Architecture (22)
Understanding the structure of an organization today means understanding the relationships between the various elements of the organization, its partners, or other businesses. Each organization utilizes different viewpoints that are part of the normal operations of running the organization. Looking at it from an architectural perspective, it may include: the business environment, the perceived market needs, product / service architecture, the process architecture, and supporting architectures.
KCI courses address builiding the understanding of how to integrate these architectural perspectives.
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Enterprise Performance Management (1)
KCI understands the need to have qualified professionals for an organization. These courses are directed to assist in the individual or person's overall development and the organization's overall performance. Here are areas of suggested certifications.
Business and IT Architecture (14)
Organizations are faced with high-demand response to changing business conditions. The business and IT Architecture certification provides and insight into the different dimensions associated with architectural thinking. Enterprise Architecture, as used in the industry today, is focused on information technology delivery and services. But, does not address a number of critical organizations considerations not part of the information technology environment. This certification is designed to assist someone to be versed in the differences associated with sets of business architectures that have a significant influence on the organization.
Strategic Management Reporting (1)
Management reporting has become a cornerstone of effective business execution. Reports both periodic and on demand have been increasingly available on line and web enabled. The usage of indicators to highlight issues of performance is now the focus of much reporting. Key performance indicators, key results indicators and now key influence indicators provide managers with information and insight with respect to the overall health of the enterprise. Business intelligence has now matured to the point of general use in companies and is replacing more traditional reporting systems.
IT Management (1)
Needs Business Skills for Managing the Digital Enterprise
Information Technology (IT) is a key part of running today's organization. Managing IT effectively and efficiently requires business skills and technology understanding that serves the organization today and into the future. This certification focuses on the skills necessary to ensure a delicate balance is achieved between both of skills. Today's Information Technology (IT) and Management Information Systems (MIS) environments have to address the management of the entire organization's environment as a collection of interacting automated/manual information systems. These systems are so critical to the "digital" organization that KCI has a series of courses designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the key elements needed to manage IT or MIS.
Some of these offerings can be packaged into a designed certification program for your organization.
Business Analysis and Modeling (2)
Organizations perform business analysis to make good decisions. In most business decision situations, the analysis can take many forms, such as: descriptive, financial, modeling, ranking, mapping, and other techiniques. An organization may want to examine a number of techniques that will enhance their over-all decision-making abilities. This certification allows one to understand and use the right technique for your business analysis.
Process Management (1)
Process management today has taken on an important place in improving the organization or enterprise. Regardless of the approach to management and the use of management disciplines, processes remain at the core of the organization and its capability to deliver goods and services. These courses are directed for personal and staff development in the area of process management. Linking process performance to strategic direction and individual performance gives a complete picture of the impact of best practices and on strategies and the requirements of performance by workers. The emergence of case management in many industries such as health care, hospitality and other service and product industries requires a new understanding of how processes can be improved. Current methods of managing policies and procedures are also changing with the related use of process management and the application of automated tools.
Document, Content and Knowledge Management (2)
The emphasis on knowledge and knowledge workers today pervades all types of organizations. Knowledge is provided at the point of execution of a process in many forms including documents and content. Understanding the relationship of documents to content to knowledge is critical to successful knowledge management. Knowledge processes as well as knowledge are being increasingly outsourced on a global scale.
By providing fundamental information for the development and growth of the organization, one needs categorization, searching, retrieving and access to the data and information in various forms. This is the foundation for knowledge management.
Enterprise Performance Management Certification:
Performance of the organization depends on setting direction and then executing to meet that direction. Enterprise performance management includes the skills an disciplines you need to do both. Strategic business thinking is required to enable an organization to properly understand, assess, and make decisions on both direction and execution. Additionally major usage of technology, skills and policies will impact the organizational performance. This certification is designed to assist someone to be versed in various strategic areas with a focus on performance using those methods, techniques and disciplines typically used in most organizations. They include:
- Enterprise performance management *
- Strategic Business Planning *
- Management disciplines (5 Forces, Balanced Scorecard, Value Chain) *
- Enterprise analysis and enterprise architecture *
- Effective business integration
- Effectively using Balanced Scorecard – A Hands on Approach
- Competitive intelligence
- Mergers and Acquisitions Methods
- Benchmarking for Strategic Excellence
Process Management Certification:
Process management today has taken on an important place in improving the enterprise. Regardless of the approach to management and the use of management disciplines, processes remain at the core of the organization and its capability to deliver goods and services. These courses are directed for personal and staff development in the area of process management. Linking process performance to strategic direction and individual performance gives a complete picture of the impact of best practices and on strategies and the requirements of performance by workers. The emergence of case management in many industries such as health care, hospitality and other service and product industries requires a new understanding of how processes can be improved. Current methods of managing policies and procedures are also changing with the related use of process management and the application of automated tools. The core set of courses required for certification help prepare a staff for applying best practices to organization performance improvement.
