Business Process Architecture
A Business is a collection of various business processes running together to create and deliver values to it’s customers and stakeholders. But what if these processes do not work in sync, what if these processes act like an independent islands?
What is Business Process Architecture (BPA), and how it can benefit your organization?
After being asked this question numerous times, I realized that most people do not know what it is or why it is significant.
Therefore, in this article, I will share about–
A. what is business process architecture (BPA) and
B. why is it significant?
A Real-Life Analogy –
Imagine you have to travel to another city for an important customer meeting at 10 AM. This meeting is crucial for you, and this is the only time slot available with the customer after you chase him for more than a month to get his time. So, you book the first flight in the morning.
You plan the entire schedule — at what time you would get up and get dressed, when to call a cab, time to reach the destined airport from your city’s airport, take a cab and arrive at your customer’s office before 10 AM. Everything is well planned, and you are confident that you would reach on time and meet him.
The morning starts as per your plan. You book the cab and get ready. You check the cab app, and it shows your cab is 15 minutes away, but it does not move from its place. You wait for another five minutes, but there is no progress. You call the cab driver, but he does not pick up your call. A few minutes later, you get a cancellation notification. In a rush, you search for another cab, but it shows a delay of fifteen minutes for other cabs too.
You book another cab and call the driver to confirm. The driver confirms, and you continue to wait. You continuously check the cab status and find that the driver missed your turn and the next turn is five minutes away. By the time cab reaches your pick-up point, thirty minutes are already gone. You take the cab and reach the airport to find that the boarding is already announced. Fortunately, you have an e-ticket to avoid the queue for the boarding pass. You see long security checking line. You request airline staff to support you to get the security clearance. They ask the security staff, but a few passengers object. Two passengers are running out of time, too, and the other two find it unethical and lecture you to respect others time. But the rest of all passengers in the queue have no problem. So, it was agreed that after these passengers, you could get into the queue.
Meanwhile, airline staff talks to the crew members and asks them to wait as the passenger clear the security check. After security, you pick up your entire stuff and rush for the boarding gate. When you board the flight, you are sweating profusely, you look like a mess, and you find everyone staring at you. After that, you struggle to find the space for your bag. Finally, your flight takes off, and it is a smooth flight. You get down to take a taxi and manage to reach the customer’s office on time.
In this entire experience, almost all processes run as expected: When the cab was cancelled, the next cab was booked immediately. The airport staff supported you well and waited an extra minute for you. The security staff checked thoroughly without overseeing any security parameter. Everything worked fine as per process, but still, it was not a good travel experience for you.
So what did not go well here?
Even though the output of meeting the customer at 10 AM was achieved, you got nervous and felt embarrassed a few times in your journey, which made the outcome not that satisfactory.
Although all processes worked fine and exceptions were executed well, the thing missing in this entire system was Integration — Integration of one process to another. Perhaps, the airport staff or the security staff would say that they do not care how cab service providers work, but there was a lot of hassle for you as a customer (passenger). You expect an end-to-end well-functioning process. End-to-end processes generate a value. However, the challenge is, no one person owns this end-to-end process. It is why even though every process works well individually, they failed to deliver the value collectively. Here, business process architecture can play a vital role.
Business Process Architecture (BPA)
A Business Process Architecture is a hierarchical model that identifies the list of all business processes (and other business components like people, technology, etc.) and establishes interrelationship among all to confirm that values are created, accumulated, and delivered to its customers and stakeholders.
1. Integrate Vision, Strategy to Execution
Every organization has a purpose and commitment to its customers and stakeholders, which can be achieved through well-defined business strategies. Strategies are executed through business processes, and there is no other way. A business architecture defines all the dots from vision, strategy to business processes. A well-defined architecture gives a clear insight that if a strategy is changed, how will it impact the commitment as well as which business processes require change. Similarly, any business change gives an insight into how it will impact other processes, strategy, and organizational commitment.
2. Bring Attention where it matters most
Many value chains run in an organization for customers and different stakeholders. BPA helps to identify where, why and when an improvement is required. It optimizes the organization efforts and resources to confirm better outcomes. An organization that is on the journey of defining every process in the organization and monitoring everything will not be as effective as the limited capacity and resources would be distributed among all critical and not so critical business areas. BPA highlights the business areas where the focus is required. Hence, an organization can plan its improvement journey in a more structured & controlled manner. It results in achieving the best return on any investment in the organization, whether on people or technology.
3. Process-Centric Business Management
To define, implement, evaluate and improve business outcomes as values can never be achieved through an unstructured approach. And to evaluate current business processes and the effectiveness, we do not require two or ten business analysts in our organization. Instead, we need every individual in the organization should be a business analyst.
So how can we make an entire workforce think and act to achieve the common goal and not the goals of their specific department or functions?
Business Process Architecture collaborates with every process and individuals in the organization by providing a journey map. It acts like a google map for an organization to move from stage A to stage B. It also results in building the “Process Thinking” culture in the organization.
4. Align People and Process Efficiency
Business goals are achieved through business processes, and business process performance is measured through process KPIs. Processes are executed through people. Hence well-defined roles and responsibilities, in the form of measurable people KRAs become more effective for an organization. In case a business goal is not achieved, BPA helps to find the process KPIs that failed and identify the challenges faced by the process execution team.
Business process architecture is essential for every organization, irrespective of its size or type. It adds much value to the organization. If it is missed, we can find an organization, which is a collection of multiple islands where each island might be developed and maintained very well, but it takes efforts to move a thing from one island to another.
About Author
Author is a certified Business Process Management Professional and Master Black Belt in LEAN Six Sigma. BPM is not his profession but passion. To know more about author, contact him at q3edge or connect with him at Linkedin.
