An Interview with Scott Armstrong, Interfacing Technologies Corporation Managing Partner: ‘We are a Leading Provider of BPM Software Tools that Allow Business Users to Model, Manage and Continuously Improve Business Processes and Knowledge’

“Our software solution has been recognized by Gartner^® as a leader over the past five years within four different categories: Enterprise Business Process Analysis, Operational Intelligence, Business Operating System and Digital Twin.”

Over time, businesses have evolved. What has evolved along with them is how their processes are managed. And that’s where Business Process Management, often referred to as BPM, comes into the picture.

From something that was only undertaken by massive businesses with a far more massive budget to an affordable option for process management and optimization, BPM has come a long way. It’s a tool crucial to businesses; helps align organizational strategy with business goals. BPM platforms have evolved throughout the years to meet the needs of growing businesses, and to ensure they fit into the ever-changing definition of ‘digital transformation’.

Interfacing Technologies Corporation provides web-enabled business process management software and tools that allow business users to document, model, manage, simulate, analyze, integrate, and improve business processes and knowledge. The company offers its BPM solutions for business architecture, process lifecycle management, process automation, and governance, risk, & compliance (GRC) applications. The company was incorporated in 1983 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

Scott Armstrong, Interfacing Technologies Managing Partner, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Tell us about your first product that was launched?

The company launched its first product back in 1994, one of the first ever process mapping and simulation engines. Since then the company released an add-on to Microsoft Visio for BPMN process modeling and most recently its flagship product, the Enterprise Process Center (EPC). The EPC has evolved drastically over the years; the new generation of the tool leverages the latest recent technology, is fully cloud-based, mobile responsive, and extremely intuitive for users. Much more than just a process mapping software, the Interfacing EPC is a full transformation & digitization suite – with a wide range of modules available for managing quality, performance, compliance, improvement and automation, Interfacing’s platform brings big value to many different stakeholders within an organization.

What were the grounds on which you have expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

The expansion of our toolset was driven by two major factors: the need for multiple departments’ knowledge consolidation and the second being the need for organizations to transform their products and services to the digital world.

A shared knowledge repository is exponentially valuable when used across groups, hence the natural extension of our tool to not only manage and share process data but also documents, risks, business rules, master data, performance metrics, etc. With one common platform for process improvement, risk assessment, compliance, audit, data governance, document management and performance monitoring, every department benefits from the shared knowledge and efforts of other groups. As an example, with process visibility, risk be in a better position to asses and control the inherent risks, and vice-versa business improvement will have clarity as to why a key control cannot be removed even if it were to increase productivity because of the financial, legal, compliance or operational risk it mitigates.

The second big driver is the need to digitize. Most companies are re-evaluating their products and operations in order to remain competitive and leverage the latest technology trends such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Our platform is excellent backbone to support companies with their challenging transformation journey by providing them with a solution to analyze their current and desired state, quickly automate and integrate their operations, and reduce change resistance and risk of downtime.

What drives/inspires you to excel in your field of business?

Belief in our product! When the largest companies in the world run through an exhaustive selection process which can last over a year and you beat out the competition time and time again, you know it isn’t a fluke or luck but you’ve really got something great to offer. Client successes are what drive me to work even harder to win the next deal to bring the company to the next level. Confidence in the team and the quality, completeness, scalability and stability of the product is what allows us to take calculated risks to grow. If you don’t have confidence in your solution then the customer won’t either.

Do you have any new products ready to be rolled out into the market?

Beyond the constant evolution of our transformation and digitalization platform, we have a new team working on developing reusable canned applications using our own Rapid Application Development toolbox. These pre-built applications can be deployed as-is or easily customized to align with any particular customer specific requirements. The value of these applications is that they cut down on the client deployment timeline by providing out-of-the-box best practices but still offer the flexibility to adapt to meet industry or company-specific unique challenges. By integrating our QMS apps with our knowledge repository clients gain exponential value from automating ing processes such as Audit, FMEA, CAPA and Incident management.

Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

In Canada, we are the third fastest growing and top 100 largest IT companies. At our current pace, I expect to be in the top 10 within the next two years through both organic growth and via acquisitions.

Internationally, we have clients and partners worldwide but we only actively started targeting certain regions in MENA and Asia recently. Technology-wise our tool already supports the ability to toggle not only the interface but the content as well into over 160 different localized languages. So the plan over the next couple of years is to open additional regional offices in order to be closer to our global client base and increase our international market share.

Scott Armstrong: A Brief Background

Scott Armstrong is one of four owners and Interfacing’s Managing Partner. Scott is an entrepreneur with a passion for high tech and the driving force behind Interfacing’s award-winning Digital Business Transformation Suite the Enterprise Process Center^®. With 15 years of experience leading multinational client quality improvement, digitization and transformation programs across all industries, Scott has a deep understanding of complex management challenges, what works and what doesn’t, and best practice approaches.

“Our award-winning Business Process Management (BPM) suite, the Enterprise Process Center^® (EPC), helps companies streamline operations, increase productivity, enforce governance, and ensure compliance. Much more than just process modeling, the EPC allows firms to manage, automate, and monitor business activities and controls.”