Discussion on:

Create sophisticated professional diagrams in Microsoft Word

I really like Visio but I have been using OpenOffice Draw at my current company. It is good and pretty easy to use. And the price can't be beaten.

Because I'm a business controls consultant, rather than an IT Techie, I try to stay out of everyone's way on the forums so that I don't clutter the space with irrelevant comments and dumb questions. As a business controls consultant, I get a lot of benefit from everyone's insights and first want to say thanks to everyone.

I've been sucked into SOX compliance for more than 3 years, so have prepared and QA reviewed many flowcharts prepared by people with a wide range of knowledge and ability. Client management, Big 4 audit executives, and the big compliance consulting firms all seem to prescribe VISIO for SOX compliance flowcharting. The completed flowcharts look pretty, and because VISIO has the reputation of being a sophisticated charting program, using it reinforces their professional status and billing rates. However, in the field, I find that using VISIO to produce effective process controls flowcharts is difficult for the SOX project staff to use, particularly for less experienced auditors and for client personnel assigned to the project to try to hold down compliance costs. Many people at that level don't seem to have enough understanding of business process analysis to get all the procedures and controls into a logical sequence so that they have a good chance of creating a reasonably accurate VISIO flowchart the first time. Also, because client process owners often have knowledge of their function, but limited experience in process documentation and controls analysis, having them use VISIO to update process flowchart documentation when controls change in the future is likely to be a problem.

Where I find the problems from using VISIO is not in the first flowchart that is created, but in the multiple revisions that are usually necessary in order to get the SOX process documentation accurately represented in the flowchart. The page by page forced formatting in the VISIO version I've used and the difficulty of inserting or deleting elements within the flowchart for all but the most experienced users frequently results in extensive additional revision time and increased project costs. Plus, in many companies, not all of the functional process owners and their staff people, who will be responsible for maintaining the SOX compliance documentation, have licenses for VISIO. Many of the client companies where I have worked have balked at buying VISIO licenses for their personnel when they see what the price tag will be.

As a result, I've used Excel to create flowcharts whenever possible. Almost everyone has Excel and most people understand it well enough to use for basic flowcharting, even for relatively complex business processes. If the flowchart is wrong, Excel is easy to revise. A new step needed - just insert a few lines and draw the additional symbol. A step needs to be taken out - just delete the symbol, reconnect the arrows, and delete some lines to bring the symbols closer together. Trying to make a multi-function flowchart and you forgot to include a function - just insert a column for the new function. For each change, the rest of the flowchart is shifted automatically, but each step keeps its relative position in the flow. Plus, with Excel you can take care of all the controls descriptions and cross-referencing in a comments column, instead of having to insert multiple annotation symbols, as in VISIO. The annotation symbols (which can be extensive in SOX documentation) add even more difficulty to revising VISIO flowcharts. And best of all, compared to the VISIO versions I've used, in Excel it is not necessary to worry about where the page breaks will fall. Draw a continous process flow, covering as much of the spreadsheet work space as you need. Then, when you have the flowchart right, check the page breaks, shift the flowchart where necessary to get the page breaks clean, then insert the page connectors and you are finished.

However, even after all that I've said to justify the use of Excel, after seeing the demo movie clip for allClear, if it works any where near as well as in the promo clips, it will become my SOX documentation tool of choice. The text based structuring is easy for even the most inexperienced person to understand. The project staff I've worked with (both audit professionals and client personnel at all levels) all understand policy and procedure narratives. With allClear's text to graphics conversion, the staff can get the process narrative correct and in a logical sequence. Then, the flowchart follows with little need for correction. Plus, it looks like it has the same continuous flow, page overrun drawing that I prefer in Excel, so that I can make sure the process is properly documented without having to be concerned about formatting until the flowchart is correct. Plus, the pricing looks good enough that fewer clients are likely to balk at getting it for their personnel to use to maintain the documentation after the consultants have finished.

Many thanks for making me aware of allClear.

I used AllClear years ago and it is good but I mucch prefer Inspiration (www.inspiration.com) which is simpler and sufficiently powerful. I use it for some presentations and websites such as www.arblaw.org.uk because it just works. A new version 9 is just about out and it's Mac and Win.

Jon

I studied in IT at college, there we learnt about the use of MS Visio, but had to plan the logical flow of the diagram first on paper, then go through the drawing and planning stages before actually making any use of the software... however since college I have been introduced to allCLEAR, this is an extrodinary piece of software, it thinks for itself, cuts out all the planning stages, you just type in plain text on the right hand side and with the use of punctuation it plans the diagram, lays it out and works the logic for itself. cutting flowchart design time down by about one tenth of the time, leaving you more time to 'pretty it up' or get on with other things.

again