Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits, and Examples

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In today's complex business world, CIOs use technology as a key tool to improve how a company works. One important tool they use is Business Process Modeling.

Even though Business Process Modeling isn't a new idea, it's still a game-changer. As CIOs push for new IT initiatives that match wider business goals, they know that the key to better productivity is seeing, studying, and improving the detailed processes that make their organizations run.

So, what is Business Process Modeling, and why do you need it? This guide will look at Business Process Modeling from a CIO's perspective. We'll explain what it is, how it works, and how it can transform business productivity and efficiency. Just like a CIO uses technology to achieve strategic success, business process modeling acts as a roadmap, leading businesses towards a future of efficient processes, improved teamwork, and excellent performance.

Table of Content

  • What is Business Process Modeling?

Why Use Business Process Modeling?

Business process modeling techniques.

  • What Do I Need in a Process Modeling Software

What is Business Process Modeling (BPM)?

Business process modeling   (or) process modeling, is the analytical representation or put simply an illustration of an organization’s business processes. Modeling processes is a critical component for effective  business process management .

Process modeling software gives an analytical representation of 'as-is' processes in an organization and contrasts it with 'to-be' processes for making them more efficient.

Many business process modeling tools end up producing something like this:

business_process_modelling_diagram-1

Get rid of redundancies through effortless process design.

Your first step in modeling is actually pen and paper. However, to actually run a   business process , you will need to digitize that process in a way that a workflow engine can understand.

Business process modeling software   allow you to represent your process in a digital way that can then be transferred to a live automated process.

There are many benefits to business process modeling:

  • Gives everyone a clear understanding of how the process works
  • Provides consistency and controls the process
  • Identifies and eliminates redundancies and inefficiencies
  • Sets a clear starting and ending to the process

Business process modeling   can also help you group similar processes together and anticipate how they should operate. The primary objective of business process modeling tools is to analyze how things are right now and simulate how should they be carried out to achieve better results.

Kissflow, our   BPM Software , Streamline your business with superpowered processes.

Business process modeling can be expressed through flowcharts, programs, hypertext, or scripts. There isn’t just one way to implement business process modeling; in fact, you can choose from   as many as 12 techniques.

Here are some of the most common business process modeling techniques:

1. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

BPMN 2.0 has become something of a standard syntax used by process analysts and those who create business modeling tools. It is a relatively simple usage of lines, arrows, and geometric shapes that all communicate the flow and nuances of the process. A process consultant can look at a BPMN 2.0 model and know exactly how it should function.

“Eventually, when [those] companies get their products shipping and crank up their marketing machines,  BPMN  will be the unquestioned standard for process modeling and execution. But right now, we are still between the news and the reality.” - Bruce Silver, Process Consultant and Author of the book BPMN Method and Style

However, BPMN 2.0 is still a learned language, and although relatively simple, isn’t immediately intuitive for the regular business user. It is a great tool for process consultants, but not helpful for those looking to create their own applications.

2. Universal Process Notation

Instead of having a new language to learn, a more intuitive system is   Universal Process Notation   or UPN.

UPN provides a simple box for each task to be completed. The box shows what happens, who is assigned to it, and when it happens in the sequence. It is extremely useful for IT to design and analyze processes, for management to comply to business norms, and - more importantly - for end business users to understand processes as intended. Kissflow uses UPN in its modeler.

3. Flowchart Technique

flowchart_technique

Flowcharts explain complex process flows in a simple yet effective way. They illustrates process steps in their sequential order, going from inputs to actual process to outputs. In fact, flowcharts provide the basic framework for BPMN to display advanced process flows.

Kissflow, our   process tracking software , can help your business stay constantly aware of every last business process.

4. Gantt Charts

Rather than showing the steps sequentially, Gantt charts are able to show the entire process using ‘time taken’ as one of the main axes. It does a better job of showing the overall time taken to complete a project than other options.

5. Petri-Nets

Traditionally a modeling technique in mathematics, petri-nets are also useful for modeling business processes. Petri-nets classify or color-code complex workflow steps, users, and routes in different colors.

What Do I Need in a Process Modeling Software?

