However none of these are tailored for business process management, and they have some major shortcomings:

Process mapping tools are designed for specialists

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is often hard for people to understand and requires training

They are essentially advanced whiteboard or drawing tools and not based on structured and logical data

There is no easy way to organize and understand how the processes are connected

It’s hard to collaborate between people and departments

If you have tried some of these tools and felt some of the mentioned shortcomings, we urge you to see how 

ShiftX has a radically different approach to Process Mapping

Everyone should understand, not just the expert

When doing process mapping, one of the most common pains is that people reading it don’t understand. Specialists commonly use Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). Consisting of over 100 symbols, it is known to be hard to decipher and make sense of on the receiving end.

When using PowerPoint to visualize processes, users are limited by the size of the slide and quickly find themselves spending more time aligning boxes and arrows than creating the actual content.

ShiftX was built from the ground up to be fast, easy to use and without the need to know a notation like BPMN or UML. Just tell the story of what happens with steps and paths, ‘@’ the systems and roles involved, and ShiftX takes care of the rest.

Never again spend time carefully aligning boxes and arrows. Updating or rearranging elements is a breeze as well. Just drag, drop and be done.

The knowledge about how a business operates is spread throughout the organization. To succeed with process mapping and business improvement, you need to capture and combine the knowledge and best practices from people all across the organization.

With ShiftX, it's easy to involve people and assign ownership to parts of a process. Allow them to add details, content, links to other systems and issues, or discuss improvement potential right in context with comments.

Easily answer questions like "Where is that system in use?", "What happens before this process?" and "Who is responsible for that process?" because everything in ShiftX is data.

If you have ever used Miro, Microsoft Visio, or PowerPoint for process mapping you know it’s like working on a canvas. There is no way to see reports on what processes specific systems are part of, the connections between different business processes or the aggregated time a specific path takes through the flow.

With ShiftX you can do all of this and more. Helping you and your colleagues see the bigger picture, explore new perspectives and get on with improving and optimizing your operation.

If you want a more in-depth comparison, check out how we 

consider these factors when choosing your process mapping tool

ShiftX is tailored for Business Process Management and Process Mapping. It has an intentional and well-thought-out way of doing process mapping that results in consistent and easy-to-use process maps.

You no longer have to hire external consultants to do the work. Use the knowledge and competence of the people who already know the ins and outs of your organization. Don't hesitate to 

The Best Process Mapping Tool in 2023

My ongoing and humbling experience tells me that the more I know about a topic, the deeper and wider it seems. So I usually feel more like an expert before I know much about something than I do when I actually know something. Therefore, getting to the point where I can state that I am an expert seems close to impossible.

Passion on the other hand is simpler and more real to talk about in my mind. I am among other things passionate about organization, collaboration and autonomy. In addition I have always had a deep need to understand how things work. People, systems and organizations. This is what eventually led me to co-found ShiftX five years ago. How did it all start?

I was one of the experts. There were two of us, eight of them, a whiteboard and post-it notes. I felt like a fraud. Like we were cheating. Again and again we had these workshops. 6-8 VPs or managers from a wide range of major Norwegian corporations. We were there to help them improve their customer journey which in return would improve their revenue. What did we do? We helped them talk. We helped them visualize problems. Could they have done it without us? Most definitely. I guess a change of scenery always helps. And the fact that they were paying these young experts to help them would make it a little bit harder to cancel the four-hour session from their calendars.

It is amazing what can happen when we take the time to talk. See each other in the eyes. Feel each other's pain. Share one another's excitement. I still fail all the time. In my marriage, in my work, with my kids. I make assumptions. I know! Don’t make assumptions! But it’s so freaking hard not to.

This happens in the workplace as well. At scale. Add some competition, pride and gossip to the mix and we find ourselves in a giant toxic mess. We hide behind busyness, expectations and endless streams of important emails. And hey, don’t ask that question! Someone might think you are stupid or incompetent! This might sound like an exaggeration to some, but normal or even an understatement to others.

If I wasn’t a firsthand witness I wouldn't have used those words. The tension in the room could be so tangible I felt that one tiny misstep would result in total breakdown. That's why I love it when years of misunderstanding and grudge vanish in an instant as one manager finally experiences and feels the pain of another. Seeing each other in the eyes, knowing that we are on the same team and actually listening to what the other has to say is so unbelievably powerful.

Those kinds of stories are what drives us at ShiftX. Yes to AI. Yes to automation. Yes, yes, yes… But don’t forget the people! Having the right balance between autonomy, collaboration and oversight has always been what makes me either thrive and over deliver, or choke and start looking for another job. Trivial small adjustments can have an enormous impact on so many levels. From the bottom line to the lives of the families of your co-workers.

I know this is about culture, and that changing culture is hard. We are not going to state that we are “The Solution” to the problem either. Not yet anyway. What we will say is that we think differently. We think that focusing on the people, believing that most people have a deep desire to do a great job and that building tools that embrace democratization, collaboration and autonomy is key to unlocking new levels of performance, creativity and continuous improvement in any organization.

Let’s go back to the workshops. To the heart of improving customer journeys. We started to see a pattern. It was so predictable that we now consider it the rule rather than the exception. Let me try to explain what we saw.

