Business process modeling isn’t a new idea; it’s been around for quite some time. The changes that can be brought in a company’s productivity and efficiency by business process modeling, are nothing short of revolutionary!
But what precisely is it, and why does a business need it? Let this article help you find the answers or you can get in-depth knowledge about business process modeling with the help of a career coach. A teacher career coach can teach you the A to Z of Business process modeling online very easily through workshops and modules.
What is Business Process Modeling (BPM) and how does it work?
Businesses rarely run at full capacity, therefore, to ensure that an organization is performing to its full capacity, you must constantly re-evaluate, improve, and, in certain cases, entirely re-work its processes. A smart place to start is with business process modeling. Business process modeling is the graphical representation of business processes or workflows to discover potential changes and improvements. Flowcharts, data-flow diagrams, and other graphing approaches are commonly used to do this.
Business process modeling and business process mapping can sometimes be used interchangeably as they are quite similar to each other. They might be identical sometimes depending on who you are asking. They’re both used to represent a business’s processes graphically.
BP modeling is used to map two different stages of the process:
- As-is, which is the current state of the process without any adjustments or improvements, and
- To-be, which is the future state after the changes or process improvements have been made.
Process modeling software gives you an analytical depiction of a business’s ‘as-is’ processes and compares the said processes with ‘to-be’ processes for improving organizational efficiency.
What Are the Benefits of Business Process Modeling?
Basically, a pen and a paper are the first tools you’ll need to start business process modeling for your business. To conduct a business process modeling, you are required to digitize it in a way that an engine for workflow can easily comprehend it.
Business process modeling software allows businesses to depict its process digitally before transferring it to a real automated process for the business operation.
Business process modeling has numerous advantages:
- Ensures that everyone understands how the process works.
- Controls the process and ensures uniformity.
- Redundancies and inefficiencies are identified and eliminated.
- Establishes a defined beginning and end to the process.
Business process modeling can also aid in grouping comparable processes and predicting how they should run. The fundamental goal of business process modeling software is to examine how things are currently done and simulate how they should be done to obtain better results.
Techniques for Business Process Modeling
Flowcharts, programs, scripts, and hypertext, and scripts are used to simulate business processes. There is no single method for implementing business process modeling. In fact, there are as many as 12 techniques. Some of the most common business process modeling methodologies are as follows:
Notation for Business Process Modeling (BPMN)
Process analysts and those that design business modeling tools have adopted BPMN as a standard syntax. It’s a simple system of lines, arrows, and geometric shapes that collectively describe the process’s flow and intricacies. When a process consultant looks at a BPMN model, they are able to tell exactly how it should work.
BPMN is still a learned language that, despite its simplicity, is not instantly intuitive for the average business user.
It’s a terrific tool for process consultants, but it’s useless for people who want to build their own apps.
The Universal Process Notation (the UPN)
Universal Process Notation, or UPN, is a more intuitive system than a new language that has to be learnt.
To complete each activity the Universal Process Notation provides a box, and this box depicts what occurs and when it occurs in the sequence, and also who is responsible for it. It is tremendously beneficial for IT to develop and analyze processes, for management to adhere to business standards, and – most crucially – for end-users to comprehend the process as intended.
Petri-Nets
Petri-nets are a mathematical modeling approach that is used to describe business processes as well. Petri-nets employ multiple colors to categorize or color-code complicated process steps, users, and routes.
Flowchart Methodology
Flowcharts are visual representations of complex process flows that are both simple and effective. They depict process steps in the order in which they occur, from inputs to process to outputs. Flowcharts basically, provide the foundation for BPMN to represent complex process flows of a business.
Gantt Diagrams
Gantt charts can depict the complete process using ‘time taken’ as one of the key factors, rather than showing the steps sequentially. It does a better job than the other options at displaying the total time it takes to complete a project.
To conclude, via this business process modeling journal we’ve made it transparent that BPM has unquestionable value for businesses of all sizes and industries. Take advantage of the power of modeling everyday operations in your business today.