# Design your company with Business Architect

Canonical HTML: [https://collty.com/help/projects/design-your-company-with-business-canvas](https://collty.com/help/projects/design-your-company-with-business-canvas)
Audience: Founders, company leaders and operations owners
Reading time: 14 min
Updated: 2026-08-27T00:00:00.000Z

Build a standards-aligned operating model and connect ongoing processes to real teams, projects and evidence.

## Manage the company as a connected process system

Business Architect is the company-level layer above individual projects. It maps how the organization repeatedly creates value: what triggers each process, what outcome it owns, where handoffs occur, which capabilities are required and which evidence shows that the process works.

A process is ongoing. A project is finite work that can improve or transform a process. Business Architect keeps that distinction explicit, so annual company planning does not turn into one oversized project plan.

> **Good to know:** Use Project Architect for one delivery plan. Use Business Architect when you need to design or operate the system of processes around many projects.

## Create the operating model

1. **Classify the business:** Choose Industry first. Collty then narrows Business model to the value and revenue patterns relevant to that industry and recommends the most typical starting option. Changing industry automatically replaces an incompatible model instead of preserving a contradictory classification. Company stage remains a separate measure of operating maturity.
2. **Choose the operating country:** Country is required for every new operating model. It defines the official company, tax, reporting, regulator and support sources that Business Architect may use; it is never inferred from the interface language or the account location.
3. **Include formation when needed:** For Idea and Early stage models, enable company formation and initial setup when the company is not operational yet. Collty adds a verified sequence for entity choice, registration, tax and ownership records, banking and KYC, applicable permissions, non-resident founder routes, grants and tax incentives before ordinary operating processes.
4. **Describe the real business:** Explain the offer, customers, stage, constraints, current teams and outcomes expected during the planning horizon.
5. **Set the operating year:** Use the Collty calendars to choose the fiscal-year start and planning horizon. The horizon is a management boundary, not a forced end date for every process.
6. **Build from a template or Business Architect:** A standards template creates a controlled baseline. Business Architect adapts the map to the supplied company context and available canonical-team evidence.
7. **Review before activation:** Confirm process outcomes, accountable owner roles, inputs, outputs, KPIs, risks, controls, teams and handoffs.

## Use current official jurisdiction evidence

Business Architect separates process architecture from jurisdiction evidence. Deterministic server rules decide which evidence categories are required, while current research is restricted to primary official sources such as government registries, tax and customs authorities, statutory regulators, immigration authorities, central banks and official business-support or grant portals.

Every accepted requirement keeps its authority, applicability condition, cadence or deadline, source URL and checked date. Grants and tax incentives are matched against the stated industry, business model, stage and activity; they are not presented as available unless the published eligibility supports that conclusion. If official coverage is incomplete, the process is marked Needs verification rather than being filled from model memory.

- Formation evidence is shown inside the relevant company-setup subprocess.
- Recurring tax, annual reporting, regulator submissions and grant reporting remain attached to ongoing operations.
- Research evidence is encrypted at application level and cached briefly so repeated work does not waste AI usage.
- Business Architect provides planning support, not legal, tax, immigration or banking advice; confirm material decisions with the cited authority or a qualified adviser.

> **Good to know:** Open a process in the inspector to see the accepted requirement, why it applies, its official source and the date it was checked.

## Industry and operating reality come before a generic template

Business Architect combines industry, business model, company stage, geography, regulation and the real physical or digital value chain. A mine, hospital, logistics operator, software company and agency must not receive the same operating map simply because they are all startups or all growing companies.

