Assignment:
Business Process Modeling:
You are employed as a business analyst for the Library and it is your job to describe how the business process is handled today, (AS-IS process) and then suggest how it can be done more efficiently (TO-BE process) by e.g. automating some tasks by the use of IT, change the sequence of activities or making parallel paths in the process.
1. Use Flow Diagram/Chart, Data Flow Diagram (DFD) or UML activity diagrams to model the as-is and the to-be process and make a short description to each activity in the processes, if the activity is handled by humans or is handled automatically.
2. Explain how and why the TO-BE process will be an improvement compared to the AS-IS process. )
3. Which tool would you adopt? TQM (incremental change) or BPR (radical change)? Why?
Business case
The handling of delays for delivering books and journals back to the library is very inefficient. The existing IT system is able to automatically send a reminder to the customer about the delay, but the handling of the delay is done purely manual by the librarians if the customer does not return the book or journal. Because of customer complaints about non-available books and journals and because of several cases of disappearing books, the Library wants to make the process of handling delays more efficient
The Library has access to a workflow management system to enable IT implementation of its business (or work) processes. The management of the Library has decided that the delay process should be analyzed, optimized and implemented in this system. For executing these tasks they have hired a task force consisting of a business analyst, an IT architect and an IT developer.
To be used in the analysis of the current business practice the librarians have been interviewed about how they handle delays; what activities do they perform, in which sequence do they execute the activities and how do they decide what to do next. The interviews result in a heterogeneous view of the practice of handling delays.
The typical scenario of recognizing and handling a delay can be summarized to:
A new customer requests an unavailable book or journal. The librarian checks the system and recognizes the delay. She promises the customer to return to him when the book or journal is returned. Then she looks up the delayed customer in the IT system. If there is a phone number registered, she tries to call him by phone, else she writes a letter telling about the delay, that he already has received one reminder and that he will be charged a fee for the delay. If the book has not been returned a week later, the librarian will send another letter to the delayed customer informing him that he will be reported to the police for theft if the book is not returned. One more week later, if not returned, the librarian contacts her manager, which takes over. The manager contacts the police over phone about a theft. The manager also contacts the bad payment register through a web browser because the customer has not paid the charged fee. The manager registers the customer as a bad payer. He also contacts a dept collection agency by phone to collect the fee. If the customer delivers the book back but does not pay the charged amount, the librarian will send a letter informing him about the missing payment. The librarian uses a web browser to log on to the librarian net bank to see if the customer has paid the fee. If the payment has still not been registered 10 days after the first request, the bad payment register and the dept collection agency is contacted by the librarian.