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MITS5507 Business Process Modelling and Management

Assessment 1: Case Study and Presentation

Introduction
EPC diagram, abbreviation for event-driven process chain diagram, is a flowchart-based diagram that can be used for resource planning and identifying possible improvements of a business process. Businesses use event-driven process chain diagrams to lay out business process workflows, originally in conjunction with SAP R/3 modelling, but now more widely it is used by many companies for modelling, analyzing, and redesigning business processes. This will be a preliminary exercise before utilizing BPMN 1.2 on the group Project in Assessment 3.

Task
In this assignment you will use Signavio, (see the Activity in week 3 for creating a Signavio account) to prepare an EPC diagram for the Case Study below. Make sure to identify the organizational units and actors relevant to the case study and indicate on the EPC diagram the actor that is responsible for each task in the process. Below is the list of tasks required to complete for this assessment:
1. Analyse the workflow of the business process and identify the organizational units and actors relevant to the case study.
2. Critically identify the process relationship, indicating the actor that is responsible for each task in the process.
3. Design and develop the EPC diagram, clearly mentioning each task and actor in the process.
4. Successfully simulate the given process and effective use of Signavio tool.

Case study University Library
Quality and service excellence is the cornerstone of the University of Melbourne Library's commitment to staff and students. Located within Melbourne, regional Victoria and offshore campuses, libraries and access centres support over 60,000 students and staff, providing access to well over half a million books, over 120,000 journal titles, 650 databases (online collections of Journal articles) and 270,000+ e-books.
The handling of delays for delivering books and journals back to the library today 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 manually by the librarians if the customer does not return the book or journal. The management of the Library has decided that the delay process should be managed by a business process management system. A business consultant interviewed a number of librarians about how they handle delays. The interviews result in a heterogeneous view of the practice of handling delays. The (hypothetical) scenario of handling a delay can be summarized as:

A delay can be recognised automatically by the existing library management system. An email will be sent to the customer automatically, requesting them to return or renew the book. If the book has not been returned a week later, a librarian will be notified by email. The librarian looks up the delayed customer in the IT system. If there is a phone number registered, they try to call them by phone, else they write a letter telling about the delay, and that they already have received one reminder and that they 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 them that they will be reported to the police for theft if the book is not returned. One more week later, if not returned, the librarian contacts their manager, who takes over. If the book is returned anytime during this period, the librarian will close this case and no further action will be taken.
If the delayed customer is a student, the manager contacts the academic registry department to suspend the student account. If the delayed customer is a staff member, the manager contacts the Personnel unit to suspend the staff payroll. After that, the manager attaches a fee payable to the customer's account and request the customer to pay, which includes the cost of the book and a late return penalty. The case will be closed by the manager when the charged amount is paid in full. When the case is closed, the manager will notify the academic registry department or the personnel unit to lift the suspension. Occasionally, the customer might return the book and also pay the fee in full. In this case, the cost of the book will be refunded. In some other cases, the customer returns the book without paying the fee. The case remains open but the amount the customer owes will be changed. Sixty days after the delay is first identified, if the case is still open, the manager change the status of the case to "forced close" and contacts a debt collection agency by phone to collect any outstanding fee.

*Assessment 2: Research Report

Introduction
This assessment item relates to the unit learning outcomes as in the unit descriptor. This assessment is designed to improve student presentation skills and to give students experience in researching a topic and writing a report relevant to the Unit of Study subject matter.
Task
For this component you will prepare a report or critique on an academic paper related to Business Process Modelling or Business Process Management. The paper you select must be directly relevant to one of these major topics. Some possible topic areas include but are not limited to:
• Business model
• Business process
• Artifact-centric business process
• Modelling and simulation
• Business reference model
• Business process integration
• Business process re-engineering
• Business management
• Business documentation
• Business automation
• Business improvement
• Business mapping
• Business optimisation
The paper can be from any academic conference or other relevant Journal or online sources such as Google Scholar, Academic department repositories etc. All students must select a different paper. You can discuss with your lecturer before week 7 to decide on a topic. The topic needs to be chosen before week
7. Students may discuss their chosen topics/papers in discussion forum and may avoid similar paper selected by multiple students. The paper you chose should be published in the last 5 years (must be published 2015 or after). Note: popular magazine articles, web sites and blogs are not academic sources.
Your report should be limited to approx. 1500 words (not including references). Use 1.5 spacing with a 12-point Times New Roman font. Though your paper will largely be based on the chosen article, you can use other sources to support your discussion. Thus, citation of sources is mandatory and must be in the IEEE style.

