Reference no: EM133552211

Business Analysis and Systems Development Approaches

Assignment

Business Process Redesign Report

In this assignment you will analyse, model and design improvements to a business process from a real organisation of your choice. Your submission will take the form of a report to the organisation from which the process comes. Internal students should work groups of two but pairs must be formed within the workshop, not across workshops. External students will be able to use the Discussion Forum to find another student to work with. When choosing who to work with, carefully consider the following points:

• You must be able to identify a process that one of you has sufficient connection with to succeed in undertaking the work required for this report

• You must be confident that the person you are planning to work with has a commitment to the work that is equal to yours. Equal marks will be given to each student.

To do

To successfully complete the assignment, you should:

• Identify a business process to use as the basis for the assignment. An ideal business process is one from an organisation where you have worked or a community organisation you have been involved with (e.g. sporting club). This close association is best because it means that you will have the depth of understanding of the chosen process needed to model it accurately and understanding of the issues associated with it that could be addressed by business process improvement. Alternatively, you could use the process discovery methods discussed in Topic 6

- e.g. interview someone else to gain knowledge about a process they are involved with. If you are unsure what to use, please discuss it with your unit coordinator or tutor. NOTE: You can not use a process from a company you have just researched on the Internet.

• Model the process using BPMN in Microsoft Visio (unless you have approval to use another software package from your tutor). As your BPMN modelling skills will be tested in the final examination each student in the pair must take primary responsibility for one of the two required BPMN process models. This will ensure that you have a good understanding of the notation.

• Analyse the process to identify issues that could be resolved using business process redesign. Your As-Is model should provide a basis for this.

• Design improvements to the process. For example, consider automating some tasks by using information technology or changing the sequence of activities or making parallel paths in the process. As part of this you must consider why the To-Be process will be an improvement compared to the As-Is process and what performance indicators could be used to measure success of the redesign.

• Model the redesigned process using BPMN in Microsoft Visio. The other team member should take the main responsibility for this process model.

• Create a report to the management of the organisation from which the process comes. Note that presentation of the report including formatting and table of contents is very important and that it should be written in professional language suitable for a manager to read. It should be structured as described below.

Report Structure

Your report should have the following structure and should be submitted as one document. But you will also submit your Visio files to support your report:

• Title page. This should include the name of the process being addressed, the company the process belongs to and student names and IDs.

• Table of contents. This must be generated using the Word Table of Contents feature.

• Introduction. This should include the purpose of the report.

• Background about the organisation. This should provide general background as well as information that will help to understand the context in which the process occurs.

• Background about the process. This section should provide supporting information about the process and MUST also include a description of how the information required to analyse the process was obtained.

• As-Is model of the business process. Modelling must be done in BPMN and supplemented with descriptions of assumptions and business rules etc. as needed. The model must have been created using Microsoft Visio. You must include an image of the model. (Note: you must have created the representation of the process yourself and uploaded a copy of the original Visio file to the LMS. Its file properties MUST show that the author of the model is an author of the report).

• Issues with the process. This section should explain issues and problems that have been identified with respect to the current process.

• Recommendations for improvement. This section should explain the improvements that are being recommended and describe why the To-Be process is an improvement compared to the As-Is process. Recommendations can include the use of specific commercial software. This section should also discuss what performance indicators could be used to measure success.

• To-Be model of the business process. Modelling should be done in BPMN and models created using Microsoft Visio. The report must contain an image of the To-Be process and you must also upload the relevant Visio file. Its file properties must show that the author of the model is the other author of the report.

• Appendix - Statement of contribution. This section must describe what contribution each student has made to the work undertaken and to the writing of the report. This should include who took the key responsibility for each model (and each student must have led the development of one), and who took the lead in writing each section of the report.