- Essential business process mapping and modeling *
- Advanced process mapping and modeling *
- Essential Policy & Procedure Documentation and Evaluation *
- Workflow and workflow management *
- Process management with Visio – A hands - approach
- Process architecture and the link to strategy
- Effective use of process tools (analysis, modeling workflow, management)
- Essential process analysis, analytics and measurement
- CASE Management and its implications
- Effectively Managing and Implementing Policies & Procedures
The importance and use of knowledge today cannot be understated. Comments abound in newspapers and articles about such topics as knowledge society, knowledge economy, the learning organization, knowledge transfer, and so on.
Yet, little is known about the actual approach to and implementation of topics like a ‘knowledge policy’, knowledge transfer, capture and management of knowledge, what are the knowledge processes, positioning versus reaching for knowledge, knowledge repositories and many other ‘hot’ topics about knowledge.
KCI has a long history of knowledge management consulting and education. KCI currently provides the following courses in document, content and knowledge management:
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Document, Content and Knowledge Management Certification:
The emphasis on knowledge and knowledge workers today pervades all types of organizations. Knowledge is provided at the point of execution of a process in many forms including documents and content. Understanding the relationship of documents to content to knowledge is critical to successful knowledge management. Knowledge processes as well as knowledge are being increasingly outsourced on a global scale.
- Knowledge Management Today *
- Document and content management *
- Effectively using and transferring knowledge *
- Implementing the knowledge management system
- Knowledge management for managers
- The knowledge process and knowledge repository
- Linking business processes with knowledge
- Hands – on knowledge management, a tool approach
IT Management Certification:
These courses are designed for the individual whose career path is focused on Information Technology management. Courses cover both the internal IT perspective and the external IT perspective focusing on the alignment with the business needs and direction.
- Strategic IT manager (focuses on the business link and IT) *
- Effective IT management (focuses on the functions and services of IT) *
- Strategic IT Planning *
- Effective data management (documents, signals, data field analysis)
- Enterprise Architecture and Business Modeling
- Cyber forensics and security
- Metadata management
- Technology Forecasting for business and IT
- IT Performance Management
- Management Information Systems
- Change Management for Information Technology
Business Systems Certification:
Developing the digitized part of the organization requires an understanding of the structure of the business (the architecture) and the digital capability that can enable superior performance. The business systems certification is intended to provide the skills that bridge the linkage between the operational people part of the business and the digital part of the business.
- Business Requirements Analysis *
- Business Systems Analysis *
- Business Systems Development I *
- Business Systems Development II *
- Enterprise Architecture and Business Modeling
- Cloud Computing – The Business View
- Adding Business Value through SaaS
- Enterprise Business Data Management (documents, signals, data field analysis)
Business Analysis and Modeling Certification:
There are various types of business analysis that can be used to aid in decision-making. An organization may want to examine a number of techniques that will enhance their over-all decision-making abilities. Sometimes the analysis leads to a digital solution and sometimes to a change in the structure of the business. This certification is designed to assist someone to be versed in these areas:
- Essential Data Analysis - Quantitative Methods for Business *
- Advanced Quantitative Methods (regression, correlation, sensitivity analysis) * *
- Core Methods of Business Analysis – Financial, Quantitative and Descriptive Analysis *
- Decision analysis (decision tables, decision trees, influence diagrams)
- Business modeling and Linear programming
- Industrial Dynamics (feedback models for business)
- Operations research for business
Neural Net Analytics for Managers and Analysts
Neural nets and related AI analytics of machine learning are an important emerging tool today. There are tools available today that provide for developing a neural net solution from the extract, transform and load stage through the model building stage and finally ending with the running and solution presentation stage. Many of the tool suites require data scientist professionals to develop the application. However, several tools have emerged that simplify the use of neural nets so a manger can more easily take advantage of their value without the intervention of a specialist.Neural nets provide an alternative view of factors (called features in NN parlance) that influence some single objective value or grouping of values. With a neural net you get predictive results based on past factors.
The KCI preferred tool for easy neural net analysis, analytics and management support is the Predictor and Classifier tools available as part of the AI Trilogy suite from Ward Systems Group. These are developed, tested and simple neural nets that can be used for many of the analytical needs in an organization.
AI Trilogy is a basic neural net modeling management tool that provides managers and analysts with entry into the world of neural need application without the need to be a coder. The Predictor and Classifier nets use an excel spreadsheet as input. Most of the time the data is extracted from operational or other systems, cleaned and formatted for a neural net input and then used to train the net. Neural nets can show bias based on the data used to train them. Prediction and classification come from adding hypothetical feature values and observing the result generated based on the training set.
Like business analytics tools, neural net tools require focused workflows to get the most use out of them. KCI provides several workflows for key types of analysis typical of managers today.
Using AI Trilogy
AI Trilogy solutions can be applied from various perspectives, for example, at a high level (understanding the influence of external factors such as social trends on your strategies) or at a more detailed level (comparing a neural net analysis of process performance factors with a statistical approach).
Here are three of the solutions that most organizations seek on a regular basis. Each of these AI Trilogy insights are used to guide the user by providing the neural net steps and features needed by following easy to use workflows.