Report Content
Title Page: The title of the assessment, the name of the paper you are reviewing and its authors, and your name and student ID.
Introduction: A statement of the purpose for your report and a brief outline of how you will discuss the selected article (one or two paragraphs). Make sure to identify the article being reviewed.
Body of Report: Describe the intention and content of the article. Document a critical analysis and clearly identify the workflow of the business process, the organizational units, actors, process relationship relevant to your chosen paper. Moreover, critically describe the adopted business process model, method and/or business process management tool which has been developed and applied in your chosen paper. In addition to that, report the approach to diagnose the root causes of poor process performance and recommend appropriate managerial levers for improving them. If such analysis and recommendation are not outlined in your chosen paper, discuss and justify your own view.
• Conclusion: A summary of the points you have made in the body of the paper. The conclusion should not introduce any ‘new' material that was not
discussed in the body of the paper. (One or two paragraphs)
• References: A list of sources used in your text. They should be listed alphabetically by (first) author's family name. Follow the IEEE style.

Assessment 3: Major Assignment

Introduction
The objective of this assignment is to apply the knowledge and experience acquired with BPMN diagrams and Business Process Management concepts gained through the lectures and activities to a simulated industry Case Study Problem. You will need to employ analytical skills for this Case Study to discover existing problems and re-design the business processes.

Task
This assignment is to be completed in teams of 3 or 4 members. You should begin by submitting (at the end of week 7 the signed group participation form provided in the Moodle. This form needs to be completed and signed by all group members. Once submitted, the teams will remain fixed and no member additions or deletions will be allowed unless by approval of your subject coordinator. Any person not part of a group by the end of week 7 will be assigned randomly to a group by your lecturer. There will be no changing this.

Your task is to model, analyze, re-design and automate the processes for the company case study attached to this assignment (Scenario contained within this document). A narrative description of the "as is" process is given in the case study below. You must take this description as the basis to analyze the process, identify improvement alternatives and to design a to- be process. If you find that the description below is not detailed enough, you can make your own assumptions. But any assumptions must be reasonable and documented.

The first step is to understand the "as is" process model. To this end, you are asked to design a detailed BPMN process model reflecting the current state of the process. This BPMN model should not only deal with the "normal course" of action, but it should also show how different types of errors or exceptions are handled, including changes, cancellations and over-due invoices.

Next, you should identify wastes in the process as well as major issues. The latter should be assessed and documented in an issue register. The "issue register" should include the following columns: Issue Priority Number, Issue Name, Short Description, Data/Assumptions, Quantitative Impact and

Qualitative Impact. The issue register should not be an inventory of every possible issue you can think of. Instead, you should focus on major issues that capture the concerns expressed by the customers, staff and management stakeholders.
Based on the identified issues, you should then design a "to-be" process model in BPMN and explain what changes you are proposing and how would these
changes address the identified issues, and/or how they would contribute to achieving the company's strategic goals.
In addition to proposing a "to-be" process model, your team must recommend how the to-be process could be automated and how would this automation affect the way the participants in the process do their work.

Scientific General Consulting Case study

Scientific General Consulting (SGC) is a small business in Melbourne's West, which was established in January of 2012 and currently operates from an office in the Footscray area, Emily Hoordoor is the owner of the business and she has four permanent employees. Her business provides coaching to individuals and organisations in areas of teamwork, leadership and personal performance coaching. The coaching is conducted by Emily and a team of coaches who work on a session by session basis. The other coaches operate as subcontractors.
SGC started as a home-based business with Emily as sole operator. Originally, most of Emily's work came from recommendations from other consulting agencies and associates. Some of her work also came through her LinkedIn account. The amount of work grew to the point that Emily could not handle it all by herself and she would sometimes have to recruit other coaches to take on or help her with some of the work. Seeing an opportunity, the Scientific General Consulting business was begun and has blossomed ever since. A website was created as well as a Facebook presence. The business has grown to the point that she is now providing work to other coaches through her business on a regular basis. There is roughly a 50:50 split between one-to-one work where a coach deals with one person at a time and group sessions, where a company might, for example, run a teamwork workshop for several of its employees simultaneously.
Over time, Emily hired a full-time receptionist and personal assistant. There is a part time bookkeeper to manage the accounts. Later, she hired a "coaching administrator" on a part time basis. His job was to coordinate the work required amongst clients and the coaches when coaching requests came in. A client relations manager deals directly with clients and coaches in the organisation and follow up of coaching sessions.
SGC has a basic website which describes the business and its coaching services, a page with the main people and coaches involved with SGC, testimonials from happy clients and a "Contact us" page for enquiries. The website is not the main source of attracting business and possibly lacks the polish and finesse that one would expect from a professional quality website.
Organisational Culture, Structure, Strategy
Scientific General Consulting (SGC)'s goals are socially and educationally driven. They want to help those in need through understanding the needs of those that they wish to support in training. They also have a genuine desire to improve their clients' career opportunities and professional standards.
At SGC, the great majority of employees believe that the organisation demonstrates high levels of trust, care, recognition and support amongst members. Within groups in the organisation, people feel that they have flexibility, good opportunities to participate and that they can express their opinions freely. Overall, people are friendly, committed to the organisation and there is good teamwork within groups. Individuals appear to be motivated towards innovation.

