Business:

An economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money, on the basis of their perceived worth. Every business requires
some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis.

Business Process:
A business process is an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific organizational goal.

There are three types of business processes:

1. Management processes:
The processes that govern the operation of a system. Typical management processes include "Corporate Governance" and "Strategic
Management".
2. Operational processes:
Processes that constitute the core business and create the primary value stream. Typical operational processes are Purchasing,
Manufacturing, Advertising and Marketing, and Sales.
3. Supporting processes:
Supporting processes are those which support the core processes. Examples include Recruitment, Call center, Technical support.

A business process begins with a mission objective and ends with achievement of the business objective. 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.

Business Processes are designed to add value for the customer and should not include unnecessary activities. The outcome of a well designed business
process is increased effectiveness (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. For instance, the Business Process Modeling Notation is a Business
Process Modeling technique that can be used for drawing business processes in a workflow.
Fundamentals of Business process:
 A process is a system of activities that creates value for customers (these are activities that the customer is willing to pay for).
 A process is cross-departmental. Departments are functional towers of expertise, but processes cut across departments.
 Every process should be documented and fully understood by everyone participating in the process.
 In order to fully understand your processes, they should be mapped. Mainly 2 tools are used: flowcharts and process maps
 Processes should be in statistical control.
 When processes are in statistical control, process capabilities can be calculated. Those can be seen as performance measures, and as a basis for
business improvement.  

Business Process Model:

A Business Process Model (BPM) is commonly a diagram representing a sequence of activities. It typically shows events, actions and links or connection
points, in the sequence from end to end. A Business Process Model includes both IT processes and people processes. Business Process Modeling by
implication focuses on processes, actions and activities, etc. Resources feature within BPM in terms of how they are processed. People (teams,
departments, etc) feature in BPM in terms of what they do, to what, and usually when and for what reasons, especially when different possibilities or
options exist, as in a flow diagram. Business Process Modeling is cross-functional, usually combining the work and documentation of more than one
department in the organization.
History of Business Process Model:
Business process model has a very rich and long history here we will briefly discuss the history of Business Process Model in the form of a summarized time
line:

1776: Business process was born. Adam smith gave the idea of division of labor breaking up the whole task and giving specialized tasks o employees

1900s: Fredrick Winslow Taylor conducted Time & Motion studies. Business processes were analyzed and time taken and number of steps in each process
was reduced.

1920s: Frank Gilbreth developed first method of documenting Process flow. He presented his paper 'Process charts - First Steps to Finding the One Best
Way' to the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1921. By 1947, the ASME Standard for Process Charts was universally adopted, using
Gilbreth's original notation.

1930s: Great Recession and theories of optimizing production.

1970s: Research and development of office automation flourished between 1975 and 1985. Specialist workflow technologies and the term 'workflow' were
established.

While BPM has its historical origins in workflow, there are two key differences:

 Document-based processes performed by people are the focus of workflow systems, while BPM focuses on both people and system processes.
 Workflow is concerned with processes within a department while BPM addresses processes spanning the whole organization.

1980s: The Quality Era.

1990s: Business Process reengineering. Drastic, brutal and difficult to manage and a revolutionary process

2000s: Business Process Model an outgrowth of BPR but less drastic, less brutal and at more manageable scale.
Purpose of Business Process Model:
A Business Process Model diagram is a tool - a means to an end, not a performance outcome in its own right. The final output is improvement in the way
that the business process works.

The focus of the improvements is on 'value added' actions that make the customer service and experience better, and on reducing wasted time and effort.

There are two main different types of Business Process Models:

 The 'as is' or baseline model (the current situation)

 The 'to be' model (the intended new situation)

Which are used to analyze, test, implement and improve the process.

The aim of modeling is to illustrate a complete process, enabling managers, consultants and staff to improve the flow and streamline the process.

The outcomes of a business process modeling project are essentially:

 Value for the customer, and

 Reduced costs for the company,
 Leading to increased profits.

