Business Process Edited

7/23/2019 Business Process Edited

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Business process

A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities ortasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particularcustomer or customers. It often can be visualized with a flowchart as a sequence of activities.

Overview

There are three types of business processes:

1. Management processes, the processes that govern the operation of a system. Typicalmanagement processes include "Corporate Governance" and "Strategic Management".

2. Operational processes, processes that constitute the core business and create theprimary value stream. Typical operational processes are Purchasing, Manufacturing,Advertising and Marketing, and Sales.

3. Supporting processes, which support the core processes. Examples include Accounting,Recruitment, Call center,Technical support.

A business process begins with a mission objective and ends with achievement of the businessobjective. Process-oriented organizations break down the barriers of structural departmentsand try to avoid functional silos.

A business process can be decomposed into several sub-processes, which have their ownattributes, but also contribute to achieving the goal of the super-process. The analysis ofbusiness processes typically includes the mapping of processes and sub-processes down toactivity level.

Business Processes are designed to add value for the customer and should not includeunnecessary activities. The outcome of a well designed business process is increasedeffectiveness (value for the customer) and increased efficiency (less costs for the company).

Business Processes can be modeled through a large number of methods and techniques. Forinstance, the Business Process Modeling Notation is a Business Process Modeling technique

that can be used for drawing business processes in a workflow.

History

Adam Smith

One of the first people to describe processes was Adam Smith in his famous (1776) example ofa pin factory. Inspired by an article in Diderot'sEncyclopdie, Smith described the productionof a pin in the following way:

One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifthgrinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make the head requires two or three distinct

operations: to put it on is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another ... and theimportant business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinctoperations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct hands, though in othersthe same man will sometime perform two or three of them.

Smith also first recognized how the output could be increased through the use oflabor division.Previously, in a society where production was dominated by handcrafted goods, one manwould perform all the activities required during the production process, while Smith describedhow the work was divided into a set of simple tasks, which would be performed by specializedworkers. The result of labor division in Smiths example resulted in productivity increasing by24,000 percent (sic), i.e. that the same number of workers made 240 times as many pins asthey had been producing before the introduction of labor division.

It is worth noting that Smith did not advocate labor division at any price andper se. Theappropriate level of task division was defined through experimental design of the productionprocess. In contrast to Smith's view which was limited to the same functional domain andcomprised activities that are in direct sequence in the manufacturing process, today's processconcept includes cross-functionality as an important characteristic. Following his ideas the
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division of labor was adopted widely, while the integration of tasks into functional, or cross-functional, process was not considered as an alternative option until much later.

Other definitions

In the early 1990s, US corporations, and subsequently companies all over the world, started toadopt the concept ofreengineering in an attempt to re-achieve the competitiveness that theyhad lost during the previous decade. A key characteristic ofBusiness Process Reengineering(BPR) is the focus on business processes. Davenport (1993)[1] defines a (business) process as

a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particularcustomer or market. It implies a strong emphasis on how work is done within an organization,in contrast to a product focuss emphasis on what. A process is thus a specific ordering of workactivities across time and space, with a beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs andoutputs: a structure for action. ... Taking a process approach implies adopting the customerspoint of view. Processes are the structure by which an organization does what is necessary toproduce value for its customers.

This definition contains certain characteristics a process must possess. These characteristicsare achieved by a focus on the business logic of the process (how work is done), instead oftaking a product perspective (what is done). Following Davenport's definition of a process we

can conclude that a process must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output, that itconsists of smaller parts, activities, which are ordered in time and space, that there must be areceiver of the process outcome- a customer - and that the transformation taking place withinthe process must add customer value.

Hammer & Champys (1993)[2] definition can be considered as a subset of Davenports. Theydefine a process as

a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is ofvalue to the customer.

As we can note, Hammer & Champy have a more transformation oriented perception, and put

less emphasis on the structural component process boundaries and the order of activities intime and space.

