Business Processes
J. G. Davis
B. Odoi-Lartey
What are Business Processes?
• A collection of interrelated work tasks,
initiated in response to an event, achieving a
specific result for the customer and other
stakeholders of the process.
• A business process is a series of steps
performed by a group of stakeholders to
achieve a concrete goal.
Business Processes… (Cont)
A business process includes at least one of, but not
limited to, the following elements:
• Task/ activity
• System
• Employee(s)
• Workflow
• Data
Business Processes… (Cont)
Some key attributes that distinguish business processes
from other business tasks and activities are:
• a process is repeatable
• a process is flexible and not rigid
• a process is specific and has established start and
endpoints
• a process is measurable
Business Process Management (BPM)
• Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of
improving a business process from end to end by
analyzing it, modelling how it works in different
scenarios, executing improvements, monitoring the
improved process and continually optimizing it.
Business Process Re-engineering (BPRE)
• Business process Re-engineering is a radical redesign of
business processes to achieve dramatic improvements
in critical aspects like quality, output, cost, service and
speed
Business Process Re-engineering (BPRE)
• BPRE is a business management strategy of conducting a business process
reconstruction for the sake of uplifting its product of service quality and
lowering the long-term expenditure
• BPRE needs business and workflow analysis to discern and draw out the
process redundancies. The steps in BPRE includes:
Define and analyze the current state
Identify and re-design
Develop and test the prototype
Implement and Monitor
• NOTE: There is a recursive relationship between IT capabilities and BPR.
• How can IT support business processes?
Business Process Management (BPM)
• BPM involves strategizing the supervision and maintenance of the
workflow to gear up the existing business processes and
organization altogether
• It is a regular and long-term string of procedures that serves as
business process backbone. The steps in BPM includes:
Identify and Design
Model and Execute
Analyze and Optimize
Monitor
Similarities between BPRe and BPM
• Both BPRe and BPM undergo several steps for better productivity of the processes
• They go through some similar business processes like understanding the existing
methods, identification, evaluation and analysis
• The main goal in BPRe and BPM are improving the speed and quality of the business
processes
• Both processes work at reducing expenses while smoothly carrying out the
workflow in the organization
Difference between BPRe and BPM
• Despite their similarities, their core functionality varies; BPR can be seen as distinguished part which
follows BPM
• BPM is a long-term strategy which is usually ongoing whereas BPRe is usually a short-term with start
and end.
• BPR reconstructs a process flow with new approach whilst BPM works on monitoring and maintaining
the current state
• BPR is cross-functional and more strategic whilst BPM is a disciplined managerial approach.
• BPR transcends organizational boundaries but with BPM, there is no new amendments in an
organization’s culture
Example of Business Process
• Processes vary depending upon the • Sales Process
type, industry, location, etc., of a
• Customer Service Process
business, but there are a few processes
• Human Resource Process
that are practiced across all these
segments of businesses around the • Production Process
globe. To make this easy to understand, • Manufacturing Process
we will look at examples of such
processes.
Common Terminologies for Business Process
• Business Process Management
• Business Process Improvement
• Business Process Mapping
• Business Process Documentation
• Business Process Discovery
• Business Process Automation
• Business Process Handoffs
Importance of Improving Business Processes
• It helps to save cost
• It boosts productivity with teams
• It enhances the customer experience
• It helps you live a better life (personal)
BPM Caveats
• BPMs has the potential to transform organizations into more nimble, agile
entities to leverage both human and tech capital but efforts are spoiled by
emphasis on technology, diagrams and other pedantries.
• BPM’s purpose is to improve business and as such for any other purpose
one needs to revisit the drawing board.
• Processes are views on organization but are abstraction of reality as such
may not cover all aspects of complex systems.
• BPM efforts require structure and methodology
• One shouldn’t try to improve everything at once, but review the most
important aspects of an organization through structured methodology
A simple Business Process
• Customer buying cup of coffee
• Different Actors involved: Customer, Cashier, Chef
Relationship Between BPM Concepts
Business Process
(i.e what is
Is defined in a intended to happen )
Is managed by
Process Definition
(a representation of what is intended
(controls automated aspects of the
to happen) business process via)
Used to manage
and create
Sub-Processes Composed of
Process Instances
(a representation of what is actually happening )
Act ivities
Include one or more
Which may be
or
During execution Activity Instances
are represented
by Which include
Manual Activities Automated Activities And/Or
(which are not managed as part of the
Workflow system)
Work Items Invoked Applications
(tasks allocated to a workflow (computer tools/applications used to