The United States and Canada are roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from coast to coast and have a population of just over 330 million people. Getting ARIS users together in one spot at one time is challenging to accomplish during strong economic times, and even more challenging during today's recession. By mid-2008, the economic downturn began to really affect the US market, so IDS Scheer began a new approach for getting users together – including the launch of a N. American ARIS User Group portal; and a regional approach to a one-day ARIS User Group meeting where customers actually host the meetings at their facilities.
As the economic constraints remain through 2009, IDS Scheer is continuing with the regional ARIS User Group meeting approach to bring elements of the annual ARIS ProcessWorld conference to the customer. Customers are volunteering to host these meetings; locations are chosen based upon a cluster or concentration of customers in the area so that participant travel is limited to driving by car or traveling by train. The topics for the agendas are driven by the customers and supported by IDS Scheer account managers, subject matter experts, and marketing.
As the ARIS User Group meetings plot their way across the map of the US and Canada, over 140 customers have participated to date – from Boston, to Toledo, Chicago, and Philadelphia; with the west of the continent next for Irvine, CA (April 8), DC (April or May TBD), Calgary (May TBD), and Houston (May TBD) next (click map to enlarge)! So how do companies survive tough economic times? They focus on PROCESS. They want to better manage their strategic business processes; they want to optimize value generating processes; they want to streamline or replace ineffective processes; they want to implement new processes to introduce new, innovative go-to-market strategies. They want to learn more about ARIS and how it can help them find opportunities in a recession and then take advantage of new opportunities when the economy begins to turn around. They want to exchange ARIS best practices; lessons learned; tips & tricks.
More meetings are already in the planning stages – look for updates to the calendar on the ARIS User Group portal.