Not every worker has to become a Collty user. Frontline workers can remain operational roles on the process map, while process owners, management teams, improvement projects, meetings, KPI evidence and risks are coordinated in Collty.

| Who or what performs the process | How it appears in Business Architect | What activation does |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Collty team | A selected team operates the process directly | Reuses the selected team and its ongoing workspace; activation does not manufacture a replacement team |
| Mixed workforce | Collty owners coordinate with frontline roles, providers or systems | Keeps the process mapped; creates a workspace only when a team is assigned |
| Frontline workforce | Operational roles such as miners, drivers, clinicians or factory operators | Does not create fake profiles or an empty team |
| External provider | A supplier or contractor executes the work | Tracks ownership, agreement, evidence and outcomes without pretending the provider is an internal team |
| System or automation | Equipment or software performs the flow | Tracks controls, incidents and evidence without creating people |

## Why an early-stage operating model is different

Idea and Early stage are company stages, not business models. They deliberately avoid premature corporate bureaucracy and begin with founder governance, customer evidence, product learning, go-to-market, customer retention, capital and runway, people capability, and technology and risk.

As evidence and headcount grow, those processes can be divided, assigned and measured without discarding the original operating history. Hiring, advisors, partners and AI agents should follow confirmed capability gaps rather than an imagined mature-company org chart.

- Connect runway decisions to operating priorities and fundraising milestones.
- Keep discovery, product and customer-learning loops visible as real processes.
- Reuse existing teams before creating a new one.
- Create only the operating workspaces needed to run the active model.

## What each process object contains

| Field | Meaning | Decision it supports |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Class | Management, core value or support process | Whether the process directs, creates value or enables other work |
| Outcome and owner | Measurable result and accountable role | Who must act when the outcome is weak |
| Inputs and outputs | Triggering information and the delivered result | Where a handoff begins or fails |
| KPIs | Evidence of outcome quality and flow | Whether improvement is needed |
| Risks and controls | Material uncertainty and the response used to manage it | Whether the process can operate safely |
| Capabilities and team | Required expertise and the team that operates the process | Whether to reuse, develop or add capability |
| Cadence and maturity | Weekly, two-week, monthly or continuous rhythm and the current control level | How the process should be reviewed and evolved |

## Edit the process map as a working canvas

Business Architect is interactive rather than a generated image. Select a process to open its current definition, drag it to refine the map and use the hand tool to move across a larger operating system. Fit returns the complete model to view; trackpad pinch, mouse-wheel zoom and the zoom controls preserve the point you are working around.

Choose Connector, then select the source process and the receiving process. Select the resulting line to change its relationship or label. Labels appear when a connection is selected or related to the selected process, keeping a large map readable without hiding its structure.

- Auto arrange creates a serpentine value-flow layout so row transitions stay short and readable.
- Value flow, outcome handoff, dependency, information and approval connections remain distinct and editable.
- Delete connection removes only the relationship; both process objects remain.
- Delete process uses a two-step confirmation. It removes the selected process tree, its generated tasks and runtime records, and process-owned workspace data. Deleting a root process also removes its generated Project Canvas project, Workspace and chats.
- Delete operating model removes its generated Project Canvas projects, Workspaces, tasks and chats. Shared people and teams and manually linked standard projects remain available; immutable financial and audit history is retained.

> **Good to know:** Open Operating models to switch between company models, review industry and status context, create another model or remove one. A model with no protected execution history can be purged. When financial or audit records must remain immutable, Collty retains only a non-operational tombstone and removes the generated work.

## Open a real BPMN model for each process

The company map stays intentionally concise. Select a process, open Standards and choose Open BPMN modeler to describe its detailed flow with BPMN events, activities, gateways, subprocesses, participants, messages and Diagram Interchange coordinates.

The editor is loaded only when opened, so a large Business Architect remains fast. Collty stores encrypted canonical BPMN XML on the server, versions each save and runs deterministic structural and semantic validation before reporting the model status. Import and Export use ordinary .bpmn XML files.

