Business Challenge
Processes are at the core of any organisation, yet they are not always clearly defined, documented or optimised. With the rate of change in the business environment increasing and greater pressure to become more efficient; organisations must form a clear view of how their processes operate.
Solution
Business Process Modelling and Analysis provides a comprehensive method for organisations to better mange and improve their processes. It offers the ability to properly document, analyse, and optimise processes and to better align business and IT.
Introduction
Faced with over changing market conditions, competitive pressures, additional regulatory requirements and introduction of new business models, organisations whether in the public or private sector must have the ability to transform and improve continually.
Existing business processes need to be regularly reviewed and improved, while new business initiatives require the development of new processes. Additionally, the developed of new system that automate time-consuming or complex manual activities and the management of end-to-end IT programmes such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) require rigours process analysis, to insure that they deliver the expected business benefits.
Business process modelling help organisations collect and objectively analyse information about their operations, then effectively communicate that information to business and IT staff. Armed with this information, executives can make informed decisions about how to optimise those processes and IT staff can design appropriate solutions. Modelling provides a mechanism for capturing key enterprise business knowledge while increasing collaboration, improving productivity quality, and guiding the development process.
Defining Business Process Modelling and Analysis
Business Process Modelling and Analysis (BPMA) is the practice of documenting, identifying, analysing and improving organisations’ business processes. It leverages software tools and design methodologies to developed models that help the organisation reduce cost, reduce complexity, become more efficient and design better IT solutions.
Business Process Modelling involves the development of models representing both the current (”as is”) and future (”to be”) processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analysed and improved. BPMA is typically performed by organisations who are seeking to improve process efficiency and quality. The process improvements identified may or may not require IT involvement, although that is a common driver for the need to model a business process.
BPMA software tools can provide much more than just simple process mapping, which tends to be a static, two-dimensional representation of the process. What is often missing from a standard process map is the data that goes with the flow and the ability to analyse the data using powerful analytical engines. The data, the process flow and the analysis are often the combination that allows for clear identification of bottlenecks, waste in the operation, root cause determination and prioritisation of improvement opportunities.
A BPMA initiative involves a range of stakeholders within the organisation; executive managers, process owners and the individuals who are actually involved in the day to day execution of these processes, all need to provide their input and process knowledge. Business analysts and process modellers then take this information and create models that document these processes. And finally IT teams can utilise the process models to define business requirements for systems development.
BPMA should be a continuous activity, where process models are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the progress made in improving them or when new requirements come up.