The organic organisational form, as described by Burns and Stalker (1961), is a structure which is appropriate to dealing with rapidly changing conditions. SGC, being a coaching service provider, is highly governed by regulatory authorities. However, it can be seen that the company operates in an organic structure, based on the following characteristics (Burns & Stalker, 1961):
• Fluid, adaptable, and open to change.
• specialised job functions.
• Few management layers.
• Decision making is not centralised to management
• Minimal ‘micro-management' of employees
By organising itself in this way, SGC benefits from free flows of information, decentralised authority whereby employees are able to participate in decision making activities, and a highly adaptable, dynamic environment (Chimoriya, 2015). One of the main problems within the organization is that the organic structure can be a disadvantage to SGC, by way of increasing the complexity of decision making by expecting input from many individuals, creating an unpredictable and unstructured working arrangement, and incurring higher administration costs by diversifying specialisations in job functions (Chimoriya, 2015). Particularly, the size of the business is becoming larger. Increased training requirements lead them to hire more employees and more collaboration with their partners. Another problem is the business processes structure and management. Sometimes, the process(es) are controlled and managed repetitively by various staff. Occasionally, this can take too long to organize jobs and decreases the customer satisfaction in the long term.
To be able to manage the increasing complexity of the business requirements, leading to increased stakeholder satisfaction, the management need to consider their current business process(es)' efficiencies (such as reduce waste and cost, better utilise resources...). The interdependent strategy with structure relationships can impact an organisation's performance (Tian 2012). Before undertaking significant process restructuring, the changes must be assessed to ensure they fit with the business goals and strategic direction. Two of SGC strategies for 2020 are as follows:
1. Focus on reducing costs and job cycle time, which increases operational productivity - allocating the right coach to the appropriate customer who requires services of both low cost and short cycle time.
2. Continued growth in SGC earnings, supported by improved customer, coach and partners satisfaction.

The challenge

While in the past business processes tended to change only slowly over time, it is now firmly held by Emily and her management team that SGC must be able to adapt and improve their processes more rapidly over time. The terms "agile" and "agile development" have now become common terminology within the management team to reflect the idea that the organisation must rapidly adapt as needed to any future changes. However, they have been aware that making changes to the way the procedures are handled can lead to many problems if these changes are not considered in the context of the overall business.
Since the inception of the company, the growth of staff and sales have led to increasingly complex procedures and it is difficult for Emily to find the time to fully document these. Additionally, Emily has realized that she lacks the skills necessary to do this in a way that would result in meaningful documentation suitable for further analysis. Thus, you have been hired to take on this role.
Company Process
Clients call the company with a request for a personal tutor or coach to develop some particular skill or ability. The company engages a suitable tutor or coach on behalf of the client and handles all the accounting for the relationship for a fee. This is called an assignment. The assignment process starts when the receptionist, Linda, receives a communication from a potential client by phone, letter or email requesting coaching assistance. The receptionist creates an assignment which begins the process. The receptionist requires personal information from the client such as name and address, contact details and the location(s) where the coaching is required by the client, plus information about the client's availability and reasons why they require a coach. The receptionist will check if the client has called previously, in which case much of this information will already be held, but still requires confirmation. When the information is complete, the receptionist submits the request.
The request is received by the coaching specialist, Ahmed, who is familiar with the coaches and what they do but, if needed, can also search the company database to find appropriate coaches for specific skills. There may be several coaches for a particular skill or skills. For example, client Mary may wish to improve her public speaking skills and so Ahmed, the coaching specialist, tries to find the most appropriate public speaking coach. Once located, the assignment needs to be scheduled. Coaches have a variety of commitments at any one time so the scheduler contacts the coach to arrange the most appropriate time. Madeleine, the client relations officer, acts as the scheduler and will contact the client to confirm the assignment, the scheduled time and costs. Sometimes when the client is contacted, they may decide to cancel the coaching rather than go ahead. If the recommended coach is not available at the same time as the client, the scheduler passes the assignment back to the coaching specialist to find another coach.
If the client requests a skill for which there is no coach available, instead of cancelling the assignment, and with the client's consent, the coaching specialist advertises for a coach with that skill. The coaching specialist will interview the applicants in an attempt to find a suitable coach. If there is no suitable coach found within 2 weeks after the advertisement, the coaching specialist informs the client the assignment is cancelled. Otherwise they pass a new recommendation onto the scheduler.
It is the role of the verifier to contact the coach and client shortly before coaching is scheduled to begin, as a reminder and confirmation of the assignment. Madeleine usually does the verification process but if she is too busy, she will ask Ahmed or Linda to do this. Once the coach and client both confirm the assignment, the coaching sessions proceed.

