Develop as-is and to-be business process

Business process improvement may come in some of the common forms below:

1. Technology adoption. For example, old-style stores perform operations by human. If we computerize a business for higher efficiency, it is very likely that the process will need to be re-engineered in order to reap the benefit from adding the computer system.
2. Changes in supplier/manufacturer/customer relations which require business process re-engineering. Perhaps customers are dissatisfied with the slow courier service. So you must change the courier company to avoid losing customers. Another case might be that the previous supplier which used to deliver goods to you weekly cannot accommodate your new daily schedule and leaves you no choice but to seek a new supplier that does. And it would probably call for a process change in order to work with the new supplier.
3. Change of management direction and process obsolescence. Perhaps the management wants to close down a department. If a process relies on that department, you have no choice but to modify the process.

Attempting to improve a process begins with understanding how it works currently. Why not describe the process visually using graphical notation of a widely adopted industry standard? A visual representation with a common ground means less confusion and saves more time for the actual re-engineering part. And that standard is called Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). In BPMN, the current process to be enhanced is called as-is process. After it gets re-designed, we call it to-be process.

Software tool we'll be using

In this tutorial, we will be using Business Process Visual ARCHITECT (BP-VA) to create BPMN-compliant business process diagrams. It provides a robust means to capture the current business process, design enhancement and identify the enhancement between the current and enhanced processes.

Capture the Current Process in As-is Process

1. In the Model Explorer, right click on untitled and select Model > As-is Process.
   
2. In the Model Explorer, right click As-is Process and select Diagram > Business Process Modeling > Business Process Diagram.
   
3. The example through which we'll demonstrate is about an online shop selling goods. The process begins with the sales representative receiving a purchase order from a customer and proceeds to check stock level. If there is enough stock on hand to meet the order, the sales representative will pack them. The process ends with shipping them along with an invoice. In case of insufficient stock, the sales representative will suggest the customer to amend the purchase order.
   
   We are not going to walk you through how to draw business process diagrams using Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) here as we have another tutorial that covers it. We also have a tutorial video called Introduction to BPMN - Swimlanes that you might want to have a look.

Re-design to Enhance the Current Process in To-be Process

Let's just say that our business has grown so much that we now have a warehouse to keep our stocks. So we are looking to improve our current (as-is) process to best use the new resource. And we will show an example of modeling the enhancement below in a to-be process diagram.

1. First, create a to-be process diagram from the current process diagram. Right click any white space in the background of the as-is process diagram and select Utilities > Create To-be Process.
   
   You'll see that a new diagram is created containing the to-be process.
   Note: Initially, all model elements are selected in the new diagram. To deselect, click any white space in the background.
   
2. Add a lane to Online Shop. Name it Warehouse. In the Sales Representative lane, select Pack Goods, Ship Goods and Order completed and drag them to the Warehouse lane
   
3. Next, we are going to insert a task between Sufficient Stock? and Pack Goods. Place your mouse pointer over the Yes flow coming from Sufficient Stock?. Click on the bubble to show the little cube icon. Click it to show the popup menu and select Task. Name the new task Request Pack Goods.
   
   The completed to-be process diagram should look something like this.
   

Compare Changes in As-is Process and To-be Process

To compare differences between two diagrams visually, we can make use of a function called Visual Diff....

1. From the main menu, select Modeling > Visual Diff....
   
2. In the Visual Diff dialog box opened, select Transitor for Strategy. For Compare, select Model Element to be the level at which we compare our diagrams.
   
3. Check the checkboxes next to Use Working Project. Select As-is Process on the left. Select To-be Process on the right.
   
4. Click Compare at the lower right corner to see differences being "spotted."
   For example, from the list below the diagrams, we know that changes were made to Pack Goods as it says Pack Goods (Modified). If you click on the row, you will see the corresponding changes in purple in the diagrams.
   
   New tasks will be noted as well. Remember (in the enhancement) we added a new task for the sales representative to request the warehouse to pack goods? That is also "spotted" in our list.
   
5. If you want, you can keep the comparison results in a PDF file for future reference. Simply click Export PDF... at the lower left corner and give the PDF file a name (e.g. comparison results.pdf).
   
   
   Download: sample project file & PDF file for comparison results

Related Links

1. Tutorial video - Introduction to BPMN
2. Written tutorial - Introduction to BPMN
3. Tutorial video - how to simulate business processes to quantify performance