ARIS Confirmation Management

With confirmation management organizations can communicate their ways of working (i.e. through business process models) and organizational stakeholders are requested to provide electronic signature confirming that they have in fact read and understood models’ content, plus that they will adhere to those communicated ways of working. 

This is valuable in context of process compliance and process conformance. Most dramatically, it elevates the value of graphical (process, other) models from oftentimes completely ignored (‘Does this affect my job?’) to becoming relevant to employees’ daily work performance and thereby essential to achieving operational excellence.

Confirmation management is the missing link between ‘This is how you (process participant) should go about our business’ and ‘I (process participant) hereby confirm that I have read and understood how I should go about our business’.

It adds value in context of notifying stakeholders when processes change through soliciting stakeholders’ acknowledgment of changes and subsequent confirmation of compliance with updated work instructions.

ARIS Confirmation Management can be used in combination with ARIS process governance workflows, where the latter takes care of manager’s approval of newly defined or updated models, whereas the former notifies stakeholders and requests confirmation of adherence.

Confirmation management can be thought of as policy management, where process models are understood prescriptively in the sense of ‘this is how things should be done best in regards to this business or IT situation'.

Within the scope of confirmation management are the following artifacts: newly defined processes, changed/updated processes (new/additional steps in process sequence, new decision points in process logic, newly designed/updated policies affecting process, new/updated business rules affecting process, and newly identified/updated risks and controls, to name just a few).

Furthermore, it is applicable to: Regulatory Compliance, Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC), Organizational Learning & Knowledge Management, Organizational Change Management (OCM).

‘Say what you do and do what you say’—the twin poles of consistency and performance. The first (‘say what you do’) refers to defining/documenting/designing the what and how of work. This is essentially business process modeling. It is complemented by ARIS’ collaboration feature, where employees can (rather: should) contribute to making processes they participate in better by giving feedback and sharing best practices.

The second (‘do what you say’) refers to holding employees accountable to following their best practice ways of working. This is more than top-down militarily imposed ‘my way or the highway’, but rather helps employees hold themselves accountable to the way they should be doing their best work and that they’re consistently doing it in an excellent and repeatable fashion. In other words, ‘say what you do’ refers to modeling the process and ‘do what you say’ refers to following the process. Emphasis on ‘not just’ command and control style, but rather in sense of empowering employees holding themselves accountable to their own high standards of work performance.

Customizing your confirmation management workflow

Let’s move to product functionality—what can you actually do with this ARIS feature available with ARIS Enterprise? 

First off, when logging into ARIS, you’re gently reminded of open tasks for you to confirm. In screenshot below, I’m logged in as William Workforce and see a confirmation task related the applicant selection process. The wording of the confirmation task is editable. Personally, I like the following wording: “I hereby confirm that I have read & understood this process, and changes to it, and that I will follow it in the course of my daily work”. This of course is up to preference, style as well as implementation purpose. 

Confirmation management workflow—before and after 

From a user’s standpoint, ARIS presents the process to follow either as an overview of activities or a graphical diagram (Table 2) which can be toggled between. Advantage of the overview presentation is that it is easier for non-trained employees to read and understand the process. Once the user has read and understood, s/he clicks the ‘Confirm’ button, which then turns into green ‘Confirmed’ status. 

ARIS Confirmation Management—is that all?

You may be thinking this is all good and nice, but can’t you do that in document management systems with embedded electronic signature? Completing the loop is workflow traceability of confirmation tasks, including proper GRC-style audit trail. Process owners (and others with permission) can follow who performed tasks and who did not. Below, the screenshot shows ‘performed’ status including time stamp for process participant who completed their task, and ‘open/in progress’ status for those who did not (yet). This will make it easy to identify participants who either do not bother to confirm, or who are on purpose not following the process in question. Putting the icing on loop cake, ARIS’s integrated dashboards for Confirmation Management workflows lifts it up to the level of a complete digital work management system where work is defined, collaboratively improved, and followed. 

Dashboards, for example, visualize statuses of confirmation tasks across entities, filterable by process or department, and giving organizational transformation leaders real-time visibility into transformation progress. Do you want fries with that?