Most   BPM Suites   include business process modeling tools in them. However, some have the modeler as a separate application.

The modeler is one of the most important elements in a BPMS , and you should spend a lot of time learning it before committing to buy a suite.

Great business modeling tools should:

  • Be easy to learn for the business departments
  • Be simple for IT teams to communicate with other departments
  • Be inexpensive and industry compliant
  • Have an integrated workflow editor tool with graphic interface
  • Be able to simulate workflow before implementing

Learn more about process modelers .

Check out why these   6 BPM Software   are at the top of the competition!

The Challenge:

RENU Contracting and Restoration grappled with unreliable manual processes, difficulty managing complex tasks, and inefficient tracking of process issues. They needed a solution to transform their operations, increase productivity, and ensure accountability.

The Solution:

Michael Casamento, Director of Process and Procedure at RENU, discovered Kissflow during a web search. Impressed by its features, ease of use, and value for money, he implemented it. RENU began building workflows for check requests and merchandise returns. The success of these implementations led to the automation of other operations, such as claims processing, debit memo processing, and maintenance requests.

The Outcome:

Kissflow has become essential for managing many of RENU's critical processes. The company has experienced enhanced productivity, time-saving in process creation, increased accountability, minimal development time, and improved end-to-end trackability of processes. Michael praises Kissflow for its well-designed user interface and responsiveness to community input. Integrations with other apps via Zapier have further improved operations. Now, RENU looks forward to building an on/off-boarding process using Kissflow.

Utilizing a platform like Kissflow for business process modeling can be a game-changer for businesses. It allows organizations to visualize, analyze, and optimize their workflows in a user-friendly interface. 

This not only enhances productivity but also fosters improved collaboration and operational excellence. With its comprehensive and intuitive tools, Kissflow empowers CIOs and other business leaders to seamlessly align IT initiatives with broader business objectives, paving the way for strategic success in the ever-evolving landscape of technology and business.

You may also like:

  • BPM Definition [A complete BPM Guide]
  • What is BPMS? How Can It Help Your Organization?
  • Business Process Management Software
  • 10 Steps to a Successful Business Process Documentation
  • BPM Systems – The Best one MUST (will) have these 10 features
  • How To Make Simple & Effective Business Process.

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Beginners Guide to Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)

By Kate Eby | November 28, 2016

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Although many big organizations still use the written word to describe their processes and requirements, a significant amount of evidence suggests that pictures are a better way to communicate. This is where modeling languages come in. Modeling languages allow companies to show their processes pictorially to minimize error and miscommunication. They can also be used to delineate responsibilities, find areas for improvement, and plan for future changes.

In this article, we look at business process modeling and notation (BPMN) as a standard of modeling languages for enterprises. We’ll discuss what it is, what it was, and how it should be used. We’ll review BPMN elements and extended elements in detail, as well as provide guidelines for modeling and tips for using the notation. We present examples of BPMN models, and finally, we’ll offer a method for choosing a BPMN tool.

What Is Modeling Notation and BPMN? An Overview

Process modeling notation is a language that’s readable to humans and that describes the structure and elements of a business sequence. The vocabulary is defined, and the language is organized such that we understand how it should flow and how the information is presented. As a data science, process modeling notation includes about 40 different elements, delineated with rules about their use.

This language tells stories about our work. By creating a model similar to a flowchart with this language, a business can capture, analyze, understand, automate, and even optimize their processes. As with any language, it’s important to learn the terms and rules of grammar. Since the 1960s, countless notations and their varying structures have come and gone. When it comes to a modeling notation, experts recommend that you choose a standard that is based upon your purpose, that it is supported by a wide number of tools, and that comes with training and references.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standardized graphical notation that is used globally for business process modeling . It is open source, which means that the original code is available for anyone to change and use. The specification defines its symbols and shapes precisely.

BPMN starts and ends with the business process flow diagram. This is a technical map of an organization’s flow and practices, presented in a standardized language, and available for users to improve, share, and follow.