Rummler & Brache (1995)[3] use a definition that clearly encompasses a focus on theorganizations external customers, when stating that

a business process is a series of steps designed to produce a product or service. Mostprocesses (...) are cross-functional, spanning the white space between the boxes on theorganization chart. Some processes result in a product or service that is received by anorganization's external customer. We call these primary processes. Other processes produceproducts that are invisible to the external customer but essential to the effective managementof the business. We call these support processes.

The above definition distinguishes two types of processes, primary and support processes,depending on whether a process is directly involved in the creation of customer value, orconcerned with the organizations internal activities. In this sense, Rummler and Brache'sdefinition follows Porter's value chain model, which also builds on a division of primary andsecondary activities. According to Rummler and Brache, a typical characteristic of a successfulprocess-based organization is the absence of secondary activities in the primary value flowthat is created in the customer oriented primary processes. The characteristic of processes asspanning the white space on the organization chart indicates that processes are embedded insome form of organizational structure. Also, a process can be cross-functional, i.e. it rangesover several business functions.

Finally, let us consider the process definition of Johansson et al. (1993)[4]. They define a process

as

a set of linked activities that take an input and transform it to create an output. Ideally, thetransformation that occurs in the process should add value to the input and create an outputthat is more useful and effective to the recipient either upstream or downstream.
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This definition also emphasizes the constitution of links between activities and thetransformation that takes place within the process. Johansson et al. also include the upstreampart of the value chain as a possible recipient of the process output. Summarizing the fourdefinitions above, we can compile the following list of characteristics for a business process.

1. Definability: It must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output.2. Order: It must consist of activities that are ordered according to their position in time

and space.3. Customer: There must be a recipient of the process' outcome, a customer.

4. Value-adding : The transformation taking place within the process must add value to therecipient, either upstream or downstream.

5. Embeddedness : A process can not exist in itself, it must be embedded in anorganizational structure.

6. Cross-functionality: A process regularly can, but not necessarily must, span severalfunctions.

Frequently, a process owner, i.e. a person being responsible for the performance andcontinuous improvement of the process, is also considered as a prerequisite...

Importance of the Process Chain

Business processes comprise a set of sequential sub-processes or tasks, with alternative pathsdepending on certain conditions as applicable, performed to achieve a given objective orproduce given outputs. Each process has one or more needed inputs. The inputs and outputsmay be received from, or sent to other business processes, other organizational units, orinternal or external stakeholders.

Business processes are designed to be operated by one or more business functional units, andemphasize the importance of the process chain rather than the individual units.

In general, the various tasks of a business process can be performed in one of two ways 1)manually and 2) by means of business data processing systems such as ERP systems.Typically, some process tasks will be manual, while some will be computer-based, and thesetasks may be sequenced in many ways. In other words, the data and information that are beinghandled through the process may pass through manual or computer tasks in any given order.

The Four Major Process Improvement Areas

The point to note here is that, irrespective of the class of the task - whether manual orcomputerised - it is important that each task - and hence the process as a whole is designedand periodically reviewed, improved, or substituted by another task, with a view to continuousimprovement in four major areas:

1. Effectiveness

2. Efficiency

3. Internal control

4. Compliance to various statutes and policies

These areas are explained by highlighting typical deficiencies in each of them, as under:

Effectiveness

The overall effectiveness of a process is the extent to which the outputs expected from theprocess are being obtained at all, and is therefore a first measure of the basic adequacy of the

process and its capability to fulfill the logical and reasonable expectations of process uses andoperators.

For example, consider the material procurement process. One of its important tasks is the sub-process for supplier follow-up to ensure timely deliveries of materials. Such a task is
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considerably less effective if it does not provide accurate and timely purchase order statusreports for use of the purchase department staff responsible for follow-up.

Efficiency

Supposing it has been observed that the average time taken to prepare and send out apurchase order after receipt of a properly prepared indent from the end-user is unacceptablyhigh, leading to delayed customer deliveries and consequent customer complaints.

The process of converting the end-users indent to a purchase order is effective because apurchase order is being somehow generated, but its efficiency is very low since it takes aninordinate amount of time and costs considerably more in terms of the cost to the company ofthe salaries of staff members involved.

