Process Identification (1)

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 1. Process Identification
• An organization applies BPM need to identify its processes and criteria
for selecting which processes have high priority.
• What processes are carried out in the organization?
• Which one of these processes the organization should
concentrate on?
• Output: Process Architecture (Captures business processes and their
scope)

• The process identification has two phases:

1. Designation: the goal of this phase is to understand the processes
involved in the organization and their interrelationships.

2. Evaluation (process selection): as we understand the processes

and their interrelationships, this phase is about prioritization
development among the identified processes for BPM phases
(modeling, redesign … etc) .
 1. Process Identification
1. Designation:
• The first step here is to define, or update, meaningful enumeration
of existing processes; this step is difficult especially for
organizations which are new to process-centered organization.

• One of the difficulties here, from the hierarchical nature of

business processes, is which criteria can be used to determine
independent (core) business processes and which of these are part
of others.

• There are many views of how to categorize business processes:

1. There are only two processes: managing product line and
managing order cycle.
2. There are only three process: developing new product,
delivering products, and managing customer relationship.
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
3. Porter, who proposes value chain model, believes there are two
categories:
-Core (primary) processes: these processes cover the essential
value creation of an organization which is production of
parts and services. The customers pay for these goods and
services i.e. design and development, manufacturing,
marketing and sales, delivery, after-sales
-Support processes: are processes that enable the execution of
the primary processes. Human resources, IT, infrastructure,
and procurement are support processes.
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
4. Some researchers add another category to Porter’s
categorization which is management processes. Provide
directions, rules, and practices for the core and support
processes. These include strategic planning, budgeting, and risk
management, as well as investors, suppliers, and partners
management.
…
…
…

“Note that this topic is disputable”.

Porter’s Model

Management
Processes

Customers / Owners
Suppliers / Partners

Core Processes

Support Processes
After Porter
Core, Management and Support Processes
Management processes Sign
provide direction, rules and Contracts
practices
Establish
Sourcing Plan
Evaluate
Vendors
Procedure Vendors
Process

Core processes
Fill Order Process
generate value as they
are directly linked to Receive Approve Deliver
Fill Order
external customers Order Order Order

Reorder
Supplies
Support processes provide
Stock Process Order
resources to be used by other Supplies Supplies
processes
Receive
Supplies
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
• The question here is does the view on processes without any further
subdivision useful for an organization??

• Very few processes could become very complex. The implementation

and automation would be also extremely difficult.

• The conclusion is that we must balance and consider manageability

when the number of processes are identified in the designation phase.
Small number of processes => bigger individual scope (many
operations).
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
Advantages and disadvantages of large scope:
Advantages disadvantages
The more operations considered It is difficult to manage.
in one process, the easier the It will involve large number of
redundant work will be stakeholders which needs effective
removed which leads to more communication.
efficiency.
It is difficult to make models of
these processes up to date.
It is complex to enhance these large
processes.
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
• There is no “number fits all” - it really depends on organization’s
domain and size.

• The number of processes (enumeration) to be defined needs to be

reasonable detailed and aligned with the aim of BPM in an
organization. For large and diversified organizations, it is better to
identify large number of processes. For small organization, it is vise
versa.
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
• Not only the identifying of what business processes we have is
important, but also understanding the relationship between different
processes is essential.

• The importance of understanding the relationship is to show how the

performance of one process is related to another. E.g. if you redesign
X process, it is important to know what processes depend on the X
process and are affected by its outcomes.

• There are ways to present the relationship between the processes: 1)

Hierarchical relationship and 2) Sequential relationship.
 1. Process Identification
Designation:

• Hierarchical relationship: in case of broad and narrow processes,

we need to relate narrow processes to broad processes; the narrow
processes can be consideredsub-processes
as ?????????????? of broad
processes. E.g. order management is broad process and billing,
delivery, shipment … etc are narrow processes.

