Executive Summary: Instant IT® Management, Control, and Governance
Instant IT includes management, control, and governance of processes, data, rules, and more so companies can control IT applications that support their business operations.
Business Design Business Design provides a rigorous way to specify business requirements digitally that captures all essential aspects of business processes, including operational actions, user interface, data, rules, and more. Instant IT authorizes who can design, approve, and/or change a business design.
Proactive Governance Instant IT governs processes, rules, and data specifications before an application is generated. Authorized Governance Collaborators must agree on these as part of the approval process before an application can be generated from a business design.
Application Generation In order to generate an application, Instant IT validates Business Designs at all operational levels, measures the business functionality so its costs are known and accepted by an Instant IT® Manager, and application technologies are selected by an Instant IT® Operations Manager.
Application Access An important part of a business design is identifying organization units who perform its process actions. This is used by an Instant IT® Operations Manager to designate the process actions each individual is to perform. This means that each business user appears to have access to his or her own personal version of the generated application.
Operational Monitoring Instant IT generates application-scale, cloud-based applications and analytics from approved business designs. Monitoring their performance, costs, and use of resources is an important IT operational capability Instant IT provides.
Instant IT is a platform to design, sustain, and transform business operations. Instant IT® management, control, and governance are essential for long-term success.
For those interested in a more detailed description of Instant IT® management, control, and governance, keep reading or select a topic from the menu at the left.
The Importance Of Management, Control, And Governance
Increasing automation, whether of a business operation or of IT overall, requires management and control to be successful. Instant IT® Business Design incorporates management and governance, while Instant IT® computer-generated applications and analytics incorporate monitoring and control, shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Instant IT® applications and analytics with unified data and rules
Instant IT makes a company’s collection of Business Designs the ‘program’ for applications and analytics, and a Business Design becomes the ‘programming language’ effectively. This makes it essential that access to and use of Instant IT® Business Design capabilities is managed and that the content of Business Designs is governed.
Similarly, access to and use of the unified data and rules that support Instant IT® applications and analytics must be monitored and controlled. Changes in workloads, growth of data, and other factors can affect the overall performance of applications and analytics, so Instant IT® management, governance, and control is essential for making application updates whenever operational conditions change.
InfoInfoNovus incorporates features that provide companies with the management, governance, and control features to oversee and operate the parts of their business utilizing Instant IT.
Managing Instant IT® Business Designs
The Instant IT® Manager is the person who performs the role of managing Business Design activity. This Manager assigns resources, monitors progress, and locks down Business Designs once design work, validations, and governance approvals are complete, and approves the generation of an application or analytic.
This role is performed by an individual who designates:
- Business processes that need a Business Design to be developed or enhanced;
- Designers to develop the Business Design for designated business processes; and
- Governance Collaborators to review, comment on, and approve assigned business processes, data, and rules.
While permissions for these roles can be role-based, each individual assignment can be tailored to align the capabilities and focus of each person involved with a Business Design to permissions that align with their specializations.
Once a business process has been designed, reviewed, validated, and approved, it is closed until the Instant IT® Manager reopens it for further work.
Governing Instant IT® Business Designs
Governance
An Instant IT® Governance Collaborator is a person who performs the role of creating and presiding over the content of Instant IT® Business Designs. The process of governance is based on establishing an enterprise business perspective on things like names (of data, rules, processes, and so forth), descriptions, definitions, and other content.
The Governance Collaborator role is supported by Instant IT® Governance, which shows each assigned Governance Collaborator the elements they help govern: business process workflows, data, rules, and/or analytics. They review each element being addressed and make comments about it for other Governance Collaborators to review and comment. A Governance Collaborator is able to provide comments on how an element needs to be improved or approve it as well.
As processes and their elements to be governed have been designed, they enter the governance process. Once all Governance Collaborators have approved the elements, governance of them has been completed. If an approved element is subsequently changed, the governance process for it restarts and requires the approval of the Governance Collaborators again.
All Business Design activities, governance approvals, and validations must be successfully performed before a Business Design is complete.
Audit
Another aspect of governance is the auditing of business processes and their rules. Instant IT® Business Design and computer-generated applications and analytics excel at being auditable.
A Business Design includes visuals of business processes which auditors can use to determine whether business adheres to the proper way of operating. Figure 2 shows a sample Instant IT® Business Design workflow.
Figure 2: Instant IT® Business Design process workflow
The fact that Instant IT® computer-generated applications and analytics are exactly as designed in the Instant IT® Business Design process without any customization or modification aids the audit process.
Controlling Instant IT® Applications And Analytics
The Instant IT® Operations Manager performs the role of controlling Instant IT® applications and analytics. This control begins once the Instant IT® Manager locks down a Business Design as complete and approves it for computer-generating an application or analytic. It is at this point that the Instant IT® Operations Manager takes over.
The Instant IT® Operations Manager:
- reviews the data objects architected by the Instant IT® data analysis process,
- specifies the database technology the generated application is to use, and
- designates the people who will use the application and the process actions assigned to each.
User assignments are based on each worker’s organization unit and the user’s assigned process actions. This provides a personalized menu presenting only permitted actions for each person using the application and prevents access to unauthorized business processes, process actions, and analytics.
Then the Instant IT® Operations Manager decides when to generate the application or analytic and make it available for the business to use.
Monitoring Instant IT® Applications And Analytics
Applications need to be monitored for how they perform so preventive action can be taken to avoid potential problems. In addition, auditors may want to see a history of changes to data for a person, in an account, or part of other application objects. Instant IT supports each type of monitoring.
Performance
When business conditions increase transactions and events processed by an application, it is important to monitor how the application performs to avoid potential problems. The Instant IT® Operations Manager monitors the performance of applications and analytics using an operational dashboard.
When application performance warrants, the Instant IT® Operations Manager can designate the type of action to take: increased application processing capacity; additional capacity for storing data; additional data streams; and so forth.
Compliance
Auditors typically want to see a history of changes to important data records. Sometimes a simple query as used in a process action by a business user will suffice. Often, however, an auditor will want a paper report that acts as a document-of-record of changes to a data object. InfoNovus includes the ability to build an audit feature into reports listing every change made to the data content in the report.
Supporting Multiple Legal Entities With Instant IT
InfoNovus Instant IT supports businesses made up of multiple legal entities. Instant IT® Business Designs and computer-generated applications and analytics are unique to each legal entity. In many cases, legal entities have product, service, organization, and regulatory issues that affect their operations, making them unique.
When operating under a single Instant IT® license, Instant IT supports governance across legal entities for consistency and the ability to import business process workflows from one legal entity to another to jump-start Business Design efforts.
Contact InfoNovus for more information about Instant IT® management, control, and governance for multiple legal entities.