The business process modeling techniques are a range of activities that must be followed with the goal of creating one or more models to the representation, communication, analysis, layout, synthesis, decision making and business control.
The aim of process modeling is to understand the internal workings of the organization – from beginning to end – and for that many techniques are used, such as organization charts, positioning diagrams, process flow, among others. All of this provides a vision of what is executed by the workers in the daily life of the company and creates a solid basis for studies, process improvements, costs estimation and a right comprehension of the business processes.
Used well, the techniques of business process modeling are very efficient in providing a true comprehension of the company and the mechanisms applied to its functioning, being extremely important to an enterprise.
In the process modeling BPM, authors use information and documents in order to bring about a flow of how the activities are taking place, from their beginning until they achieve the purpose of the process. To develop a business project in process modeling, the following techniques are employed:
- Method: Step sequence to information gathering and modeling.
- Metamodel: Information to model.
- Notation: Symbols and rules to represent the information.
- Tool: Computational support to information documentation. Check out this free tool for process modeling.
There are many business process modeling techniques that can be adopted to understand the company procedures. Most of them have been used for years and work exceptionally well.
Topics in process modeling BPM – Definition
Business Model
A business model is a tool for the creation of economical ways, social ways or other values. The term “business model” is used in a broad range of descriptions, both formal and informal, to represent the central aspects of business, including its motive, offers, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, commercial practices and operational and politic processes.
In a more basic sense, a business model is a method of doing business through which the company can sustain itself, that is, generate revenue. The business model sets out how an organization makes money, specifying its position on the value chain.
Business Process
A business process is a set of activities that happens in business with the intent to come up with a product or service, achieving a particular purpose. These are usually entrepreneurial, managerial or productive, and must meet the strategic objectives of the company.
It is possible to make an organization more effective if we can improve its processes, and to accomplish that we have to know them in detail. In many cases, the processes are not explicit or are very complexes, involving many areas of the organization. To boost the processes, we need firstly to be aware of how they are structured, modeling them to monitor how their activities are taking place, who participates in them and which pieces of information are being shared.
As soon as the modeling is ready, it is possible to, through a wider knowledge of the processes, effectuate improvements, identifying the activities that are passive of automation and even establishing outsourcing opportunities, if that is interesting to the company.
Artifacts-centric Business Process
The approach of artifacts-centric business process modeling arose as a promising new one to the business modeling process techniques since it provides a highly flexible solution that captures the operational specifications of the business processes.
It particularly concentrates in describing the business processes data, known as the artifacts, and relating their changes to an action on the process. It characterizes the relevant data business objects, its life cycles, and related services. The artifacts-centric business processes promote the operations automation and support the flexibility of the workflow’s dissemination and evolution.
Understand better what is a process mapping and see also what is BPM. See also the CBOK definition of business process modeling and other BPM terms to know more about business process modeling techniques.