Internal Control

In a scenario where quantities of major raw materials are regularly ordered and consumed,rates are fixed with selected, reliable, approved vendors for an extended period commonly ayear. Moreover, let us say that the rate contract does not contain a price escalation clause.This safeguards the organisation from unanticipated price escalation during the period. Therate contract data are stored in the ERP systems database. Whenever materials are to be

ordered (with or without a delivery schedule), purchase orders are generated mentioning therate finalised in the rate contract. An internal control exists to keep the purchase rate constantthroughout the year.

Suppose, however, it is found that the rate on a purchase order based on a current ratecontract is changed to a different value, and the purchase order then sent out to the supplier.This is a serious lapse in internal control, since a change to a higher rate exposes the companyto a higher financial liability. Moreover, the editability of the rate in such a purchase ordercompletely nullifies the internal controls provided by having a rate contract in the first placeand including a no-escalation clause in it. There would be a further breach of internal control ifit were found that such a PO amendment is actually authorised before sending the purchaseorder to the supplier.

Statutory and Policy Compliance

There are certain situations where payments made to consultants or service contractors mustbe statutorily made after deducting tax at source (T.D.S.), and such T.D.S. amounts must bedeposited in government treasury accounts with banks on or before a specified date in themonth following the month in which the payments are made.

In such cases, if a business process does not provide for deduction of T.D.S. and/or fails toensure deposition into government accounts by the specified date, then this is a statutorycompliance issue that makes the concerned executives liable to civil / criminal legal action.

Policies, Processes and Procedures

The above improvement areas are equally applicable to policies, processes and detailedprocedures (sub-processes/tasks). There is a cascading effect of improvements made at ahigher level on those made at a lower level.

For instance, if a recommendation to replace a given policy with a better one is made withproper justification and accepted in principle by business process owners, then correspondingchanges in the consequent processes and procedures will follow naturally in order to enableimplementation of the policy changes.

Manual / Administrative vs. Computer System-Based Internal Controls

Internal controls can be built into manual / administrative process steps and / or computersystem procedures.

It is advisable to build in as many system controls as possible, since these controls, beingautomatic, will always be exercised since they are built into the design of the business system


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software. For instance, an error message preventing an entry of a received raw materialquantity exceeding the purchase order quantity by greater than the permissible tolerancepercentage will always be displayed and will prevent the system user from entering such aquantity.

However, for various reasons such as practicality, the need to be flexible (whatever that maysignify), lack of business domain knowledge and experience, difficulties in designing/writingsoftware, cost of software development/modification, the incapability of a computerised systemto provide controls, etc., all internal controls otherwise considered to be necessary are often

not built into business systems and software.

In such a scenario, the manual, administrative process controls outside the computer systemshould be clearly documented, enforced and regularly exercised. For instance, while enteringdata to create a new record in a material system databases item master table, the onlyinternal control that the system can provide over the item description field is not to allow theuser to leave the description blank in other words, configure item description as a mandatoryfield. The system obviously cannot alert the user that the description is wrongly spelt,inappropriate, nonsensical, etc.

In the absence of such a system-based internal control, the item creation process must includea suitable administrative control through the detailed checking, by a responsible officer, of allfields entered for the new item, by comparing a print-out taken from the system with the itemdata entry sheet, and ensuring that any corrections in the item description (and other similarfields where no system control is possible) are promptly carried out.

Last but not least, the introduction of effective manual, administrative controls usually requiresan overriding periodic check by a higher authority to ensure that such controls are exercised inthe first place.

Information Reports as an Essential Base for Executing Business Processes

Business processes must include up-to-date and accurate Information reports to ensureeffective action. An example of this is the availability of purchase order status reports forsupplier delivery follow-up as described in the section on effectiveness above. There arenumerous examples of this in every possible business process.

Another example from production is the process of analysis of line rejections occurring on theshop floor. This process should include systematic periodical analysis of rejections by reason,and present the results in a suitable information report that pinpoints the major reasons, andtrends in these reasons, for management to take corrective actions to control rejections andkeep them within acceptable limits. Such a process of analysis and summarisation of linerejection events is clearly superior to a process which merely inquires into each individualrejection as it occurs.