The Object Management Group (OMG) , a nonprofit technology standards consortium, governs and maintains BPMN. OMG offers several certification programs, including the OCEB Certification (OMG Certified Expert in BPMTM) for BPMN. The field of business process management (BPM) approves of standardization and often uses software (BPMS) that includes the BPMN language. Some are low-code platforms, meaning that the business can configure its BPMS to work with its incumbent software and needs.

The BPMN language is not owned by a commercial enterprise, though Trisotech is a commercial software and consulting company that helped develop BPMN by building on its standards internationally. It has also been involved in developing and setting BPM standards, XPDL, BPSim, and CMMN, and is considered a leader in BPMN consultation.

At its core, BPMN is intuitive. Even when staff members do not understand the exact symbols, they can figure out the meaning of the workflow. However, for more advanced users, the nuances are apparent. For example, in the simple process below, Lane 1 starts a task. This could be your company, which is the pool. Your department is Lane 1, which starts the process and completes the first task. The work is then sent to another department (in Lane 2), which sends it back for Task 3 and completion. This seems more complex with the standardized language, but if you add names, it is very clear. You can model this simplicity throughout your processes, even those that appear very complex.

Basic BPMNc Diagram

A simple BPMN process map

OCEB 2 Program

The OCEB 2 Program has five examinations, each offering a certification. After the Fundamental level, there is a track for business and another for technical. In the BPM world, these certifications assure employers that you understand not just the principles, but also the practice of BPM. The OCEB 2 Certification was designed by 25 BPM professionals from the commercial industry, with the intent of providing this assurance to their peers and prospective BPM employers. The certification gives BPM practitioners an edge over their uncertified competitors.

When to Use BPMN

Different users of BPMN describe it as simultaneously complex, simple, prohibitive, and helpful. There are certainly times when you will prefer to use this standardized language. Three reasons you would want to use BPMN versus another notation include:

Its use is tied to organizational objectives . In this scenario, your business would require a specific modeling notation language in order to stay consistent, especially if they have international business interests. Out of necessity, this modeling is generally more formal than most.

You commonly use the same handful of elements in a specific concept . In this scenario, you are able to draw selectively from BPMN as needed, and there is less concern about other users misunderstanding.

You want to show your breadth of BPM knowledge . Nothing says you are a BPM expert like understanding the modeling language designed specifically for it. When you apply for positions that require BPM expertise, this knowledge and experience could set you apart.

OMG merged with the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), the inventors of BPMN, in 2005. Since its inception, five releases of BPMN have followed. BPMN 2.0 arrived in early 2011. The five versions and their dates of release are below. Each version is linked to its official specifications.

BPMN 1.0, released May 3, 2004

BPMN 1.1 , released January 17, 2008

BPMN 1.2 , released January 3, 2009

BPMN 2.0 , released January 3, 2011

BPMN 2.0.2 , released January 3, 2014

BPMN was originally a modeling notation that was meant to give all stakeholders, from high-level decision makers to technical staff, a standardized language for diagrams. But with the release of version 2.0, BPMN became about models and notation. The difference is that instead of standardized models alone, BPMN offers a standardized XML (Extensible Markup Language) schema that can map between software tools. At this time, more than 80 tools support BPMN.

OMG originally developed the Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) as a bridge between BPMN and software. BPDM describes the rules, constraints, and theories of BPMN so that software programs can map and use it with an XML syntax (such as the Business Process Execution Language, or BPEL). The originators thought users should be able to move process models from one modeling tool to another without losing information. According to OMG , “By providing a common, syntax-independent vocabulary for business process concepts, BPDM standardizes the way BPMN diagrams are stored and exchanged.” However, according to experts, the advent of BPMN 2.0 negates the need for BPDM. Further, experts say that BPEL does not fully support BPMN.

BPMN 2.0 also improves the following:

Semantics : The execution semantics (meanings) for all BPMN elements were formalized.

