Comparing BPM solutions in To-Increase RapidValue is now a simple, automated, time-saving function

In enterprise environments, your ERP projects and business process optimization initiatives may involve multiple solutions or solution versions that you create in To-Increase RapidValue for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Technology consultancies often maintain a variety of BPM solutions that serve different industries or types of companies. Not infrequently, ERP managers and BPM designers in companies and consultancies need to answer solution-related questions: What are the differences between versions of a RapidValue solution? How do the processes in a solution deployed in your Bulgarian manufacturing operation compare to those at headquarters in Toronto? What really distinguishes a B2C retail solution from a B2B wholesale distribution business model? How do the processes in a certain instance of Microsoft Dynamics AX compare to an industry standard model from an expert consortium? Traditionally, you relied on research and documentation to answer these questions. Either documentation was created when the BPM team decided to maintain and track solution variants or other multiple, targeted solutions, or somebody needed to examine the solutions’ content and detail all the differences in a spreadsheet or list. In RapidValue 6.3.1502, the most recent release, you no longer need to work that hard to verify the differences between BPM solutions. We added a Compare Solutions capability that can save lots of time and labor. As long as you use version numbers , also new in this release, you can simply tell RapidValue to compare different solution versions and tell you what the differences are . Or, compare solutions for different business, industry, or standards models. One of our customers, Alfa Laval, the global industrial engineering company, is performing deployments of Microsoft Dynamics AX in 35 locations, using a standard master solution. Sometimes, local processes include improvements that make sense for the entire enterprise or several other locations, and they are absorbed into the master solution. In this scenario, the Compare Solutions feature quickly lets you see what’s different in a local solution and decide whether it warrants wider adoption. When you compare solutions, you can browse through all differences, or filter them by type. You can drill down into specific records where differences occur, and you can call up a visual display of differences between workflows. A list of differences can also be exported to Excel. And, once you know what the differences between solutions are, you can use the Find and Replace feature, also new in this release of RapidValue, to make changes in one or the other very quickly. You can easily review the differences between solution releases, as illustrated in the screen grab below. We purposefully kept the Compare Solutions feature simple. When you compare different versions of a solution—probably the most frequent utilization scenario—RapidValue goes by the version numbers in your processes and content items. It does not attempt to find detailed differences in documentation or the steps in workflows, which might leave you with a huge amount of findings that highlight very minor changes along with a few that make a real difference. Most BPM designers using RapidValue rely on the versioning to mark significant updates, so a more high-level approach is more efficient. Together with Release Management and Find and Replace , the Compare Solutions feature helps BPM practitioners streamline the effort of broadcasting, verifying, and managing standardized processes and solution content. That, in turn, make it easier to ensure compliance with ERP goals, company strategies, and the parameters of compliance and quality initiatives. If you want to discuss BPM in your business, please get in touch. Send me an email at psnaeland [at] to-increase.com, connect with me on LinkedIn , or contact To-Increase . Other new features in RapidValue 6.3.1502 include enhanced multilanguage capabilities .