Negative Time Filter: Un-Skew Your Indicators

Hi there! It’s time for another Feature Highlight! This one’s a little bit special – until now, we’ve been mostly covering our basic functions in our Highlights, catching you up on all the things we’ve been building for the last couple of years. This one, however, is fresh off the press – the last story for it was pushed to production a couple of weeks ago!

Without further ado, I present to you our Negative Time Filter! In a nutshell, one of the common problems we’ve encountered analysing our clients’ processes have been skewed averages durations of activity paths because of business processes happening in the wrong order. So, we decided to provide a way to avoid this issue. Let’s get right into it.

The Feature

Here we have the tail end of the Quote to Cash demo dataset that we use for all our Feature Highlights. Specifically, we see here the part of the process that begins with the invoice being sent and ends with cash being received and booked, with an optional fork of the process where the customer is reminded to pay his bill. As we all know, this part of the process can sometimes be messy if payments are received at the wrong time, or reminders are forgotten.

Turning on violation paths, you can see this is in fact the case – many instances of this part of the process run in the wrong order. In some cases, the payment is received before the invoice is sent. In some cases, reminder stages are triggered in the wrong order. All this changes the unfiltered average duration of these steps, as without violation paths on, we need to consider the transition from, for example, Invoice to Payment to be negative if the Payment happens first. So, unfiltered, this step looks like it’s faster than it is in reality.

This is where the Negative Time filter comes in. By toggling our filter in the sidebar to show us only Positive durations, we can see the average durations of every step only for those cases where the steps were executed in the correct order. This is highlighted on the chart with a bold label and a + sign – keep an eye out for this, wherever you see a + or – sign in brackets or a circle, that means you’re looking at numbers that are filtered for negative or positive times.

On the flip side, you can also toggle the filter in the other direction – showing us only negative durations. These are specifically only cases where the process was executed in the wrong order. Since you also see the quantity of path instances where this is the case, next to the total quantity of path instances for this path, this lets you easily see where most of your violations are happening and what their time cost is.

We’ve focused so far on only the Process View, but this feature is available across every View in the application where it makes sense. Here you see examples of the Timeline and some Dashboard Tiles, filtered for both Positive and Negative durations. You can see here as well the same visual language to make it really clear when you’re looking at averages where some numbers were taken out of the calculation on purpose: the affected dots on the Timeline are darker and you can see the Plus and Minus iconography on the tooltip labels, the headers of the timelines, and next to the numbers of the affected Dashboard Tiles.

Real-World Use Cases

Now that we’ve covered the ins and outs of the Negative Time Filter, let’s explore some real-world scenarios where this feature can be a game-changer for your business operations. By leveraging this tool, business owners and managers can achieve greater transparency, enhance compliance, and drive process efficiency. Here are a few practical applications:

1. Enhancing Invoice Management

• Problem: Invoice mismanagement can lead to delayed payments, cash flow issues, and customer dissatisfaction.
• Solution: Use the Negative Time Filter to identify and rectify instances where invoices are processed out of order. This can help streamline your billing process, ensuring timely and accurate invoicing and payment reminders.

2. Streamlining Supply Chain Processes

• Problem: In supply chain management, steps executed in the wrong order can lead to inventory issues and delays and make KPIs non-representative.
• Solution: The Negative Time Filter can help ensure that your KPIs are showing the right fulfilment durations for orders while also showing you how often the process is executed in the wrong order.

3. Improving Project Management

• Problem: In complex projects, tasks performed out of order can cause delays and budget overruns.
• Solution: Use the Negative Time Filter to keep project tasks on track. By highlighting instances where tasks were completed in the wrong sequence, the project team can see the time cost of work process not being followed.

Food for Thought

As we wrap up this Feature Highlight, we’d like to leave you with some questions to ponder. These can help you reflect on how the Negative Time Filter might be integrated into your specific processes and what benefits it could bring to your organization:

• How often do processes in your business occur out of order, and what impact does this have on your overall efficiency?
• How might this feature help you in identifying and correcting compliance issues before they escalate?
• In what ways could something like this aid in improving customer satisfaction by ensuring your KPIs & PPIs aren’t skewed?

By reflecting on these questions, you can start to visualize the transformative potential of this feature within your organization. The insights gleaned from using the Negative Time Filter can lead to more accurate data, improved process compliance, and ultimately, a more efficient and effective business operation.

Conclusion

The Negative Time Filter is a powerful addition to the Noreja Process Intelligence suite, designed to help you gain clearer insights into your business processes. By filtering out steps that occur out of order, you can ensure your data reflects the true nature of your workflows, enabling you to make more informed decisions.

We’re passionate about helping you optimize your processes and achieve your business goals. This new feature is a testament to our commitment to innovation and excellence. As always, we value your feedback and are here to support you every step of the way.

Thank you for joining us in this month’s Feature Highlight. We hope you find the Negative Time Filter as exciting and useful as we do. Until next time, keep striving for process excellence and stay tuned for more updates from the Noreja Team.