Module 2

Business Process

• collection of events, activities and decisions that collectively lead to an outcome that brings value to an organization’s customers

  → superior business processes are a way to outperform competitors

Business Process Managment

• art and science of overseeing how work is performed in an organization to achieve consistent outcomes and take advantage of improvement opportunities

• def: body of methods, technique and tools to discover, analyze, redesign, execute and monitor business processes (about managing the entire chain of events, not individual activities)

Common categories of business processes

• order to cash

• quote to order

• procure to pay

• issue to resolution

• application to approval

order to cash

• starts with customer order and ends with delivery payment

• performed by a vendor

• may encompass order verification, shipment, delivvery, invoicing

ex: order on amazon

quote to order

typically starts with customer requesting price quote qnd endswith customer placing order

procure to pay

• start with determination that a given product or service needs to be purchased, ends with delivery and payment

• may encompass obtaining quotes, approving purchase, selecting supplier

• can be considered as dual to quote to cash process

issue to resolution

• start: customer raising an issue

• continues untill both parties agree that issue has been resolved

• variant in the insurance industry relates to insurance claims

application to approval

• starts with a request for certain privileges, ends with approval, denial

• common in government agencies, universities,

ingredients of business process

• Events happen instantaneously; they have no duration (e.g. the arrival of equipment)

• Events can then trigger a number of activities (e.g. checking that equipment meets expectations); activities have duration

• Decision points are points in time when a decision is made that affects business processes (e.g. the equipment should be returned)

Business Process management lifecycle

process identification

process discovery

process analysis

process redesign

process implementation

process monitoring and controlling

• collect and analyze performance data on running redesigned process

• correct deviations, restart cycle if major issues emerge

• critical often forgotten last step

process identification

• business problem is posed

• process relevant to the problem are identified, defined, and related to each other

• results in process architecture (collection of processes and links between them)

process discovery

• current state of each process is documented

• results in “as-is process models”

process analysis

• identify issues with as-is-process

• results in structured collection of issues

process redesign

• identify changes that address uncovered issues

• analyze and compare change options with respect to performance measures

• results in a redesign process (“to-be process model”) that combines most promising changes

process implementation

• prepare and perform changes required to move from as-is to to-be process

• covers organisational change management (changes required to way of working of involved participants) and process automation (development and deployment of supportive IT systems)

process monitoring and controlling

• collect and analyze performance data on running redesigned process

• correct deviations, restart cycle if major issues emerge

• critical often forgotten last step

role of algorithms

• can assign tasks

• can make processes more efficient

• can reduce costs

ex: uber dynamic pricing

BPMN: events and activities

naming conventions:

• Events usually begin with a noun (e.g. purchase order received)

• Activities usually begin with a verb in imperative form (e.g. approve order)

• To name a process model, we use a noun, potentially preceded by an adjective (e.g. “claim handling process”)

tokens

• illustrate the progress of a given instance of the process - they outline the currents ate of that instance

• depicted as colored dots on top of a process model

branching and merging

gateways:

• gating mechanisms that allows or disallows the pasage of tokens

• represented by diamonds

exclusive decisions: XOR gateway

parallel execution

AND gateway

inclusive decisions

OR gateway

resources

• anything or anyone involved in the performance of a process activity, such as participants, software, or equipement

• BPMN provides two constructs to model resources aspects: pools and lanes

pools

• generally used for resources classes

• business oarties, such as sellers, buyers, supliers

lanes

• used to partition a pool into sub-classes or individual resources, department unit, teams, software system

• can be nested in multiple levels

BPMN: information artefacts

data perspective

indicates which information artifacts are required to perform an activity

data objects

• represents the information that flows in and out of activities in a business process

• notation: documents with upper right corner folded over , linked to activities with a dotted arrow with open head

data stores

• places where data objects are stored and need to be persisted beyond the duration of a single process instance

• noted as empty cylinders