Standard Bank Investment Corporation Limited (Stanbic), based in Johannesburg, South Africa, is the holding company for the interests of the Standard Bank Group. The group has total assets of over $24 billion USD (146 billion South African Rand). Stannic, a division of the Standard Bank Group, finances a range of new and used assets such as:
Þ Passenger vehicles;
Þ Leisure goods, e.g. 4X4 vehicles, boats and caravans;
Þ Commercial vehicles;
Þ Capital equipment, e.g. tractors, forklifts, bulldozers, machine tools, computer and medical equipment, aircraft, and helicopters.
Stannic announced a major repositioning exercise aimed at providing improved customer services in a more cost-effective manner. The far-reaching exercise will result in sales staff becoming more mobile, using new technology rather than branch premises as their base. Administrative processes will be centralized in four processing centers, or “hives”, in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town. A major challenge is to determine proactively whether the proposed processes are going to work and what resources will be needed to maintain high customer service levels.
In order to determine if the proposed processes would work, Stannic chose a flowcharting system called Cool Biz to capture process flow and corresponding information. Stannic realized that the proposed processes had to be tested and decided to use Systems Modelling Corporation’s BP$im®, simulation software for mapping and analyzing business processes. (BP$im was the forerunner to Rockwell Automation’s Arena® Basic Edition.) 
Stannic wanted an interface that would automatically download the process flow information from Cool Biz, then convert the information to a format readable byBP$im, which would automatically reconstruct the process flow model in BP$im.
After Cool Biz and BP$im were integrated, an interface was developed using Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA), allowing Stannic personnel to choose which Cool Biz flow diagram to import into BP$im; the conversion process takes place automatically. By using the integrated tool suite, Stannic personnel are able to test and determine the resourcing requirements of the new processes with simulation.
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