Description

Business Analysis Assignment 2

Instructions:

·         Download the word document, read the questions carefully, do extensive research on the topic Business process modelling and Business process management.

·         Thereafter, complete the questions in this assignment and submit a word document of your work on blackboard.

·         The link of the submission will remain open until Friday 09:00 am. There will be no extension for this assessment.

·         The marks will count towards the final mark for this subject.

·         No plagiarised work will be accepted.

Section A:  (33 Marks)

1.    Name and briefly describe the five basic transaction cycles in a business. (10 Marks)

2.    Briefly describe the six phases of the BPM life cycle and, where relevant, how process models are used in the various phases (12 Marks)

3.    What is the purpose of a Business Process Diagram? (I mark) (Highlight the correct choice in yellow)

a.    To model in an unambiguous and easily understood fashion the business logic of the organization.

b.    To graphically model the goals and objectives carried out by a business process

c.    To represent the decomposition of business process in a hierarchical manner

d.    To represent the relationships and dependencies between different entities that execute a business process

4.    Write a brief essay on the link between organizational strategy and business process management? (6 Marks)

5.    How do process models best inform the software development lifecycle? (4)

Section B: (12 Marks)

If a process is a connected series of business activities designed to produce a meaningful outcome for the business. Simply put a process provides for all transactions in scope. An example of a process include: “place order” which provides for the transactions “place order for product A”, “place order for product B” and so on. Process should always be named as verb and noun – something is being done (verb or verb phrase). Using this information, read the following case and answer the questions that follow.

CASE:

Obscure Book Collector (OBC) is a small chain of 15 shops specialising in the supply of old and obscure books. These books tend to be expensive collectors’ items so the volume of transactions is low – around 10 sales per day per shop. Each shop has 2 assistants and a manager to provide a very customer focused service. Typically, the customer enters the shop and can browse for what they want or – more often – request it from an assistant. The assistant or manager will search for editions they hold of the desired title both in the shop’s stockroom and the other shops’ stock via an internet based stock enquiry system. Having displayed the stock held in the shop or by the chain of shops, the customer can select which books they are interested in. The OBC employee finds the customer record by searching existing customer records for matching name and address details held in a customer database also accessible via the internet. New customers are registered by the assistant or manager completing a registration form with the customer. In the interests of customer focused service, this process needs to be as quick as possible to get the customer to the purchasing stage with the minimum of delay so the customer details are not loaded to the database until after the customer has left. It is not uncommon for duplicate customers to be created due to different OBC employees across the chain of OBC shops spelling the customer name or address differently and so failing to find an existing customer. This is an issue for OBC in understanding it’s customer base and when doing marketing mail-shots and other promotions. Having found or created the customer, payment is taken by cash or credit card using immediate payment validation via a credit card machine.

After the customer has gone, if items were sold from the stock held at the shop, the assistant needs to update the stock enquiry system with the sale. If items are sold from stock held at other shops a paper order is created and faxed to the relevant shop(s). It is not uncommon for the shop receiving the faxed order to respond that the item has already been sold. This causes considerable customer inconvenience and disappointment, as well as significant work for the OBC employee who placed the order to refund the customer and update records of sales. Given that OBC needs to build and maintain excellent customer relationships because of the nature of the business, this is a major issue for OBC.

Question 1

List the processes mentioned in the scenario (10 Marks)

Question 2

From the processes you have listed, suggest 2 that are candidates for full or partial automation. (2 Marks)