- A generated start–activity–outcome flow is only a starting point and is not saved until the owner reviews it.
- Server validation checks the BPMN meta-model, namespaces, identifiers, sequence-flow endpoints, start and end semantics, reachability, decision conditions, boundary-event attachment and Diagram Interchange data.
- A saved invalid draft remains visible for correction, but its blocking checks prevent standards-assured launch.
- Process Modeling Conformance is an assessed model status, not an external certification and not an executable process-engine claim.

## Review the starter backlog, then launch without duplicates

Activation is idempotent: repeating the same activation cannot create another copy of the same process workspace. Business Architect reuses the team assigned to the top-level process. Every subprocess inherits that team and Process Owner unless the user deliberately assigns an override. If the effective team or owner is missing, activation stops and explains what must be completed; it never creates a duplicate team implicitly.

Generate launch plan is an explicit AI action. Business Architect proposes a standards-traced starter backlog and process-aware team onboarding, but creates no tasks until the owner reviews individual tasks and applies the plan. Each selected task is created idempotently in the process Workspace; recurring work keeps a cadence template while only its first occurrence is created immediately.

A process with a team can have one ongoing operating workspace. Frontline, external and automated processes remain valid mapped processes without fictitious teams. Existing finite projects can be linked as initiatives that improve or transform any process; they do not become duplicate process records.

- Validation blocks activation for structural errors, failed standards checks and a saved invalid BPMN model.
- A missing detailed BPMN model remains a review warning; Collty never presents it as verified.
- Process onboarding explains the purpose, outcome, inputs, outputs, roles, KPIs, risks, controls and selected starter work to the team.
- The operating horizon is synchronized to created process workspaces without inventing a project completion date.
- Teams and projects remain governed by their existing access boundaries.

## Use live Collty evidence

Business Architect can compare the designed process requirements with teams and linked projects. The process map therefore becomes a navigation and intelligence layer over company activity instead of a static diagram.

Only confirmed Collty evidence should influence recommendations. When evidence is insufficient, Business Architect records a capability gap instead of inventing a specialist, qualification or team match.

| Collty evidence | How Business Architect uses it |
| --- | --- |
| Teams and Professional Profiles | Capability coverage, ownership, cadence and confirmed gaps |
| Projects and tasks | Improvement initiatives, operating workload, dependencies and delivery signals |
| Calendar and meetings | Operating rhythm, reviews and cross-process coordination |
| Finance | Runway, cost, margin and performance evidence relevant to the process |
| Signals and knowledge | Market, customer and internal learning that may change priorities |

## Standards used by the model

Business Architect uses established standards as referenced design constraints and original deterministic checks, not as copied standards text or configuration forms. Business Architect selects the relevant structure from the company context. APQC provides process-classification concepts; ISO 9001 supplies the process approach and PDCA improvement logic; ISO 31000 provides risk principles; BPMN 2.0.2 supplies the open process meta-model and XML interchange; and ISO 21502 preserves the boundary between ongoing operations and temporary projects.

The Standards panel reports verified, review and failed checks from saved evidence. It does not claim ISO or APQC certification. BPMN is evaluated separately against the canonical XML for the selected process, rather than inferred from the simplified company-level connection lines.

### Official references

- [APQC Process Classification Framework](https://www.apqc.org/process-frameworks) - Cross-industry process-classification structure.
- [ISO 9001 process approach](https://www.iso.org/iso/iso9001_2015_process_approach.pdf) - Process approach and PDCA guidance.
- [ISO 31000:2018](https://www.iso.org/standard/65694.html) - Risk-management principles and guidelines.
- [BPMN 2.0.2](https://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0.2/PDF/) - Formal process-modeling notation.
- [ISO 21502:2020](https://www.iso.org/standard/74947.html) - Project-management guidance and project boundary.

## Related guides

- [Plan With Project Architect](https://collty.com/help/projects/plan-with-project-architect)
- [Create A Project And Choose Its Operating Model](https://collty.com/help/projects/create-a-project-and-choose-its-operating-model)
- [Understand Teams Canvas](https://collty.com/help/teams/understand-teams-canvas)