Action Plan report can be downloaded here.

How do I get access to the report?

You can purchase premium access by clicking the [download your detailed BPM assessment report] button from the assessment results page. This adds the report to your shopping cart, and forwards you the MWD online shopping cart page. From here, you can quickly check out and pay using American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Maestro or JCB via our secure payment processor, WorldPay. Worldpay is a global leader in payment processing, operating in over 40 countries.

Immediately once you’ve completed your purchase, you will be able to access your personalised Action Plan Report from your own personal my mwd page on the MWD Advisors site. To access the report at any future time, just log on to the MWD Advisors site using your Guest Pass account credentials and visit the BPM Benchmark Capability and Planning tool page or your own personal My MWD page.

Do I have to pay in GBP?

No. Although prices are quoted on our site in GBP, on checkout you can convert prices to your own preferred currency.

Is is safe to purchase online?

Worldpay is a global leader in payment processing, operating in over 40 countries. MWD Advisors does not store or process any cardholder data; all processing and storage of cardholder data is carried out by WorldPay, which has been certified PCI DSS compliant. If you have a query regarding an online payment you have made through WorldPay you can visit their online help page here. We are also available to assist you with any queries. Visit our contact us page to get in touch.