Notation : New diagram types were added with new contexts for use. These include choreography and conversation diagrams. Choreography diagrams center on the flow of messages and between-process interactions. These diagrams chiefly focus on the interaction between the pools. There is no central control, responsible entity, or observer. Conversation diagrams focus on conversations between the participants, showing a bird’s-eye view of the information exchange between participants. BPMN 2.0 also made improvements to events, adding non-interrupting events and event subprocesses. We discuss the event improvements in the “Extended BPMN Modeling Elements” section of this guide. With sub-processes, BPMN 2.0 added more than 50 new elements. Elements are the symbols that represent different parts of the process.

Technical : The formal meta-model was defined.

Choreography Diagram

Example of choreography diagram. The choreography diagram in the center represents the communication between the pools.

Conversation Diagram

Example of conversation diagram. Conversations diagrams show a different view and incorporate two new elements: the hexagon and the double line.  

According to some experts, not everything in BPMN 1.0 has a partner in BPMN 2.0. However, software packages are available that provide migration pathways to update older models.

OMG states that there will not be another version of BPMN for at least two to three more years. Since many users want a stable long-term platform, OMG is not in a hurry to get to BPMN 3.0. In 2014, OMG did release a complement to BPMN called the Decision Model and Notation (DMN), which provides a separation in the decision and the process. DMN was designed to work to connect with BPMN as a schema model in XML format via the identified processes and tasks, as well as through the decision knowledge base data type. In other words, BPMN shows the processes, while DMN models show how decisions are made in the processes.

BPMN’s main goal is to be a notation that all users can understand. This includes not only the businesspeople who manage all of the processes, but the business analysts and the technical developers. Other goals of BPMN include:

Provide a consistent structure.

Be highly readable throughout all levels of the process.

Ensure that the model is complete without any additional documentation required.

Be able to be shared with IT as an executable process.

Your BPMN diagram should represent not only business process activities, but can and should show the following:

Any information that is exchanged during process implementation.

Control checkpoints that show the sequence of data exchange and activity implementation.

Personnel roles and any needed additional personnel.

What information systems support the process.

How the process in regulated in the business rules and legal framework.

The implementation.

business model process means

BPMN Diagram Perspectives

Many organizations strive for interoperability, where different software applications and IT systems are able to communicate, exchange data, and use the information and knowledge from the exchanged data. You can consider interoperability from three perspectives: private business processes, public business processes, and collaboration business processes. For IT, these perspectives are important for the ability to exchange data.

Private business processes detail:

Internal activities

Departments responsible for each task

Documentation

Rules that regulate the processes

Information systems

Public business processes:

Concentrate on the interaction between internal processes and those of other organizations

Do not review organizational structure, information systems, or rules

Collaboration business processes:

Show all interactions for every organization in the process (two or more businesses)

Do not provide internal processes for any organization

Help identify the software that supports the processes

Contain two or more pools

This makes sense in BPMN, because part of the purpose of BPMN 2.0 is to exchange BPMN models between different software systems. There are noted limitations on this interchange; these are intentional on the part of the designers of BPMN 2.0 because they wanted to ensure maximum flexibility. Visually, these include colors of shapes and text, shape decorations such as shadows, gradients, backgrounds, text wrapping, and thickness and style of lines. Semantically, these include proprietary extensions such as the script of a script task, user task implementation, and global user task implementation.

BPMN Constraints

For all of BPMN’s capabilities, it is specifically constrained to business processes. Some organizations and analysts assume that BPMN is a magic bullet for all of their process modeling needs. However, the following processes are not meant to be supported by BPMN:

Organizational structures and resources

Functional breakdowns

Data and information models

Business rules

These types of processes can be addressed in other UML models or additional documentation. It must be noted that BPMN models are not data flow diagrams (DFDs), which show the flow specifically of data information from one place to another. These diagrams provide only one view of a process through the data.

Target Audience for Business Process Modeling Notation

BPMN was designed so that all users can understand it: businesspeople, business analysts, and IT staff. Although the BPMN originators had these groups in mind during development, they were also concerned with how they could link BPMN to other OMG standards. Further, although the standard supports all of these professionals, not all professionals design to the same level.

