Part 1:

Business Processes Mapping

Learning Objectives

 Understand goals of business processes

 Understand what is process mapping
 Understand process map symbols
 Roles in process mapping
 Steps involved in mapping business processes

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 Business Processes

A company is only as effective as its business processes

 Some processes make the company’s main operations (e.g,
product production)
 While other processes provide supporting roles such as HR
or accounting

Business Processes
Examples of processes

 In manufacturing; product assembly process, quality

assurance process, …

 In finance; invoice process, billing process, …

 In healthcare; medical assessment process, …

 In HR; vacation request process

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Business Processes
 Formal processes refer to processes that are ‘well
documented’

 Discussion:
– Are most of the business processes in your workplace formal or
informal?
– Give examples of formal/informal business processes in your
workplace.
– What are some of the advantages of having formal processes over
informal ones?

Process Map
 A method for visualizing the process as a diagram
 The diagram includes all activities and roles in the process

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Process Map Symbols

Process Map Symbols

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Process Map Symbols

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Process Map Symbols

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Process Map Symbols

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Process Map Symbols

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 Exercise: create a process map
 Scenario: a service provider company has the following
sales process.

 Sales department receives requests from clients (or

prospects), and after approval of the quotation, the
technical team steps in to deliver the service

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Exercise: create a process map

 The sequence of facts
– Step 1: client Contact
– Step 2: Sending quotation
– Step 3: Client Approval
– Step 4: Service delivery

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 Exercise: create a process map
 Now sketch the process map And keep in mind

– Avoid assigning specific names in roles (Ahmed, Mohammed, …);

roles can be team, positions, departments, …
– Naming ‘best practices’:
• Event - Noun + Past verb (e.g., Client Called)
• Activity - Verb + noun (e.g., Create Quotation)
• Decision Point - Question
– Activities such as send/receive can generally be excluded because
they are represented by the flow lines

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Useful tools for creating process maps

 https://www.draw.io (online)
 Microsoft Visio
 SmartDraw
 and many many more

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Useful tools for creating process maps

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Useful tools for creating process maps

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Exercise (continue)
 Draw the process map using draw.io

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Exercise (continue)

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 Benefits of Process Mapping
 Identify responsible parties in each process
 Highlight workflow inefficiencies including
– Bottlenecks: a process bottleneck is a work stage that gets more
work requests than it can process at its maximum throughput
capacity.
– excessive handoffs
– duplicate work
– unproductive utilization of resources
 Orienting / training new employees

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Real World issues

 How do you gather information to create a process map?

– Self generate method: if you are an expert at this process

– One-on-one interview method: each person involved in the
process is interviewed separately and sequentially
– Group interview method

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 Steps for drawing process maps
 Identify the scope (start / end) for the process
 Agree on the level of detail to be displayed
 Determine the roles participating in the process
 Identify the triggers (start) of the process

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Tips for drawing a professional process map

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Exercise - Electric City

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Exercise - Electric City

Steps:
 Identify the scope:

 Identify the roles:

 Draw the process map*:

* Make it look professional

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Exercise - Electric City
Steps:
 Identify the scope:
– The process is: order to cash
 Identify the roles:
– Customer, sales clerk, warehouse employee
 Draw the process map*:

* Make it look professional

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Exercise - Electric City

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 High-level maps vs detailed ones
 High level do not provide enough details to identify the
root of the problem

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Extensions to the basic Symbols

 We saw the basic symbols; more advanced and specific
symbols exist and can be used to show more details on the
map

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Exercise - a more advanced process map

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Exercise - a more advanced process map

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Exercise - a more advanced process map

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Exercise - a more advanced process map

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 Exercise (individual)
 Visualize the 4 business processes you have identified in
your previous class work

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(Additional) Benefits of Process Mapping

 Helps during the planning of the ERP system phase – to
transform ‘as is’ business processes to ‘to be’
 Determine if ‘as is’ measures of performance are
appropriate
 Understand internal controls in the process

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 Part 2:
Business Processes Redesign

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Business Processes

A company is only as effective as its business processes

 Some processes make the company’s main operations (e.g,
product production)
 While other processes provide supporting roles such as HR
or accounting

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 Learning Objectives
 Identify types of problems with business processes
 Business processes improvement Vs. reengineering
 Business process reengineering and ERP
 Steps of business process improvement

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The ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ process maps

 ‘As is’ process map - visualizes the current processes in a
company. It is useful for:
– Developing requirements for an ERP system
• Mapping existing processes into configurations of the ERP system
– Making ‘necessary’ changes (improvements) to the process
• Often to match ‘best practices’ in ERP systems

 ‘To be’ process map - visualizes the improved (more

efficient) processes
– If the improved process is the best practice, the ‘as is’ map should
be already visualized in the ERP system documentation

