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MITS5507 Business Process Modelling and Management

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

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?

Attachment:- Process Modelling and Management.rar