Bruce Silver discusses three levels of BPMN users in the trainings that he conducts. Level 1 is your typical user who employs only a handful of symbols. Their diagrams are simple and conform to a very traditional standard. Some journals estimate that almost 90 percent of users are at this level of design. (This figure is referenced by many blogs and periodicals, but there is no specific study that supports it.) Level 2 users provide the layer that IT professionals can then add to. It is essentially a more advanced business process layout using less common

BPMN Elements

BPMN keeps elements of a business process model to a minimum so that the look and feel of the diagram stays as consistent as possible. You can always add more detail after the basic categories are complete.

There are two types of elements: descriptive and analytic. Within this framework, you’ll find over 40 different elements, each with rules about when they can and cannot be used. Business analysts developed descriptive elements to model processes as documentation, and technical staff developed analytic elements to model executable processes within the software.

The five basic categories of elements are:

1. Flow Objects . These define the behavior of business processes.

Events: What happens during a process. There are three main types: Start, Intermediate, and End. An event is also what happens during a process. For example, an event could be that “a message is sent,” “an error occurred,” or “cycle is completed.”

Activities: Work performed in a process; also known as tasks .

Gateways: These determine the sequence flow path in a process. Gateways have internal markers that give additional detail to show how the flow is controlled. These are decision points in a process. For example, if a condition is true, then processing continues one way; if false, then another.

2. Data : These elements call out information about the activities. Data is either provided or stored for the activity.

Data objects

Data inputs

Data outputs

Data stores, where processes can either read or write information. A data store continues beyond the life of the process.

3. Connecting Objects : These connect the flow objects to each other or to other information.

Sequence flows: This element shows the order in which activities are performed.

Message flows: This displays the messages and the order of flow between participants.

Associations: This element is used to link information and artifacts (see below).

Data associations: These have an arrowhead to indicate direction of flow in an association.

4. Swimlanes : In BPMN, a swimlane is an element that shows where the responsibility for the process resides, and a pool represents the participant. Lanes break apart the pool as a partition of responsibility, showing the location of activities. Lanes can also delineate phases (first phase, second phase, etc.). In other words, a pool is a container for a single process, and a lane classifies the activity within it.

Lanes do not have semantics in BPMN; they are merely a partitioning concept. You can arrange swimlanes either vertically or horizontally. Lanes are optional and may be nested. Some issues with swimlanes:

Flow elements are connected differently depending on whether they are in a pool or between pools.

Only message flows can be used when communicating between pools. Message flows designate the exchange of messages.

A pool cannot contain more than one process.

Sequence flows should not be used between pools. Lanes are more appropriate where sequence flows are necessary, not pools.

5. Artifacts : These are used to give extra detail about the process. The two standardized artifacts are:

Groups: This is a hatched box around a group of elements to designate visually that they are related. This does not affect sequence flows.

Text Annotations: Extra text, attached with an association, that gives additional information. Also known as a comment.

6. Message : This element is shown in the tables in the specification guide for BPMN, but not put into a specific category. It is used in extended notation as well. A message represents communication between participants.

BPMN

The five basic categories of BPMN elements.  

Extended BPMN Modeling Elements

Extended modeling elements take the basic elements, add notation, and change their meaning while still showing consistency. The following sections are a foray into extended elements. The elements shown are not meant to be exhaustive, but provide the most commonly used elements in BPMN.

An example of an extended element is the use of a Start Event. A message element is then added, and the meaning changes from plain “Start” to a “Start triggered by a message.” The extended modeling element in this scenario allows users to specify how the event begins, not simply that it has begun, adding to the detail in a process.

BPMN start event

Events Extended

We know there are three type of events: start, intermediate, and end. These events can also be broken down into catching events, throwing events, and interrupting or non-interrupting events. A trigger defines catching events. Once the trigger is activated, the event starts. Throwing events are assumed by BPMN to trigger themselves. They do not react to triggers; instead, the process triggers them. Whether an event is interrupting or non-interrupting is related to the action. When an interrupting event is fired, the action is blocked. When a non-interrupting event is fired, the action continues.

BPMN event sub processes

Extended Event Sub-Processes

Activity Tasks, Sub-Processes, Transactions, and Call Activities Extended

You can add to tasks as well, with extra notation to show more specificity. The following image shows the notation and the meaning of each.