Business process owners and operatives should realise that process improvement often occurswith introduction of appropriate transaction, operational, highlight, exception or M.I.S. reports,

provided these are consciously used for day-to-day or periodical decision-making. With thisunderstanding would hopefully come the willingness to invest time and other resources inbusiness process improvement by introduction of useful and relevant reporting systems.

Supporting theories and concepts

Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the concept ofscientific management. The conceptcontains aspects on the division of labor being relevant to the theory and practice aroundbusiness processes. The business process related aspects of Taylor's scientific managementconcept are discussed in the article on Business Process Reengineering.

Span of control

The span of control is the number of sub-ordinates a supervisor manages within a structuralorganization. Introducing a business process concept has a considerable impact on thestructural elements of the organization and thus also on the span of control.
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Large organizations that are not organized as markets need to be organized in smaller units -departments- which can be defined according to different principles.

Information management concepts

Information Management and the organization design strategies being related to it, are atheoretical cornerstone of the business process concept.
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Business process management

Business process management (BPM) is a management approach focused on aligning allaspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic managementapproach[1] that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation,flexibility, and integration with technology. Business process management attempts to improveprocesses continuously. It could therefore be described as a "process optimization process." Itis argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient, more effective and more

capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach.An empirical study by Kohlbacher (2009) reveals that BPM helps organizations to gain highercustomer satisfaction, product quality, delivery speed and time-to-market speed [2].

Overview

A business processcomprises a "series or network of value-added activities, performed by theirrelevant roles or collaborators, to purposefully achieve the common business goal."[3] Theseprocesses are critical to any organization: they may generate revenue and often represent asignificant proportion of costs. As a managerial approach, BPM considers processes to bestrategic assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and improved to delivervalue added products and services to clients. This foundation is very similar to otherTotal

Quality Management or Continuous Improvement Process methodologies or approaches. BPMgoes a step further by stating that this approach can be supported, or enabled, throughtechnology to ensure the viability of the managerial approach in times ofstress and change. Infact, BPM is an approach to integrate a "change capability" to an organization - both humanand technological. As such, many BPM articles and pundits often discuss BPM from one of twoviewpoints: people and/or technology.

Roughly speaking, the idea of (business) process is as traditional as concepts oftasks,department, production, outputs.[citation needed] The current management and improvementapproach, with formal definitions and technical modeling, has been around since the early1990s (see business process modeling). Note that in the IT community, the term 'businessprocess' is often used as synonymous of management ofmiddleware processes; or integratingapplication software tasks. This viewpoint may be overly restrictive - a limitation to keep inmind when reading software engineeringpapers that refer to "business processes" or to"business process modeling".

Although the initial focus of BPM was on the automation of business processes with the use ofinformation technology, it has since been extended[by whom?] to integrate human-driven processesin which human interaction takes place in series or parallel with the use of technology. Forexample (in workflowsystems), when individual steps in the business process require humanintuition or judgment to be performed, these steps are assigned to appropriate members withinthe organization.

More advanced forms such as human interaction management are in the complex interactionbetween human workers in performing a workgroup task. In this case, many people and

systems interact in structured, ad-hoc, and sometimes completely dynamic ways to completeone to many transactions.

BPM can be used to understand organizations through expanded views that would nototherwise be available to organize and present. These views include the relationships ofprocesses to each other which, when included in a process model, provide for advancedreporting and analysis that would not otherwise be available. BPM is regarded by some[who?] asthe backbone ofenterprise content management.

Because BPM allows organizations to abstract business process from technology infrastructure,it goes far beyond automating business processes (software) or solving business problems(suite). BPM enables business to respond to changing consumer, market, and regulatory

demands faster than competitors[citation needed]

- creating competitive advantage.

As of 2010 technology has allowed the coupling of BPM to other methodologies, such as SixSigma. BPM tools allow users to:
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Define - baseline the process or the process improvement

Model - simulate the change to the process.

Analyze - compare the various simulations to determine an optimal improvement

Improve - select and implement the improvement

Control - deploy this implementation and by use of User defined dashboards monitor theimprovement in real time and feed the performance information back into thesimulation model in preparation for the next improvement iteration.

