Business process Management Assignment: Identifying Issues At ABC Food Corporation
Question
Task: You are required to develop a business process management assignment in NOT more than 2000 words analyzing the Business process managementdiagram for the issues related to the ‘customer ordering’ process at the ABC Food Corporation.
Answer
1. Introduction
The 'business process management' (BPM) is required at the operation of business management with various analytical methods, such as discover the issues, model the problem, analyze the issues, measure for improvement, optimize the process and 'automate' the process. The implementation of 'BPM' has been identified as a successful method in innovating and improving the organization's operations. However, the problems can be arising from the broad business 'context' with a variety of knowledge and approaches (vom Brocke, et. al.,2016). The current report on business process management assignment will analyze and present BPMN (‘Business Process Management and Notation’) diagram for the issues related to the ‘customer ordering’ process at the ABC Food Corporation from Australia.
2. Case Study Overview
ABC Food Corporation is in the market from 2004 and mainly exports Japanese ingredients and food items to Australia as it is the major export of Japanese foods. The company holds one of the most comprehensive distributions and logistics facilities in Australia with its six different branches/divisions. The company has a simple hierarchy structure under its managing director. The mid-level managers from different departments are responsible for documenting and providing monthly reports to a higher authority. The current case study is specifically focusing on their Melbourne division at their customer order processes. The customers (from local shops and supermarkets) orders their required items from the company via phone, email, or fax. However, the management is currently facing some issues regarding their order accept and delivery process. The current report will discuss the current issues at the company’s ‘As-Is’ process.
3. Assumptions from the Case Study
The current operation process in ‘customer order’ in the ABC Food Corporation is complex and proceeding with several steps, such as registering the customer, acquiring order list, matching and picking up the items from the warehouse, let the customer know about any unavailable products or alternative options, and engage transport company to deliver the items. However, the current process described in the business process management assignment has some issues, such as some issues in their 'BPM' process, such as wrong interpretation of the item list, continuous changes in the order list, customer dissatisfaction for the late order delivery process, limited credit amount, and other issues regarding transportation. The current 'digital' advancement makes various challenges into the business transformation and 'BPM' process application with a specific map, documents, identification, and implementation (Hitpassand Astudillo,2019). The current case study is also lacking some of the technical aspects regarding their business process and management operations that causes several issues.
4. Overview of ‘BPM,’ Process Analysis, Design and Development: Literature Review
According to the readings of Mendlinget. al. (2018) undertaken in this segment of business process management assignment, the current 'digital' advancement presents blockchain technology that helps the organizations with a customizes, sizable, and transforming 'BPM' approach. There are both advantages and disadvantages regarding the blockchain technology in the 'BPM' and organizations are optimizing the technologies to generate beneficial aspects and sustainability. The blockchain technology in the current trends and practices under the 'BPM' can be used as establishing its 'lifecycle' with the utmost security and transparent customer engagement processes. The implementation of blockchain technology can help the organization in generating a 'tamper-proof' record and documentation list of the transaction from different time-frame, and provide a trust factor between the customer and organization.
According to Žemguliene and Valukonis(2018), the business process analysis from different methods and instruments inside a business process helps in enhancing the possibilities and opportunities during a business decision-making process. The increasing implementation of business process analysis makes the intellectual outline of an organization enriched and makes the research stream optimized. The 'actionable' knowledge from a business analysis is always beneficial for evaluating the performance of an organization and integrating different domains in a business process. The business process analysis is directly aligned with the performance evolution in a business process for enhancing the ‘BPM.’
According to Poll et. al. (2018), the constant changes in the customer's needs and requirements make an organization to enhance their digital and technical opportunities to prevent any further challenges and issues. The articles have identified that various business processes have been forecasting the negative future outcome of failure due to their restriction at the 'BPM.' It is because the 'BPM' is often dominated by other management and monitoring processes, such as 'lean' management, traditional and contemporary process monitoring process. The future 'BPM' is more activity-oriented that provides information regarding the current 'business process' simulation, future predictions, and accurate forecasting for a business process.
According to Pourmirza et. al. (2017), the increasing complexity in the modern business processes makes the organizations to implement and adopt different 'cutting-edge' developments for enhancing innovations. These kinds of changes help the organizations in influencing their business process, structure and operations optimized, and support the activities of 'BPM' systems widely. The systems under the 'BPM' is constantly changing because of growing challenges and issues inside the organization's complex business activities. The architecture of 'BPM' helps a business process in evaluating and practicing different functions that support its operations.
According to Hussein et. al. (2018), the current ‘digital’ advancement in various technical evolutions, such as blockchain technology and ‘IoT’ derives various challenges and issues in an organization’s ‘BPM.’ The implementation of blockchain technology can provide a publicly open transaction process that is transparent and secured, and documented in different chains of files. On the other hand, it can enhance networks and improve the security process in that specific network. Blockchain technology provides a 'decentralized' distribution of blocks that contains customer's information in a stable and anonymous format. The issues regarding the technologies can arise problems regarding its scalability, privacy control, and implications.
