06/23/2004

Interfacing, a provider of collaborative business process management (BPM) and knowledge solutions, released Charter Standard Edition, a Microsoft Office Visio Add-On, and the latest version of its BPM software.

Interface offered these details:

Charter Standard integrates directly within the Visio interface, providing business users with a dynamic and integrated process modeling environment. It offers a holistic, multi-dimensional view of a business model, consisting of mapping the organization, the process structure, the information and the role and responsibility distribution. The addition of Charter Standard to Interfacing’s BPM family enhances Interfacing’s position as a leading developer of BPM tools and services that empower clients to increase visibility of their financial and operational processes.

The new Charter Standard, a lighter version of the Charter Professional edition, is ideal for Visio users seeking an easy way to create and maintain Visio-based process models, increase modeling consistency and automate many of the manual modeling tasks within the familiar Visio environment. Charter Standard offers an easy-to-model framework of process hierarchies, activities, linked resources, flow entities, organizational units and related content. Charter utilities are integrated directly into the Visio engine, which effectively enables it to become a process data repository where data can be captured and referenced. Consequently Charter users benefit from standardized process models, automated generation of “swimlane” views of all model aspects, and more.

Interfacing has already experienced tremendous success with its Charter Professional Edition (previously known as FirstSTEP Charter) among many Fortune 500 and other organizations using Charter in Visio to create a powerful and unified business process framework. The Visio/Charter software combination offers a synchronized visual process modeling framework that enables a business user to initiate their BPM journey quickly and achieve greater process performance and productivity with a low initial investment.

“Companies are realizing that a full-scale BPM implementation can take months, be very costly and often fail due to a company’s initial inability to properly model their corporate processes,” said Meir Levi, Interfacing CEO. “Charter provides a cost-effective, low-risk way for Visio users to take the first step towards a successful BPM implementation,” added Mr. Levi. “The Charter/Visio add-on installs in minutes on top of the Microsoft Office Visio program and is intuitive to business users at all levels. We’re truly putting business back into the process.”

“Building on the visual mapping platform that Visio provides, Interfacing has been able to create a solution that provides specific functionality and customization, ensuring an accurate and efficient business process modeling tool”, says Richard Wolf, Microsoft Office Visio General Manager. “We’re very excited to be a part of this solution and to see how Visio is being used to take business process management to the next level.”

Advanced users can leverage the investment in Visio and Charter with two other Interfacing BPM offerings: Designer for Process Simulation and Analysis, and the EPC (Enterprise Process Center), a multi-user, modeling repository and publishing environment with secure and audited process and content management.