• Sequential relationship: here we define downstream and

upstream. E.g. order booking is upstream compared to billing
(downstream) because order booking is performed ???????
before billing
process.
Hierarchy Example
Level A
 Hierarchy Example
Level B

Level C
Hierarchy Example
Level D
 1. Process Identification
Designation:
• After identifying the number of processes and the interrelationships
between them, there are guidelines for the designation phase of business
processes:

-Reference models: they standardize different processes, which have

unique characteristics and deliverable products, and how their
performance are measured. The benefit of the reference model when
we benchmark the performance with competitors. We may use the
reference model as a checklist when we identify processes.

-Processes change over time

 identification should be iterative (process continuous in nature )
 improvement opportunities are time-constrained
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
• The process prioritization is the second goal of the process
identification because not all processes receive the same amount of
attention.

• There are three common criteria for the evaluation phase of the process
identification (other criteria than the three can be used):
- Importance - Dysfunction - Feasibility
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
1- Importance: it refers to the assessment of each process in relation to
the strategic goals of an organization in order to find which processes
have the great impact on these goals.

2- Dysfunction: this criterion gives a high level decision of the health of

each process to identify which processes have big problem and affect
the strategic goals achievement. The dysfunction processes may benefit
most of BPM initiatives or projects.

3- Feasibility: it refers to the determination of how each process

susceptible to BPM initiatives or projects. Culture and politics are the
most common obstacles to get the results of BPM initiatives or projects.
So, we perhaps can say the focus BPM initiatives should be on those
processes that we can achieve the expected results.
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
• To apply these criteria in the evaluation of the processes identification,
certain information should be exist and available for the evaluation
purpose.
 For the importance criteria, organizations should clearly define their
strategy and strategic goals. Then the concentration can be made on
the interested processes to support the defined strategic information.

 For the dysfunction, organizations can use quantitative or

qualitative approaches. Organizations not familiar with process-
centered fashion, do not have quantitative information about their
performance and for this reason they need to set up systems and
procedures to collect such information. These organizations can use
qualitative approach to identify which of processes are not working
well.
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
 For the dysfunction criteria, management or participants views and
impressions about the performance of the processes, or customer
evaluations collected through surveys or their complaints can be
used as qualitative approaches to collect interested data.

 For the feasibility criteria, politics within organizations may affect

the success.
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
The question now is: do we get the same processes if we use the
three criteria mentioned above?

 NO, because we may find an important process strategically and

also it is most difficult to manage and enhance. The conclusion here
is that various evaluation criteria should be balanced to reach a list
of those processes that should receive priority over others.
 1. Process Identification
Evaluation:
• Another question is: do we include all processes, that are important,
dysfunction, and feasible, in BPM initiatives?

 As a general answer NO, because BPM initiatives consume resources (people, money,
and time) and the majority of organizations, even motivated to redesign current
processes, are short of these resources. Just big organizations can afford working and
supporting more than BPM initiatives.

 Another justification is that carrying out many BPM projects will make coordination
complex because of the relationship between processes.

 Here we suggest:
• Focus on small set of critical processes and dedicate resources to achieve the
expected results and BPM experience.
• This may provide basis for small improvements. The bad thing here is that we
miss major enhancements, and participants feel not getting a return for their
effort.
 1. Process Identification
Designing process architecture:
• A process architecture: is conceptual model to show processes of an
organization and makes relationships between these processes
explicitly. It is developed using systematic way.

• Processes are defined in different levels of detail; see the following

diagram.
Level 1
Process landscape

Level 2
Abstract process models

Detailed process models

(e.g. BPMN)
 1. Process Identification
Designing process architecture:
• Level 1 (process landscape): represents the main processes on a very
abstract level. Each process of this level has a bit detailed processes at
level two.

• Level 2 (abstract process models): shows the processes with more

details yet in relatively abstract level. As level 1, the processes at level
2 points detailed processes at level 3.

• Level 3 (detailed process models): represents the full details of each

process; these details include e.g. BPM notations (control flow, events,
inputs, outputs, … etc).
1. Process Identification