State-of-the-Art Process Management with ADONIS at The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB)

The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) consistently focuses on innovation and efficiency to remain competitive in the age of digitalization. A decisive step in this direction was the modernization of their process management in 2019, marked by a switch from their previous process management software to the cloud-based BPM tool ADONIS from BOC Group.

In this blog, you will learn about the motivations, challenges, and benefits behind implementing ADONIS as a modern process management platform.

SBB’s decision to replace their various process management solutions was made after a thorough market analysis. The choice fell on the cloud-based process management SaaS solution ADONIS from the BOC Group. “Our old solution was no longer up-to-date. It lacked efficient support for process modellers and end users,” explains Alexander Zehr, Product Owner of ADONIS and ADONIS Process Automation (TIM), Process Architect in SBB’s Process and Organizational Development department. “We needed a tool that is not only modern, but also meets our specific current and future requirements.”

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The implementation project was divided into six main service packages, including design, consulting, system integration, configuration, data migration and training. A major emphasis was on the transfer of around 2,500 trilingual process models including glossary elements from various process management tools. By applying the digital twin approach, SBB succeeded in creating a virtual replica of their company to properly manage the complex structures associated with the project.

BOC and SBB project teams developed a step-by-step plan to migrate and consolidate all processes and tools. This enabled the various departments and specialist areas of SBB to gain initial experience with ADONIS and check their process content in test environments.

“ADONIS was already fully operational just a few weeks after the project kick-off – including important adjustments to the corporate identity and essential interfaces to other systems,” reports Fabio Anghileri, Managing Director of BOC Switzerland, who is also leading the SBB project as a strategic account manager on BOC’s side. “The total lead time of the project was only around 18 months.”

“The complexity of the project was enormous, and it fills me with particular pride that we were able to master the introduction of ADONIS as an innovative platform for Business Process Management in close cooperation with SBB. We successfully met all the time, budget and quality requirements,” says Anghileri.

Nevertheless, there were also important challenges to overcome. The harmonization of these diverse processes required persuasion and gradual adaptation to establish a uniform way of working. “Before the introduction of ADONIS and ADONIS Process Automation, different departments at SBB used different tools or the same tools in different ways to model and automate business processes,” reports Zehr. “In this context, expectation management was a challenge, as the introduction of ADONIS aimed to harmonize usage across the different divisions,” explains Anghileri.

“The cooperation throughout the project was characterized by an extremely positive, pragmatic and goal-oriented way of working, which always took place on an equal footing,” says Anghileri. “Given the size of SBB’s organization, we were in contact with many stakeholders from different departments and specialist areas, each of whom had different needs. Transparent and regular communication with all parties involved was the key to success.”

Today, the ADONIS process portal is available to the entire SBB organization, giving all 34,000 employees personalized access to process documentation.  Over 300 process modellers, 80 process architects, 450 process owners and 750 process managers drive their respective process use cases both efficiently and effectively.

“The introduction of ADONIS has enabled us to make our processes more efficient and effective,” Zehr is pleased to report. The documented processes provide a solid basis for further optimization and automation. “This is an important step towards a process-oriented organization.”

The modernization of SBB’s process management with ADONIS gave a significant push towards efficient and digital work processes. The introduction of the cloud-based solution created a solid foundation for continuous improvement processes and process automation. Despite some obstacles during implementation, SBB now benefits from a harmonized and future-proof process management that covers the needs of over 34,000 employees.