Other secondary consequences arising from successful Business Process Modeling can be increased competitive advantage, market growth, and better staff
morale and retention.
Creating a business process model
Now we will discuss how to create a business model using different symbols and notations

Component parts of a BPM

An 'as is' or baseline model gives an overall picture of how the process works. Any structural, organizational and technological weak points and
bottlenecks can then be identified, along with possible improvements at the next stage.

We will need the following information before we start to construct our model:

1. The desired outcome of the process.

2. The start and end points (customer need and customer need fulfillment).
3. The activities that are performed.
4. The order of activities.
5. The people who perform the activities.
6. The documents and forms used and exchanged between functions and from customers and suppliers.

Usually two drafts of model are created first one is a rough draft used to finalize the sequence of activities and in the next draft all activities are
drafted in the form of a flow chart in any modeling software and all the users are made familiar of their activities.

Symbols and notation

The diagrammatical representation of Business Process Modeling is commonly 'notation'. Different symbols are used for this purpose. Every
organization may use their own set of symbols which should be easily understood by the users. There are some widely used and known
symbols for BPM and they are
IT-based activity - documentation, sending or Decision point or Gateway - where a decision has to be
requesting information, for example) made and the flow can go more than one way.

   

Action - to be carried out by a person in the Event - An action or IT-based activity from an external
organization. source or carried out by the customer.
Example of a Business process Model:
To understand the business process model we will take a general example of Doctor-patient interaction. Whenever a persons falls ill and he goes for a check
up following steps are taken.

1. Patient gets appointment

2. Doctor gives Checkup Time
3. Patient tells Doctor about Illness
4. Doctor Check him
5. Writes prescription
6. Patient Request for Medicines
7. After payment receives medicine and leaves.
Now we will convert these steps in a Business Process Model:
An Accounting related detailed example:
There are different subprocesses in the business process. As we have discussed earlier that there are 3 substeps in a business process. Here will focus on
the operational processes and will discuss 4 operational processes:

1. Sales Process
2. Purchase Process
3. Accounting Process
4. Reporting Process

1. Sales & Purchase Process:

Sales and purchase are the two most frequent and most important processes for any business. They may be in the form of physical goods or services. There
are different steps involved in the sales and purchase process they are summarized below.

1. Initial Contact
2. Proposal and Acceptance
3. Terms of Sale/purchase
4. Acceptance by both parties
5. Payment & delivery
6. Closing sale & purchase process
Now we will try to portray these steps in a Business process model:
 2. Accounting & Reporting Process:
Accounting is also a very important process. Accounting involves all the activities regarding expenses, revenues, payrolls etc. and an effective process in
required to have a transparent and good system. We will take a general example of and employee requiring a certain amount of money to buy some
material for the production process. Following steps will be included in this process:

1. Employee will file an application for the expense

2. Manager will analyze application and will examine the respective account
3. Then application will be reviewed for approval
4. If expense is within authorized limit for that employee then Amount will be transferred to his account
5. If expense is beyond his limits then the application will be rejected
Here is a Business process model:
Current Trends of Business Process Model
Business process modeling is still not applied and understood completely. It is still in its developing stage and organizations are trying to implement BPM
effectively. Now there are many software companies which are providing services to organizations for business process modeling. Some of most commonly
used tools for BPM are

 Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

 Cognition enhanced Natural language Information Analysis Method (CogNIAM)
 Extended Business Modeling Language (xBML)
 Event-driven process chain (EPC)
 ICAM DEFinition (IDEF0)
 Unified Modeling Language (UML), extensions for business process such as Eriksson-Penker's
 Riva method using Role Activity Diagrams (RAD)

Programming languages that are being introduced for BPM include: Some standards:

 BPMN
 Business Process Execution Language (BPEL),
 Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL).
 XML Process Definition Language (XPDL),

Some vendor-specific languages:

 Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) supports EPC,

 Java Process Definition Language (JBPM),