This brings with it the benefit of being able to simulate changes to business processes basedon real-life data (not assumed knowledge). Also, the coupling of BPM to industry methodologiesallows users to continually streamline and optimize the process to ensure that it is tuned to itsmarket need.[4]

BPM life-cycle

Business process management activities can be grouped into five categories: design, modeling,execution, monitoring, and optimization.

Design

Process Design encompasses both the identification of existing processes and the design of"to-be" processes. Areas of focus include representation of the process flow, the actors withinit, alerts & notifications, escalations, Standard Operating Procedures, Service LevelAgreements, and task hand-over mechanisms.

Good design reduces the number of problems over the lifetime of the process. Whether or notexisting processes are considered, the aim of this step is to ensure that a correct and efficienttheoretical design is prepared.

The proposed improvement could be in human-to-human, human-to-system, and system-to-system workflows, and might target regulatory, market, or competitive challenges faced by thebusinesses.

Modeling

Modeling takes the theoretical design and introduces combinations of variables (e.g., changesin rent or materials costs, which determine how the process might operate under differentcircumstances).

It also involves running "what-if analysis" on the processes: "What if I have 75% of resources todo the same task?""What if I want to do the same job for 80% of the current cost?".

Execution

One of the ways to automate processes is to develop or purchase an applicationthat executesthe required steps of the process; however, in practice, these applications rarely execute allthe steps of the process accurately or completely. Another approach is to use a combination ofsoftware and human intervention; however this approach is more complex, making thedocumentation process difficult.

As a response to these problems, software has been developed that enables the full businessprocess (as developed in the process design activity) to be defined in a computer languagewhich can be directly executed by the computer. The system will either use services inconnected applications to perform business operations (e.g. calculating a repayment plan for aloan) or, when a step is too complex to automate, will ask for human input. Compared to eitherof the previous approaches, directly executing a process definition can be more straightforwardand therefore easier to improve. However, automating a process definition requires flexible

and comprehensive infrastructure, which typically rules out implementing these systems in alegacy IT environment.

Business rules have been used by systems to provide definitions for governing behaviour, anda business rule engine can be used to drive process execution and resolution.
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Monitoring

Monitoring encompasses the tracking of individual processes, so that information on their statecan be easily seen, and statistics on the performance of one or more processes can beprovided. An example of the tracking is being able to determine the state of a customer order(e.g. ordered arrived, awaiting delivery, invoice paid) so that problems in its operation can beidentified and corrected.

In addition, this information can be used to work with customers and suppliers to improve their

connected processes. Examples of the statistics are the generation of measures on how quicklya customer order is processed or how many orders were processed in the last month. Thesemeasures tend to fit into three categories: cycle time, defect rate and productivity.

The degree of monitoring depends on what information the business wants to evaluate andanalyze and how business wants it to be monitored, in real-time, near real-time or ad-hoc.Here, business activity monitoring (BAM) extends and expands the monitoring tools ingenerally provided by BPMS.

Process mining is a collection of methods and tools related to process monitoring. The aim ofprocess mining is to analyze event logs extracted through process monitoring and to comparethem with an a priori process model. Process mining allows process analysts to detect

discrepancies between the actual process execution and the a priori model as well as toanalyze bottlenecks.

Optimization

Process optimization includes retrieving process performance information from modeling ormonitoring phase; identifying the potential or actual bottlenecks and the potentialopportunities for cost savings or other improvements; and then, applying those enhancementsin the design of the process. Overall, this creates greater business value [5].

Practice

Example of Business Process Management (BPM) Service Pattern: This pattern shows howbusiness process management (BPM) tools can be used to implement business processesthrough the orchestration of activities between people and systems.[6]

Whilst the steps can be viewed as a cycle, economic or time constraints are likely to limit theprocess to only a few iterations. This is often the case when an organization uses the approach

for short to medium term objectives rather than trying to transform the organizational culture.True iterations are only possible through the collaborative efforts of process participants. In amajority of organizations, complexity will require enabling technology (see below) to supportthe process participants in these daily process management challenges.
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To date, many organizations often start a BPM project or program with the objective tooptimize an area that has been identified as an area for improvement.

