ROBERT J.R. GRAHAM: Business Process Modelling

Business process modeling (BPM) in systems engineering and software engineering is the activity of representing processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analyzed and improved. BPM is typically performed by business analysts and managers who are seeking to improve process efficiency and quality. The process improvements identified by BPM may or may not require Information Technology involvement, although that is a common driver for the need to model a business process, by creating a process master.

Change management programs are typically involved to put the improved business processes into practice. With advances in technology from large platform vendors, the vision of BPM models becoming fully executable (and capable of simulations and round-trip engineering) is coming closer to reality every day.

History

Techniques to model business process such as the flow chart, functional flow block diagram, control flow diagram, Gantt chart, PERT diagram, and IDEF have emerged since the beginning of the 20th century. The Gantt chart were among the first to arrive around 1900, the flow charts in the 1920s, Functional Flow Block Diagram and PERT in the 1950s, Data Flow Diagrams and IDEF in the 1970s. Among the modern methods are Unified Modeling Language and Business Process Modeling Notation. Still these represent just a fraction of the methodologies used over the years to document business processes.^[1] The term “business process modeling” itself was coined in the 1960s in the field of systems engineering by S. Williams in his 1967 article “Business Process Modeling Improves Administrative Control”.^[2] His idea was that techniques for obtaining a better understanding of physical control systems could be used in a similar way for business processes. It took until the 1990s before the term became popular.

In the 1990s the term “process” became a new productivity paradigm.^[3] Companies were encouraged to think in processes instead of functions and procedures. Process thinking looks at the chain of events in the company from purchase to supply, from order retrieval to sales etc. The traditional modeling tools were developed to picture time and costs, while modern methods focus on cross-function activities. These cross-functional activities have increased severely in number and importance due to the growth of complexity and dependencies. New methodologies such as business process redesign, business process innovation, business process management, integrated business planning among others all “aiming at improving processes across the traditional functions that comprise a company”.^[3]

In the field of software engineering the term “business process modeling” opposed the common software process modeling, aiming to focus more on the state of the practice during software development.^[4] In that time early 1990s all existing and new modeling techniques to picture business processes were considered and called “business process modeling languages.” In the Object Oriented approach, it was considered to be an essential step in the specification of Business Application Systems. Business process modeling became the base of new methodologies, that for example also supported data collection, data flow analysis, process flow diagrams and reporting facilities. Around 1995 the first visually oriented tools for business process modeling and implementation were being presented.

Business model

A business model is a framework for creating economic, social, and/or other forms of value. The term ‘business model’ is thus used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies.

In the most basic sense, a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself. That is, generate revenue. The business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.

Business process

A business process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers. There are three main types of business processes:

Management processes, the processes that govern the operation of a system. Typical management processes include “Corporate Governance” and “Strategic Management“.

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

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

A business process can be decomposed into several sub-processes, which have their own attributes, but also contribute to achieving the goal of the super-process. The analysis of business processes typically includes the mapping of processes and sub-processes down to activity level. A business process model is a model of one or more business processes, and defines the ways in which operations are carried out to accomplish the intended objectives of an organization. Such a model remains an abstraction and depends on the intended use of the model. It can describe the workflow or the integration between business processes. It can be constructed in multiple levels.

A workflow is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, work of a simple or complex mechanism, work of a group of persons,^[5] work of an organization of staff, or machines. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work, segregated in workshare, work split or whatever types of ordering. For control purposes, workflow may be a view on real work under a chosen aspect.

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