Business Process Modelling

Business Process Modelling

Overview:
Business Process Modelling is a collection of process to understand the current business process of the organization in visual documentation, which also can help in understanding the scope of improvements in the process. It majorly emphasis on the process of the work than the product of the organization.
BPM comes within the Business Management discipline and the focus is to improve by managing the process. The business management uses the BPM which discovers, models, analyses, optimises and automates the process to achieve greater success.
In this process it has a goal, with specific inputs and outputs across time and place. Resources are used to perform a number of activities in order and in the whole process it creates value of some kind in the internal or external customer.
Business analyst performs this process and provides expertise in the discipline modelling or subject matter expertise also performs the process who is having specialized knowledge of the model.
There could be several business objectives, eg. To increase process speed or reduce cycle time; to reduce costs of labour or material, scrap, capital costs; or to increase the production quality and to fulfil each of the objective there should be defined business process model. In IT companies, depending on the need of the requirements the business management invests in business process modelling.
Change management programs are also involved in this improved process. With the help of tools and techniques this vision of bpm has turned in fully executable and capable of simulation and is coming to reality.
Business Process Modelling Techniques:
To map the workflow diagrams are used to visualize the whole business process, making decisions and to implement positive changes in the process.
Below are the various techniques listed:
1. Business process modeling notation (BPMN)
2. UML diagrams
3. Flowchart technique
4. Data flow diagrams
5. Role activity diagrams
6. Role interaction diagrams
7. Gantt charts
8. Integrated definition for function modeling
9. Colored petri-nets
10. Object oriented approach
11. Workflow technique
12. Simulation model

Importance of Business Process Modeling
i)Introducing new business strategy aligned with operations:
People resist change by nature; henceforth due to new strategies change in operation and people requires BPM facilitates by:
• Helps to maintain consistency
• Ensuring the operational tasks performed by the team help the organization in implementing its strategy and achieve the goal.
• Helps implementing process re-engineering keeping the improvement in mind.
• To enable process agility by which organization can take up any challenges or business opportunity
ii) To Improve Process Communication
To make a business and team successful they should have a clear idea in what they want to do or produce, how they are supposed to do it and what are going to be the roles of the team members. For the smooth functioning of the team clear communication of the operational process is much needed.
Though Business Process Modeling the documenting and communicating of the business process is achieved:
• Process modeling offers a common unified language and methodology to communicate on processes and information about processes and decision rules.
• It is ideal to conduct training for new people and rapid knowledge transfer because with a thoroughly documented process any new team member can be very quickly trained on what they have to do in any situation that they may face.
• Minimizes potential danger of loss of staff resulting into loss of business process knowledge.
• It helps business managers to communicate their ideas quickly and articulately.
• Jump-starts the organizational process documentation initiative.
• Turns the team’s experience into a documented process.
iii)To Increase Control and Consistency
Organizations and companies that succeed are ones that ensure their business processes and rules are well designed and that they are consistent in applying the same way every single time. This process control and consistency is the key success in organizations.
Business Process Modeling makes this possible:
• BPM formalize the existing processes which may not be well documented or which have evolved over time into “informal knowledge”.
• Execute a process in consistent manner because instead of relying on people to remember to do the right thing; the right process is to document the process and the documented process can be given to the business users.
• Helps to Make better decisions because guesswork is eliminated as business users can have the documented business rules in front of them.
• Helps handling exceptions faster and in a better way.
• Complete regulatory compliance by ensuring that the documented processes follow the company guidelines and legal regulations.
• Helps to put business people in charge.
• To Support compliance initiatives such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000
iv)To Improve Operational Efficiency
• In today’s business environment, every business and every manager wants to ensure that they are achieving the best possible results with the available resources. There is no room for inefficiencies and wastage.
• The Process simulation and analysis steps of Business Process Modeling are critical tools for managers and business analysts to ensure that their processes are optimized and are running accurately and accordingly.
• Process Simulation allows analysis and understanding of the process flows and helps managers know if there is scope for further optimization and efficiencies.
• It helps spot needed improvements and reduce process cycle time too.
• It increases productivity of existing resources and staff and so allows the team to do more activity with lesser resources.
• It facilitates risk free experimentation and encourages exchange of process improvement ideas.
• Process simulation allows modeling of process designs before actually implementing them and thus minimizing disruptions.
• It encourages a mindset of continually optimizing business critical processes to incrementally improve operational efficiency.
• Process analysis enables better resource utilization.
v)To Gain Competitive Advantage
All the above mentioned benefits lead to a significant competitive advantage for an organization that has invested the time and effort to document, simulate and improving its business processes.
Studies of many wildly successful companies has often shown that they succeeded not only because of better ideas or better business models, but also because of constant refined and improved processes through business process modeling.
A slight improvement in one activity here and there leads to an overall better process. And those little refinements help organizations run efficiently and give the edge over their competitors.