In financial sector, BPM is critical to make sure the system delivers a quality service whilemaintaining regulatory compliance.[7]

Currently, the international standards for the task have only limited to the application for ITsectors and ISO/IEC 15944 covers the operational aspects of the business. However, somecorporations with the culture ofbest practices do use standard operating procedures to

regulate their operational process.[8] Other standards are currently being worked upon to assistin BPM implementation (BPMN,Enterprise Architecture, Business Motivation Model).

BPM technology

Some define the BPM System or Suite (BPMS) as "the whole of BPM." Others will relate theimportant concept of information moving between enterprise software packages andimmediately think ofService Oriented Architecture (SOA). Still others limit the definition to"modeling... to create the perfect process," (see Business modeling).

These are partial answers and the technological offerings continue to evolve. The BPMS termmay not survive. Today it encompasses the concept of supporting the managerial approachthrough enabling technology. The BPMS should enable all stakeholders to have a firmunderstanding of an organization and its performance. The BPMS should facilitate businessprocess change throughout the life cycle stated above. This will assist in the automation ofactivities, collaboration, integration with other systems, integrating partners through the valuechain, etc. For instance, the size and complexity of daily tasks often requires the use oftechnology to model efficiently. These models facilitate automation and solutions to businessproblems. These models can also become executable to assist in monitoring and controllingbusiness processes. As such, some people view BPM as "the bridge between InformationTechnology (IT) and Business."[citation needed]. In fact, an argument can be made that this "holisticapproach" bridges organizational and technological silos.

There are four critical components of a BPM Suite:

Process Engine a robust platform for modeling and executing process-basedapplications, including business rules

Business Analytics enable managers to identify business issues, trends, andopportunities with reports and dashboards and react accordingly

Content Management provides a system for storing and securing electronicdocuments, images, and other files

Collaboration Tools remove intra- and interdepartmental communication barriersthrough discussion forums, dynamic workspaces, and message boards

BPM also addresses many of the critical IT issues underpinning these business drivers,including:

Managing end-to-end, customer-facing processes

Consolidating data and increasing visibility into and access to associated data andinformation

Increasing the flexibility and functionality of current infrastructure and data

Integrating with existing systems and leveraging emerging service oriented architecture(SOAs)

Establishing a common language for business-IT alignment

Validation of BPMS is another technical issue that vendors and users need to be aware of, if

regulatory compliance is mandatory.[9] The validation task could be performed either by anauthenticated third party or by the users themselves. Either way, validation documentation willneed to be generated. The validation document usually can either be published officially orretained by users.[10]
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What is a Business Process?

The business process is a series of activities occurring within a company that lead to a specificend. Most often, the business process focuses on meeting the needs of the customer anddelivering a good or service that will fulfill that need. In many cases, the business process isactually a collection of interrelated processes that function in a logical sequence to achieve theultimate goal.

Defining the exact steps of a business process will vary somewhat from one corporatestructure to another. However, there are some elements or sub-processes that can be found injust about any business process. To some degree, these sub-processes will always occur in anorder that lead to successful completion of the manufacturing process.

The first step in a business process normally has to do with the acquisition of raw materials forthe business operation. In order to maximize the benefit from raw materials, efforts are madeto secure materials of the highest quality at the most cost efficient price. Doing so increasesthe chance of achieving a higher amount of profit for each unit produced and sold.

Following the acquisition step, the business process will move on to the structure andefficiency of the production structure. Here, the organization of the plant facility in order to

allow raw materials to be processed with the greatest degree of efficiency becomesparamount. This is coupled with attention to such factors as employee training, settingreasonable production goals, and establishing a workable maintenance program for theproduction machinery.

The next step in the business process focuses on the sales and marketing effort. While it isestablished early on that the final product will be of value to consumers, it is often necessary todevelop and implement creative strategies for making buyers aware of the product. As part ofthis effort, public relations, advertising efforts, and the establishment of a simple means ofplacing orders will often help to secure customers who are ready and willing to buy theproduced products.