Decision Analytics for Managers and Analysts
A key part of managing an organization is making decisions. Decision involve choosing between options and understanding the impact of changes in the decision factors. Having the most achievable, accurate, and meaningful decision results improves the overall performance of any organization. Decisions are part of processes, performance reporting, incident response and direction interest. Decisions are expansive covering the overall direction of an organization in response to external threats or very detailed providing input to options in a process.Specific tools, methods and techniques provide the insight and options when choice situations appear. Tools such as spreadsheets can provide some input to a decision, but the best approach is to use tools that provide consideration for influences and alternatives based on likely probabilities that conditions may happen. To evaluate options, specific types of models and analytics provide better insight than looking at tables of numbers.
The KCI preferred tool for these types of analysis and decision support is the DPL/9 decision and influence modeling product from Syncopation. Like business analytics tools, decision tools require focused workflows to get the most use out of them. KCI provides these workflows for key types of decisions typical of managers today.
DPL/9 is a decision modeling management tool that provides managers with easy to use modeling structures for analyzing decision options. With the Excel input option managers and analysts can prepare the basic model in Excel, add probabilities, data values, influences and decision factors. Multiple sets of data values can be added to view several alternatives or changes in the meaning of the model over time.
Using Decision Tools such as DPL/9
Decision solutions like business analytics can be applied from various perspectives, for example, at a high level (such as market penetration options) or at a more detailed operational level (granting credit or approving a sale).
Here are two of the solution workflows KCI provides for organizations looking to improve decision making. Each of these insights are used to guide the user by applying decision modeling capabilities in easy to use workflows.
Risk
Every organization needs information about threats they face whether they are from competitors, or from the external landscape. The idea of risk assessment has been around for a long time and has well established methods of assessing riskRisk assessment starts with gathering information on threats that impact the organization. It usually begins with the strategic level and includes all types of threats such as environmental (storms, flood etc.), cyber threats, sabotage, competitive and so on. More advanced methods also use organization, operational, IT and product threat assessments.
What is missing is the capability to link all these together and determine composite horizontal and vertical risk assessments providing a comprehensive risk perspective. Assessments include many factors other than impact and likelihood. These factors include remediation cost, loss, difficulty, importance and other factors that focus the risk analysis on those threats of most significance.
Linking risk assessments together provides a valuable piece of insight for the organization. Using Wizsm hidden relationship analysis, critical risk connections are revealed, and the organization improves the insight into the more fragile parts of the organization that need protection and monitoring.
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Mergers and Acquisitions
How can you increase the probability of M&A success? Keeping in mind that most M&A analysis is based on financial, market, product and legal similarities and differences the real value comes from the capability of comparing the operations. Comparisons of operations are usually glossed over as too expensive so a series of interviews with executives is substituted for a more extensive analysis.The goal of an M&A analysis depends on the purpose of the M&A. What the organization need you are trying to fulfill:
- If the goal is complementary, then you are looking at differences to expand your reach
- If the goal is economics of scale, then you are looking at similarities to reduce costs or keep a competitor out of the market.
Business Innovation
Organizations constantly look for actions they can take that assure their continued growth and survival.Without a means to capture, understand, consolidate, test, and implement ideas, an organization faulters. Innovation and digital transformation are driven by a constant flow of ideas that are assessed for risk and impact on the organization. It means these ideas produce new revenue opportunities, optimizing existing channels and, ultimately, generating higher profits within existing products or services or completely new.
Wizsm’s analytics gives management a way to gain insight into the various ideas and their potential impact on the organization’s ability to change. Then, the resulting innovation chosen from those ideas can be examined and evaluated prior to executing the change on its products, services or both.
SWOT Analysis
Most management decisions are predicated upon knowing the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats associated with a problem or situation in which an objective is known. SWOT Analysis is traditionally used in strategic planning activities. Strengths and weaknesses are used to reflect internal factors within the organization while opportunities and threats are external to the organization. But SWOT analysis can be applied in many other decision-making situations.Wizsm analytic flows provide a quick means to capture relevant SWOT perspectives across participants to assess the risks or rewards. It helps to focus on the actions that need to take place to achieve desired outcome. With Wizsm’s semantic analytics, you can identify possible relationships associated with the descriptions of each item. The evaluation of the hidden relationships from the semantics opens possibilities not considered before. Various matrices associated with these relationships also provide insights that point to the actions that are desired.
Operational Consolidation
When simplifying an organization, the first observation needed is whether things can be consolidated. It can be processes, databases, organizations, locations or other factors of the enterprise.Wizsm provides semantic comparative analytics that identify which items in two organization, processes etc. are the same, or different. Using this analytic, managers or the analyst can decide by the degree of overlap whether consolidation is difficult or easy. The most common use is consolidating two or more processes to get a corporate standard such as for hiring or payments etc.
Applying combinations of factors for comparisons, managers or analysts can see which of a group of organizations is a best fit and is a good candidate for merger or acquisition. This increases the chances of success in the restructuring of the organization.