CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) was founded in 1984 following a major reform of agricultural research and development in France. CIRAD is a public establishment under the joint authority of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Development. Its 1800 employees, including 1140 scientists, work for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions, with a particular focus on promoting resilient farming. While its Head Office is located in Paris, CIRAD conducts operations in over 100 countries on all continents thanks to its 14 regional offices and a global network of some 200 partners.
Need to simplify and standardize management processes across the entire organization in order to better support research units
Desire to establish a methodological framework for managing complex processes
Ambition to promote better collaboration across different functions
Need to provide internal and external stakeholders with a clearer picture of how the organization works and its information systems
Mapped and digitalized 5 macro processes for the support functions, 24 processes, 145 procedures and 32 sub-procedures
Established ARIS as the hub for all process-related information
Involved all relevant parties in process definition to further optimize operational efficiency
Delivered organization-wide transparency to enhance collaboration with CIRAD team members based in French overseas territories and internationally
Accelerated onboarding of new recruits by providing clear vision of processes
Delivered a clearer presentation of the organization’s information system
Enabled process transparency for the needs of supervisory bodies, partners and auditors
ARIS Business Process Analysis
Christine Baudassé Head of Quality and Social Responsibility, CIRADThe process visibility offered by ARIS allows us to share information internally and externally, and makes it easier to understand the processes of our support functions. We've been able to establish a whole new way of working together more efficiently."
In the 2000s, research and development organizations came under increasing pressure from partners to obtain certification and accreditation for their laboratories. Like many similar organizations, CIRAD realized it needed a more systematic approach to meet the required quality standards in its labs.
Initially, scientific and technical production processes were managed by research units. These research units had the freedom to develop their own Quality Management System based on appropriate standards and/or reference frameworks (ISO 9001, ISO 17025, NF S 96-900). Then in 2009, CIRAD launched a global improvement project using a process-based approach. The aim was to gradually roll out the initiative to include all employees and all activities across management, production and support processes.
CIRAD started integrating Quality into the strategy of its different business support services. “We wanted to establish a consistent approach to processes across the different functions,” explains Christine Baudassé, Head of Quality and Social Responsibility at CIRAD, “to ensure a global and coherent vision that would guarantee the reliability of results and information.”
A Quality strategy was implemented across the organization, with a dedicated contact appointed to map the processes in each of the five core functions: Finance, Purchasing and Supply, Material Resources, Information Services, and HR. However, each function mapped its processes in isolation. This meant processes were documented using different media and graphic forms and with inconsistent granularity. The resulting lack of homogeneity made it impossible to have a global vision of processes across the organization. The priority for CIRAD was, therefore, to standardize these models.
So CIRAD adopted ARIS, the leading Business Process Management & Analysis solution from Software AG. “Working with a Software AG consultant, we defined a standardized mapping methodology and drew up a user manual so that everyone could define their processes using a common language,” explains Cyril Durand, Head of Management Studies & Development at CIRAD. The manual clearly sets out the different levels of processes and procedures.
CIRAD then trained process owners so they could recreate their processes in ARIS. “ARIS made everyone ask questions and include the details necessary to coherently define our processes,” says Christine Baudassé.
Initially, employees saw ARIS as a simple tool for representing flowcharts. “But once they realized that ARIS is available to all employees and that process mapping makes their jobs easier, they understood the benefits of working with it,” explains Christine Baudassé.
CIRAD also decided to map its information system to make it easier to understand. “We’ve modeled almost 150 applications and services in ARIS,” explains Cyril Durand. “And we’ve linked the applications to the associated business processes.”
“ARIS has transformed the way we share information,” says Christine Baudassé. Today, new recruits are able to visualize and rapidly understand how CIRAD is organized and which IT tools should be used at which moments.
“Using ARIS has made us question how we do things,” explains Christine Baudassé, “and that’s driven many improvements.” She gives the example of employee recruitment. Previously, contracts needed to be signed and passed between departments, and the whole process was slow and time-consuming. Using process modeling on ARIS, CIRAD realized it could simplify the process—and today, employee contracts are handled more smoothly and faster.
CIRAD has chosen to make ARIS available to all employees via a web interface. This has helped boost communication across the organization, especially for team members located in remote French overseas departments and internationally. ARIS has become the organization’s central platform for reliable, up-to-date information. It is not only a valuable tool for employee activities; it is also an important reference tool for external stakeholders (auditors, financers, supervisory bodies, etc.).
By delivering total transparency on the activities of CIRAD’s support functions, ARIS enables everyone to contribute to process optimization. “We’ve started involving our research teams in defining finance processes,” explains Christine Baudassé, “and their on-the-ground knowledge has helped to further improve the way we do things.”
“ARIS has been crucial for making our processes tangible to stakeholders beyond our organization, including financers” says Christine Baudassé. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words—and that’s exactly what we’ve experienced with the visualization capacities of ARIS.”
In the future, Christine Baudassé would like to use ARIS to identify and map operational risks. “We’ve seen what ARIS can do for transparency and collaboration and we see its vast potential,” she says. “We would like to exploit ARIS’ powerful governance and risk capabilities in the coming years.”