Comparison of business processes and organizational efficiency

¶ … Business Processes

Of the many examples of business processes provided in the text, the one that continues to go through significant change as a result of continued innovations in enterprise application development is distributed order management. Enterprise application providers are now able to create distributed order management and order process workflows that are agile enough to reflect how companies choose to work, rather than forcing them to change how they do business just to use the system (Chan, Chung, Choy, 2006). Figure 1 below shows the revised order process as defined in chapter 10 of the text (Kroenke, 2013). The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate how methodologies vary in terms of defining how best to manage revised order processes in an enterprise.

Analysis of Methodologies

The text makes the claim that a methodology based on swim lanes as the foundation, with continual improvements in trimming back overlapping processes is the best possible methodology. A swim lane-based methodology makes sense when processes are serially based and lack complexity across a great number of departments (Kroenke, 2013). As swim lanes are by nature a bounded methodology by how many can be shown on a given department, this methodology works for smaller implementations.

The advantages of a swim lane-based methodology can be seen in Figure 1, which is from chapter 10 of the book. It is clear from this methodology that the interconnecting points at the departmental level can be managed well from this approach, assuming a relatively limited number of process and system integration points. There is another dimension to this methodology that doesn't show the overall value of the project as well.

Figure 1: Revised Order Process

Source: Kroenke, D.M. (2013). Using MIS (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Using value stream mapping in conjunction with a cross-department workflow approach to distributed order management planning and provide insights into the dollar value of the process improvements (Chan, Chung, Choy, 2006). A methodology more based on the value and extent of impact of process changes on the total business performance of a given business unit or division is more pragmatic and actionable than one that relies purely on swim lanes. While swim lanes are effective in defining change of the order process at the generic level, methodologies incouding value stream mapping can provide even greater depth of insight and financial metrics of performance.

In conclusion, both approaches or methodologies are essential for a company to get the most value from their distributed order management process improvements. Value stream mapping provides the added insight into how business processes impact overall financial performance (Nurcan, Etien, Kaabi, Zoukar, Rolland, 2005).