When going on a journey you bring a map. And if you found this article you might be familiar with “Customer Journey Maps” or “Business Process Maps”. Here is the issue. Given a map of a city, a regular human being knows exactly what it is and is able to make sense of it quickly. That is not usually the case with 

I can hear all the objections to my statement. Organizations are complex! They change all the time! There are so many variations, levels, technical details, compliance requirements and more. Yes! That is true. But if your goal is to help someone understand how to get from SOHO to Central Park you don’t give them a map of the sewage system or the electrical grid. You give them a high-level overview of Manhattan, probably with the Subway as an overlay.

Why is it then that managers, VPs and leaders across businesses all over the world are given maps that they don’t understand? Or even worse, they are required to produce maps they don’t understand. And end up hiring consultants to produce 

. And therefore creating maps that have a 100% guarantee of being somewhere between inaccurate and complete nonsense.

I think we can do better, and that we should do better.

I’m amazed at all the hard-working, diligent people we meet. The sacrifice managers have to make as they try to deliver on their KPIs while serving and meeting the needs of their employees. That’s also why I think that they deserve great tools that help them do their job, that are easy to use and that promotes involvement and delegation.

We are still a small company with a lot to prove and a long way to go, but we have enough traction and excited customers for us to know we are onto something. We strongly believe most 

 in the EA (Enterprise Architecture) and BPM (Business Process Management) space greatly miss the mark on user experience. The consequence is way bigger than the lack of functionality, it’s a fundamental flaw. We live to fix it. 

Kill the grudge, free the people and revolutionize BPM

Including stakeholders with a role or interest in the process is required to succeed.

Key knowledge and accuracy with no assumptions

In organizations, much of the knowledge and know-how is distributed across the minds of its members. From CEO and managers to trainees, each individual holds unique insight and expertise. They all have hands-on experience and knowledge from their perspective that may not be obvious to the rest of the organization.

It is key to recognize that our colleagues are not just task-performers, but are in possession of knowledge that can be used to improve the organization. Every person, regardless of their position, holds a piece of the puzzle that completes the larger picture of the organization's knowledge.

 capture the current state and identify areas for improvement

. By capturing the key knowledge from the people involved in a process, you can ensure that the accuracy of the process map is high.

If a process map is inaccurate or outdated, the potential effect of utilizing the map greatly decreases or vanishes altogether. When a map is inaccurate it fails to engage and the risk of using it skyrockets.

Feeling of ownership and increased engagement

Involving people in process mapping has many great benefits. It promotes teamwork. It brings a sense of meaning to the participants. People are more likely to share their ideas. You develop a can-do attitude and greatly improve willingness for change. And it creates ownership of the process and the organization itself.

Engagement also leads to better job satisfaction. When members of an organization experience that their contributions are valued and lead to improvements, it creates a positive feedback loop that further drives engagement. Engaged employees are more productive, more innovative, and more likely to stay with the company long-term, reducing turnover costs and contributing to a better work environment.

Change is a part of any growing organization. A decision made in the boardroom does not automatically guarantee successful implementation in the organization. The people that will implement the change are the people who should know, understand and be motivated for it.

By including them when mapping processes and visualizing pain points, they get a better idea of why change needs to happen and the chance of success greatly improves. You also get the benefit of better ownership and overall understanding and willingness for change.

Research conducted in 2017 found that in 

 few or none of the process maps are ever used by employees.

Many people wonder if mapping out the details of a process is even necessary. This could be fueled by prior experiences where process maps were made but never fully utilized.

Process mapping has to be about more than just documenting for documentation's sake. That quickly becomes unsustainable and demoralizing. The potential is huge if implemented and done correctly.

Once a process map is outdated it quickly loses its value. If the job of updating the process map is slow or cumbersome people quickly find other ways to solve their pain and do their job. This results in many different ways of doing things and unorganized scattered knowledge. Companies should ensure they have a simple way to map and keep processes up to date. When your tools and methods are outdated it is no surprise your process maps are outdated.

Most people avoid process mapping due to the complexity of the tools, notation or the excessive time needed. A notation like 

BPMN uses specialized symbols and terminology

 that in itself requires time and training to understand. This added complexity leads to confusion, misunderstandings and can result in team members avoiding process mapping if they can.

 get in the way of anything getting done at all. Simply because the barrier of entry is too high.

Lastly, another common reason why process maps are underutilized is that most people don’t even know they exist. Probably due to the issues mentioned before, but could also be due to them being managed by a select few gatekeepers or a culture of secrecy and silos instead of a culture of transparency and knowledge sharing.

How to get started with process based knowledge-sharing

Select a process that you are well familiar with and where you have key responsibility. Examples would be a reimbursement process, onboarding process or any other process that has an impact on many people. Start mapping the process based on your knowledge and insight.

When at any point you find steps or areas you are unsure or unfamiliar with, invite the people who have key knowledge to take part in the mapping. Let them contribute with their insight and experience, instead of you guessing or assuming. There might be details or improvement opportunity that you would not learn or understand otherwise.

Setting up a workshop where you map together with your co-workers is another valuable way to go. This often turns into an exciting learning opportunity for everyone involved as the sharing of knowledge usually leads to the uncovering of both small and big improvement ideas.

Use the process whenever possible. In meetings, presentations, emails, workshops or in your daily work. This makes it visible to your co-workers.


To make it even more accessible, make the process available in solutions your co-workers already use

(MS teams, Sharepoint, Slack, Notion, etc) for greater reach and transparency.

Encourage stakeholders to add comments to the process if they have suggestions for improvement, or issues if there are bottlenecks that need to be fixed.


. To involve everyone that takes part in any process. 

Simplified versioning, version reference