See LINQ in action

LINQ’s power comes from a combination of using simple visualisations of your business; the relationship between People, Processes, Technology and Information and using this to deliver ‘Instant Insights’ to help you gain new understanding about how your business really works. Take a look at the scenarios below to learn how you can apply this approach to your own business, enabling your transformations to deliver new business value.

An all-in-one computer screen with LINQ running as the application on screen

GDPR Article 30

This sketch explores how the LINQ Language can be extended to enable GDPR Article 30.

Using the familiar relationships between Information, Actions, Systems and People, we can define relationships in terms that meet the needs of the Data Controller and the Data Processor. The sketch shows how you can connect multiple actions associated with specific business processes such as Consent, Legitimate Interest and Purpose so that the impact of these on Personal and Special Information can be understood by everyone.

In this sketch you will see;

  • Flags created from tags showing multiple purpose flowing through the business (the yellow and red flags)
  • Specific actions of interest to GDPR such as ‘Provides Consent’ linked to the person providing the consent
  • Internal actions such as ‘Legitimate Interest’ showing where decisions have been taken against captured Personal Information required by the Data Controller
  • Where data has been shared with external parties
  • How information templates (consent, legitimate interest and purpose) can speed up capture and
  • How data and information delivers value to the business using LINQ’s value cascading methodology

If you’d like to explore further and try LINQ for yourself, contact us.

Hilary’s Office

Hilary’s office is a fictional workplace employing five people. The business manages a number of administrative tasks including Asset Management, Marketing, PR, Recruitment and Financial Management.

You can use this Viewer to familiarise yourself with;

  • The construct of an Information Supply Chain demonstrating all of the possible connections between information, action, system and people nodes
  • Value cascading from a number of key information assets produced by the business so support their business outcomes
  • The Scorecard Dashboard which shows the costs of the various aspects of the business
  • The People Dashboard which shows the roles that the individuals have in the business
  • The Savings Potential Insight which allows you to explore the impact of not producing various business outcomes in terms of time and money savings
  • The Cost Allocation Insight which allows you to understand how much it costs to produce the information outputs which are needed to deliver the required outcomes

Of particular interest is Hilary herself. Go to the People Dashboard and pick Hilary to see the systems she has to use in order to deliver the outcomes the business needs. The sketch in the People Dashboard gives insight into Hilary’s expertise as well as the training requirements for anyone else coming into her role.

If you’d like to explore further and try LINQ for yourself, contact us.

Prioritisation of Work

LINQ’s Value Cascading methodology quickly identifies areas within your business that are of high value. By identifying the relative value of the information assets which deliver business outcomes, values cascade through the Supply Chain tagging every data or information element, action, person and system which contributes to the value of the outcome.

By quickly linking data inputs to information outputs, value cascading allows you to visualise where value exists. At a 50,000’ foot view of your business, you can use this knowledge to prioritise your LINQ capture.

In this sketch, based on understanding the data inputs which deliver our airlines business outcomes associated with the Loyalty Application, we have realised that how we manage Customer Information (value 52) is the most critical work that happens. We have then chosen to start to capture more detail in this part of the business before we look at anything else. The value of 52 shows that if Customer Information became unavailable, it would impact 6 business outcomes.

Use this Viewer to:

  • Explore the Value Cascading approach
  • Understand the impact of data not being available from the Downstream View in the Navigator Window

Of particular interest is selecting the Customer Information information node and in the Downstream View, understanding how much of the business would be impacted by any operational waste occurring in actions impacting that data.

If you’d like to explore further and try LINQ for yourself, contact us.

Core Finance System Business Case

Contributing to a business case for change is easy using LINQ.

Capturing the current state of the way the business works to prove where the inefficiencies lie, which when removed create a more effective state takes hours, not weeks.

In this sketch, the current way Purchase Orders are managed has been captured from the information flow perspective and costs have been allocated on a per transaction basis. Each action describes the Duration and Frequency for a single PO transaction and therefore the cost of the action when the person performing it is considered.

The insights gained from the Scorecard Dashboard show where the most significant costs lie; in creating a payment file, raising an expense request and raising the PO itself.

Alongside current state is the model for a target state. This assumes that a Core Finance System, once implemented, would remove many current manual tasks and make others significantly quicker.

This sketch has set a baseline of value from a system implementation – a saving of $81 per transaction. When many thousands of transactions are completed per year, this becomes a number of significance, especially when considered across the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a Core Finance System.

Use this Viewer to:

  • Understand how capturing Current State has led to the insights which enabled the future state to be captured
  • Explore the Scorecard Dashboard and see which activities could be removed
  • Look at the impact of the People involved through the People Dashboard; what time could be given back to them if low value work was stopped?
  • Consider how presenting this evidence based material to a decision maker would impact the business case for change.

If you’d like to explore further and try LINQ for yourself, contact us.

2 LINQ sketches shown side by side - a current state and a future state and the Cost/Value Dashboard showing the costs of operating each process - part of creating the business case for change

Cost of Data Maintenance

In this more significant sketch, we bring together the many insights delivered by LINQ when data and information flow is modelled.

Starting with data being provided from many external sources, we trace the impact of that unstructured data to the business.

We identify duplicate processes being performed by many people through the organisation at great cost to the business and we identify potentially inappropriate systems being used for the storage, maintenance and provision of data.

The Dashboards provide the business perspective in terms of total cost in turning source data into valuable content fit for purpose and the time impact on the people involved.

Use this Viewer to:

  • Gain a deeper level of understanding if the power of the data modelling approach
  • Identify this organisations opportunity to mitigate wastage to become more efficient and effective. What is the single action you could take to fundamentally help this business?
  • Begin to consider what a target state would look like? How would that model help to describe the benefit of change to the business?

If you’d like to explore further and try LINQ for yourself, contact us.

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