Once the goods are produced and sold, the final step of the business process has to do withdelivery to the client. This portion of the process includes such elements as processing ordersin a timely manner, advising the client of the scheduled delivery date, and making sure thatdate is met. On the back end, the delivery process also has to do with obtaining feedback fromthe customer regarding their level of satisfaction with the product and the efficiency of thephysical delivery.

Depending on the nature of the industry involved, orders from clients may be secured beforethe actual process of production begins. However, many companies operate with a businessprocess that allows for the production of goods in anticipation of sales to consumers.

PROCESS MANAGEMENT LIFECYCLE (PML)
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Bringing a new business process to life, modifying or optimizing an existing business process,and continually innovating a business process all involve a similar set of phases and activities.The business process lifecycle visually depicts this ongoing circle of these activities.

The lifecycle includes the following phases:

1. Analyze phaseo Analyzing the current environment and any current processes that may be in

placeo Identifying needs and defining requirements

2. Design phaseo Evaluating potential solutions to meet the identified needso Designing the business processo Modeling the business process

3. Implement phaseo Project preparationo Blueprintingo Realizationo Final preparationo Go live and support

4.Run and Monitor phase

o Executing or deploying the business processo Monitoring the business process

Note that a separate optimize phase is unnecessary, since process optimization takes placethroughout all of the phases.

Business Process Management Basics - Life Cycle & Implementation

Change is the only constant thing in this world, especially for businesses. This is becauseconsumer demands are also constantly redefined. Success can only be achieved by keeping upwith modernisation. Therefore, businesses should always reinvent themselves, so that

customers will not get bored with whatever they have to offer. This is where effective businessprocess management (BPM) comes in handy. BPM helps organisations stay ahead of thecompetition. It is the methodical and organised management approach that is designed toimprove the quality of products and services to meet the customers changing wants andneeds. It is also referred to as the ideas, techniques and tools used to manage businessprocesses. Business process management tools consist of organising, leading, staffing,controlling, planning, and coordination. To simply put it, the basic definition of BPM is theprocess of designing, as well as maintaining a common environment where individuals thatwork together in groups efficiently accomplishing targeted aims.

Business process work flow

In any company, workflow is a critical operational task that is carried out in various businessprocesses. Business process workflow is the organising and plotting of tasks or documents,which are performed by a set of rules or procedures. It is a very critical function carried out inthe business work procedure. The key factors performed in a workflow process are structuraltasks, order of relativity, procedure synchronisation, tracking procedure, as well as trackingrelevant information that supports the task. It is performed using three essential parts:software, management and automation. Workflow software contributes to the generation offlow of work processes in an organised manner. Workflow management controls and managesthe whole workflow of the processes involved in the business. Some of the most importantbenefits of such process are high efficiency, improved service, better control, improvedflexibility, and growth in the business. The use of data through a wide array of applications,

algorithms, and services refers to scientific workflow. Meanwhile, the concentration onscheduling task executions and dependencies is the business workflow. One can find severalvarious workflow solutions that can offer strong ROI (Return of Investment) through highproductivity, efficient operations, organisational accountability, information accessibility, andprocess intelligence. These solutions help improve business processes that can lead tosimplifying and streamlining of the business.
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Business process management

Investing in a quality management technique such as business process optimization canpresent a whole new world of efficiencies for the company and its employees. In most cases,this method requires end users to use codes as they mould and pinpoint workflow processes.However, some companies provide solutions that require only scripting and mapping withoutcoding. This allows users to have more freedom and eliminating the need for IT in the process.

Nearly all company departments can benefit from this approach. The HR department can usethis to automate everything from leave requests to job requisitions. The finance departmentcan automate approvals in regard to invoices, sales, quotations, capital expenditure, etc. Thus,business process optimisation helps clients achieve measurable results by modifyingtechniques surrounding their trial development life cycle. This website was constructed andestablished for users and researchers looking for adequate information about BPM. Allow us toenlighten you in this area through our written articles and presented data.

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