Excel Format Documentation – BCM Transformer

Purpose

This resource explains how to structure your Excel input file so it can be processed by the BCM Transformer to generate a visual Business Capability Map in PowerPoint format.

Why Excel?

There are many ways to define business capabilities—ranging from top-down modeling to more design-oriented, visual-first methods. As enterprise architects, we often start by dragging boxes on a screen. But while this may feel intuitive, it tends to shift the focus from actual capability thinking to layout alignment and visual polishing.

The result: Junior team members may spend more time fixing misaligned boxes than reflecting on the structure and content of capabilities themselves.

Sure, you could prompt a large language model to generate a capability map for you. But unless your prompt engineering is extremely precise, the output will often lack structure, hierarchy, or the visual logic required for a meaningful capability view. (If you’ve found a prompt that works reliably—let me know.)

That’s why Excel is still a practical choice:

• It provides a clear, structured way to model capabilities in levels
• You can instantly see how many capabilities exist per domain
• It’s fast to edit and easy to collaborate on

Yet, visual communication is still essential—especially in corporate environments where Microsoft Office remains the standard. That’s why the BCM Transformer exports editable PowerPoint slides: you can start with structure in Excel, and refine visuals later without rework.

Expected Structure

The tool expects a simple three-level hierarchy structured as follows:

ID_1	ID_2	ID_3	Level_1_Capability	Level_2_Capability	Level_3_Capability
[ID 1]	[ID 2]	[ID 3]	[Top Capability]	[Sub-Capability]	[Detailed Capability]

Each row in the Excel sheet represents one capability path across these levels.
You can leave Level 3 empty if you only want to map two levels.

Example

Below is an example to illustrate how real capabilities would be entered:

ID_1	ID_2	ID_3	Level_1_Capability	Level_2_Capability	Level_3_Capability
1	1.1	1.1.1	Marketing	Campaign Management	Social Media Scheduling
1	1.1	1.1.2	Marketing	Campaign Management	Email Campaigns
2	2.1	2.1.1	Sales	Lead Management	Qualification Process
2	2.1	2.1.2	Sales	Lead Management	Opportunity Handling
3	3.1	3.1.1	IT	Infrastructure	Cloud Hosting
3	3.1	3.1.2	IT	Infrastructure	Network Security

Processing Logic

• Unique entries in Level 1 define the top-level capability buckets
• Matching entries in Level 2 are grouped inside their Level 1 bucket
• Level 3 capabilities are placed inside their respective Level 2 containers
• Empty rows or duplicate entries are ignored
• A maximum of three levels is supported

Sample File

You can download a ready-made sample Excel file here to get started.

Download Sample Excel File