A business process or business method 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 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 begins with a customer’s need and ends with a customer’s need fulfillment.
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).
The following is a list of characteristics for a business process:
- Definability: It must have clearly defined boundaries, input and output.
- Order: It must consist of activities that are ordered according to their position in time and space.
- Customer: There must be a recipient of the process' outcome, a customer.
- Value-adding: The transformation taking place within the process must add value to the recipient, either upstream or downstream.
- Embeddedness: A process can not exist in itself; it must be embedded in an organizational structure.
- Cross-functionality: A process regularly can, but not necessarily must, span several functions.
IT plays a very crucial role in a business process, an is involved in each and every stage of the process.
Let us look at some of the ways IT assists Business Processes. |
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