5. What are the issues related to the current process mentioned in the business process management assignment?
5.1 Issues
The issues regarding the ‘BPM’ implementation and its sustainability factors are numerous. In the current case study context, two of the most concerning problems are – wrong interpretation of the order list and limited credit offer to the customers. The sales staff at the ABC Food Corporation often misinterprets the orders retrieved from the telephone. On the other hand, the company has restricted their credit limit up to $1000. But the existing technical complexity generates a problem regarding the payment deduction process that takes two weeks to complete and the additional orders cannot get attached to the previous credit amount. It makes confusion among the sellers and customers. The blockchain technology has pointed out the issues regarding untrusted payment transactions between two parties without any 'autonomous' program or 'smart contract' system at the organization's 'computational' infrastructure (Weber, et. al., 2016).
5.2 Justification for Changes
The complicated payment process makes the operational processes stagnant and complicated. The current system at the ABC Food Corporation generates issues for the customers in understanding how much money they have left after placing their first order during the second-order placement within two weeks. It can be stated herein business process management assignment that the blockchain technology implementation can resolve coordination problems with 'smart contract' technology (García-Bañuelos, et. al., 2017). On the other hand, the manual telephonic order retrieving process needed to be backed up by digital technology for mitigating additional ‘operation’ costs.
5.3 Limitations
The restriction at the credit amount needed to be resolved for generating more businesses. It can be fixed by providing an instant credit amount after placing an order. However, the limitations can occur from the specific amount of credit that is $1000 and the order placement cannot be overboard than that amount. The telephonic interaction process is difficult to resolve as it is one of the most vital interaction processes with the customers.
6. BPMN Diagram Explanation
6.1 BPMN Diagram for Issue 1
|
Tasks and Gateways Names |
Explanation |
|
Wrong Interpretation of Telephonic Order |
When the customer places an order via telephone, the call operator writes the order. Manual documentation can generate mistakes. If a mistake occurs, the customer contacts the sales team regarding the wrong item and change the order. It will take another entry of the fresh order. The customer can contact the sales team for further modification. |
|
Decision Gateway |
If exchange the order, the customer can go 'Contact Seller' |
6.2 BPMN Diagram for Issue 2
|
Tasks and Gateways Names |
Explanation |
|
Restricted Credit Amount |
The company provides a $1000 credit balance to each customer during the purchase process. The customer can order their requirements and the company will deduct the money from their credit balance. The process takes up to 14 days. Additional order during these 14 days cannot generate the deducted credit amount until the 'account department' receives an invoice from the sales team and refresh the credit limit. |
|
Decision Gateway |
If placing another order within 14 days from placing the previous order, the customer needs to contact the accounting department for invoice to refresh the remaining amount at their credit balance |
7. Conclusion
The effective operational processes at the ABC Food Corporation can be implemented by identifying the 'As-Is' issues at their 'BPM.' The problems identified with the 'BPMN' diagramdeveloped in the business process management assignment provide a clearer picture of the current operation process and challenging areas. The understanding of current trends and advancement at the 'BPM' can help in framing a better recommendation plan in the future.
8. References
García-Bañuelos, L., Ponomarev, A., Dumas, M. and Weber, I., 2017, September. Optimized execution of business processes on blockchain.Business process management assignment In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 130-146). Springer, Cham.
Hitpass, B. and Astudillo, H., 2019. Industry 4.0 challenges for business process management and electronic-commerce. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 14(1), pp.I-III.
Hussein, D.M.E.D.M., Hamed, M. and Eldeen, N., 2018. A blockchain technology evolution between Business Process Management (BPM) and Internet-of-Things (IoT). Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl., 9(8), pp.442-450.
Mendling, J., Weber, I., Aalst, W.V.D., Brocke, J.V., Cabanillas, C., Daniel, F., Debois, S., Ciccio, C.D., Dumas, M., Dustdar, S. and Gal, A., 2018. Blockchains for business process management-challenges and opportunities. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems (TMIS), 9(1), pp.1-16.
Poll, R., Polyvyanyy, A., Rosemann, M., Röglinger, M. and Rupprecht, L., 2018, September. Process forecasting: Towards proactive business process management. In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 496-512). Springer, Cham.
Pourmirza, S., Peters, S., Dijkman, R. and Grefen, P., 2017. A systematic literature review on the architecture of business process management systems. Information Systems, 66, pp.43-58.
Weber, I., Xu, X., Riveret, R., Governatori, G., Ponomarev, A. and Mendling, J., 2016, September. Untrusted business process monitoring and execution using blockchain. In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 329-347). Springer, Cham.
Žemgulien?, J. and Valukonis, M., 2018. Structured literature review on business process performance analysis and evaluation.
vom Brocke, J., Zelt, S. and Schmiedel, T., 2016. On the role of context in business process management. International Journal of Information Management, 36(3), pp.486-495.
9. 9. Appendices