If the client fails to confirm, the assignment is cancelled and the coach/tutor is contacted about the cancellation. If the coach fails to confirm, the company will contact the client and offer to find a new time with the same coach, find a new coach or to allow them to cancel the coaching. If Ahmed is too busy, he may ask Linda or Emily to make contact.
After a coaching assignment has been completed, Madeleine, as the client relations officer, follows up with the client and the coach to determine how satisfied the client and coach or tutor are with the coaching assignment. Madeleine compiles a report once completed questionnaires from both coach and client have been received.
On completion of an assignment, the bookkeeper compiles an invoice and sends it to the client. In the meantime, the coach sends an invoice to the company bookkeeper. The bookkeeper must have both the customer's payment and the coach's invoice before the coach can be paid. If 30 days have elapsed after the bookkeeper has sent the invoice to the client, and no payment is yet received, the bookkeeper writes to the customer to remind them of the payment. If after 90 days payment has still not been received, the bookkeeper passes the unpaid invoice to the manager who writes to the customer. The unpaid debt is sold to a debt collection agency and the client is blacklisted.
Once payment has been received from the client, the coach has been paid and the client relations officer has compiled the satisfaction survey, the assignment is considered complete

The Problems
The Coaching Specialists' Top Ten Problems:
1. The Coaching Specialists have suggested that there could be an advantage in allowing for potential and existing clients to request coaching assignments online as well as over the phone or face to face.
2. The company has found over time that most coaching requests fall into a small number of categories e.g. public speaking, becoming a mentor, personal development and a few intensive professional level language courses (e.g. English, French, Mandarin). The coaching specialist believes that their knowledge is wasted matching these standard assignments, leaving them little time to handle the more unusual ones, finding new potential coaches or thinking about new opportunities for coaching. How to better use resources is a challenge.
3. Market research has shown that many potential clients (people from the general public) are put off by the cost of one-on-one coaching assignments and would be willing to be coached in small groups of three or four people. This would attract many new clients if the costs were reduced accordingly. This applies especially to corporate clients who would send groups of employees to be coached. However, the Coaching Specialists are not sure how to manage this in the most cost effective and convenient way during the process.
4. Scheduling is a time-consuming process organising a common time between the coach and client and then verifying that the coach and client are both still available shortly before the due date. Streamlining this would be a great advantage.

5. The bookkeeper who has other duties other than invoices, payments and receipts can be extremely busy. If the business expands, she believes she will not be able to cope. Who and how to manage payment process is a challenge?
6. Corporate clients are often repeat customers because they send their employees on assignments. They do not like having to go through the receptionist, especially if they have to explain their particular situation again. The coaching specialist is normally familiar with their situation and can quickly arrange what they need. How to restructure their process to better manage corporate clients is essential to the business.
7. A potential client can sometimes call in wanting an assignment set up quickly, e.g. a problem in their business has come up that urgently needs some support, training or mentoring. The current process has limited flexibility to cope with this as assignments are dealt with in the order in which they are received.
8. It is happening with increasing frequency that bad debts are being sold to the debt collection agency, entailing an inevitable loss. It would be better
perhaps to check customer's credit rating beforehand, but that might further delay the assignment process.
9. Some coaches have offered to take group sessions. The idea is appealing to the Coaching Specialists. How could this be coordinated during the process?
10. When a client pays for their assignment, the Bookkeeper matches this with the invoice from the coach. Sometimes these don't match and the bookkeeper can spend considerable time to determine why there is a difference.
The Future
Emily is ambitious and would like to expand the business even further. Firstly, she wants to expand the coaching work the business handles across the entire Melbourne area. However, she can see that both she and her permanent staff are usually very busy and wants to streamline their operating methods. Some of the questions she has been considering are:
• How to re-structure the coaching process to reduce the cost, free up staff and reduce job cycle time?
• How to reduce the waste, such as reducing no value and repetitive tasks?
• How to adopt some of the best practices and methodologies to improve the processes?

Note: Need Assignment 2 only

Attachment:- Business Process Modelling and Management.rar