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 A company is only as effective as its business processes
 Companies spend time to analyze and optimize their processes
 The following are some criteria for a good business process:
– Cost effective: processes should enable faster task accomplishment to
reduce cost
– Customer satisfaction and differentiation: processes should enable
better customer service
– Standardization: when possible, processes should be standardized
– Value added activities: process should add a value, e.g.,
• Accomplish something the customer cares about
• Converts input to output
• It is imperative, done right the first time
– Improved agility and speed: processes should be fast to change in
response to the marketplace

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Analysis of business processes

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Common Process Issues

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

 BPR is fundamental radical redesign of business
processes to achieve breakthrough performance in key
performance indicators
– cost, quality, speed, and service.

 Optimizing business processes can drastically improve the

performance companies
– Reduce process cycle time
– Reduce paper work
– Reduce mistakes
– Reduce rework

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 Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

 So how can you measure ‘radical’ change?

A change is _____ if it achieved _______ improvement in

key performance indicators (cost, quality, speed & service)
– Radical -> >60%
– Major -> 30-60%
– Incremental -> -30%

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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

 How to achieve BPR? Two ways:
– a. Clean Slate reengineering
– b. Technology enabled reengineering

16/09/2021 23:28 Prof. Jamel FEKIH - University of Jeddah, FCIT, IS Dept., Jeddah - KSA
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Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
 How to achieve BPR? Two ways:
– a. Clean Slate reengineering
– b. Technology enabled reengineering

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a- Clean Slate reengineering

 Clean slate reengineering: starting over from scratch and
completely redesign the process
– If we had no limitation, what would this process look like?

 There are 8 BPR principles that can be used to guide the

design of ‘to be’ processes (next slide)

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 a- Clean Slate reengineering

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Steps to move from ‘as is’ to ‘to be’

 visualize the ‘as is’ process
 Carefully redesign it, and visualize the ‘to be’ process
 Do a gap analysis between the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ processes,
technologies, and structures.
 Implement the proposed solution
=> the outcome is often a recommendation to change
some or all business systems
HOWEVER, the system needs are often determined
after redesigning more than one process

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 Example
 Company: Harely davidosn
 Year: 1990s
 Process: Purchasing
After interviewing the purchasing personnel, they found
out that 85% of their time is spent on non-strategic
activities (e.g., reviewing inventory)

The goal was to have 70% of time spent Developing

supplier relationship, analyze performance, improve quality ...

It took 1.5 to analyze the as is process, then design the new to be process, and find
a suitable ERP system
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Drawbacks of Clean slate BPR

 Very costly: Only first movers in industry and large
companies with deep pockets can afford it
 Requires devoted experts to document processes, develop
requirements, and design a better process
 Takes time: process analysis and redesign is (alone) a very
time consuming task, not to mention the time spent in
applying the technology
What about clean slate failures?
 Radical changes are not always welcomes by employees
(especially if it leads to job loss)
 Reengineering vs downsize?
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 Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
 How to achieve BPR? Two ways:
– a. Clean Slate reengineering
– b. Technology enabled reengineering

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a- Technology enabled reengineering

 Instead of starting from scratch, adopt an ERP system
(which usually has constraints on the business operations)
 Also known as constrained reengineering, because the
imposed system constrain the process design

The company should never adopt an ERP system and keep

its old processes in place
Adopting ERP best practices requires fundamental
changes in the way employees do their work, and the way
companies interacts with customers, suppliers, and business
partners
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 Comparison of clean slate vs tech enabled BPR

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Factors for reengineering success

 Management commitment and leadership
 Defined scope
 Managed expectations
 Looking at other companies for similar processes and
similar solutions
 Setting and meeting short term goals
 Scaling up and down: can the redesigned processes work
on small and large divisions?

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 Business Process Improvement (BPI)
 BPR is radical redesign of the process
 BPI is gradual/incremental improvement over time
 Though the effect is different, yet the goal is similar
– Strive for business processes that are streamlined, standardized,
and of better quality in order to better serve customers, increase
employee morale, and improve the company’s ability to anticipate,
manage and respond to changes in the marketplace
 Some of the methods used to improve processes. Include:
– Six sigma
– Lema thinking
– Total quality management

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Organizational Roles

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 BPI Model

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Processes in Need of change

Keep in mind the 3 C’s: customer, core, competition
– Customer facing processes
– Core competency processes
– High volume, low margin processes
– High defect, high reward processes
– High skill, time intensive processes
– High complexity, specialized resource processes
– Processes built around obsolete or changing technology

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Stakeholders for business process transformation
 Customer
 Employees
 Information technology staff
 Executive suite
 Business partners
 Suppliers
 Other interested parties

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