Business processes

Business process

A business process, also referred to as a business method, can be understood as a grouping of structured and related actions or tasks serving a particular purpose, which upon completion result in fulfilling a service or delivering a product for a customer, either internal or external.

There are three types of business processes:

Management processes: are the processes that govern the operation of an organization.
Typical management processes include "corporate governance" and "strategic management".
Operational processes: constitute the core business and create the primary value stream.
Typical operational processes are purchasing, manufacturing, advertising, marketing, and sales.
Supporting processes: are those which support the core processes.
Examples include accounting, recruitment, call center, and technical support.

A business process starts with a well-defined business objective and ends (ideally) with achieving that outcome. A complex process can be further broken down into several sub-processes, and each has its own attributes and contributes to achieving the overall goal.

The analysis of business processes typically includes the mapping of processes and sub-processes down to the activity level, across the entire organization. Having a comprehensive view of all business activities and how they’re related and executed provides the perfect opportunity for business optimization.

Business processes are designed to produce value for the customer and (ideally) shouldn’t include any unnecessary activities. The outcome of a well-designed and optimized business process is twofold: increased effectiveness (higher value for the customer) and increased efficiency (lower cost for the organization).

A business process can be seen as a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points, easily visualized by using a flowchart. Likewise, a process can be thought of as a sequence of activities with relevant rules, evaluated based on data in the process itself, better represented using a process matrix (table).

There are many methods and techniques to model business processes. The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a standard and modelling technique to specify business processes using a graphical representation, similar to a flowchart and easily understandable by all business stakeholders, adopted and implemented at the heart of Emakin. The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is a related standard and modelling technique to specify business rules in the form of decision tables, also present in Emakin’s core.

Process chain

Process-oriented organizations seek to remove the barriers of rigid structural departments and attempt to avoid functional silos in pursuit of business agility, streamlining operations and increasing productivity.

Business processes are designed to be operated by one or more functional business units within an organization and emphasize the importance of the value chain rather than the partial value contributed by individual units. The produced business value is only realized when the process ends successfully, not upon completion of intermediary stages. Here, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Independently of how we represent it, a business process usually contains a set of sequential tasks or sub-processes, each with alternative paths depending on certain conditions, performed to achieve a given objective or produce an expected output. Additionally, each process or sub-process requires some form of input. The input may be received from and the output may be sent to other business processes, other organizational units, and internal or external stakeholders (e.g. customers).

In general, the various tasks of a business process can be performed in one of the two ways:

Manually: without computer-based business data processing systems;
Electronically: with computer-based business data processing systems.

Typically, some process tasks will be done manually, while most will be done electronically. The data and information being handled throughout the process may be operated on by manual or electronic tasks in any given order. Ultimately, every task needs to be completed for the process to finish successfully.