Receive waits for a message from an external participant.

Script is a task executed by the engine.

Manual is a task the operates without the aid of engines or applications.

Receive (Instantiated) is a task that is designed to wait for a message to arrive from an external participant. It then instantiates a process.

Service is a task that uses a web service or automated application.

User is a human task scheduled through a manager.

Send is a task that is designed to send a message to an external participant.

Business Rule is a task that confirms with the business rules engine the input prior to executing.

BPMN business rules

Three types of markers are specified for a task as well. These include loop, multiple instance, and compensation.

Loop will continue as long as the condition is true; a numeric cap may be specified.

Multiple instance may execute in parallel or sequentially. An expression or a data-driven setup can be used to determine the number of instances.

Compensation tasks specify some type of recompense or payment, either into or out of the process.

BPMN loop tasks

Loop tasks, sequential multiple instances tasks, and compensation tasks, respectively.

Sub-processes show lower levels or more detailed levels in a process event task. A collapsed sub-process is shown below:

BPMN sub process

Additionally, you can combine four types of markers with the sub-process marker. These include loop, multi-instance, ad-hoc, and compensation.

BPMN compensation

Source: OMG

Transaction Sub-Process

A transaction sub-process is embedded. You can use it to group multiple activities and show that they either fail or succeed collectively. These groupings of processes are surrounded by a double border to show they are a transaction.

Transaction image

In the above example, the flow moves to a Cancel End Event in the case of an error due to unavailable bookings. This activates the process rollback, and any completed reservation activity will be undone. The tasks in this example are undone in the reverse order that they were completed.

Gateways Extended

Notation may be added to gateways to represent different kind of control behavior, such as making decisions, branching, merging, forking, and joining. The types of possible gateways are exclusive, event-based, inclusive, complex, and parallel.

Exclusive gateways are the main type. They may have the X in the middle, or they may be empty. They model alternative paths and are where the diversion takes place.

Event-based gateways are used to model the alternative paths, but are based on events that occur, not the expression of flow.

Inclusive gateways can be used to model alternative and parallel paths. They evaluate all condition expressions and take paths with a positive result.

Complex gateways model complex synchronization behavior.

Parallel gateways create and join parallel flows. They check no conditions.

BPMN parallel

Data Objects Extended

Data objects are available in processes and sub-processes. Aside from the main type of data object, you can add notation to indicate data input, data output, collection data item, collection data input, and collection data output. Data inputs and outputs relate to the entire process. Collection data relate to the actual collection of some type of information during the process.

BPMN object

From left to right: Data input, data output, data object collection, data input collection, and data output collection.

Connecting Objects Extended

The addition of extra notation to connecting objects can extend their usage in BPMN. These include conditional flows, default flows, exception flows, and compensation associations.

Conditional flows are used in merging and branching in place of a gateway. A conditional expression is defined at its origin.

Default flows are only selected if no other sequence flows available. Conditions on a default sequence flow are always ignored. There may be only one default flow per object.

Exception flows occur outside of the normal flow of the process and are based on an intermediate event on the boundary.

Compensation associations are used when an activity is canceled, and the process must be set to its original state.

BPMN arrows

Conditional flows and default flows.

BPMN exception flows

Exception flows and compensation flows.

BPMN Critique

Critics have written widely about BPMN and why it is not appropriate for widespread use. The majority of the criticism centers on BPMN’s complexity. With more than 100 unique elements (resulting from the five main elements and their additional notation), it is too much to learn, too easy to make errors, and too granular for business processes alone, according to critics. Further, doing BPMN for the sake of doing BPMN causes more harm than good.

Other risks of BPMN include:

Mistakes in the Modeling Elements : This would decrease the clarity of process flows, rather than increase the communication.

Increased Complexity in Modeling : With more time required for analysis, the value of the product decreases.

Lack of Stakeholder Understanding : If stakeholders need everything explained, it could introduce errors and incorrect information.

Bruce Silver , who helped draft BPMN 2.0, says, “Business analysts should learn the semantics and rules, and that for most effective use the method and style of BPMN should also be learned.” Most professionals and organizations stick to a handful of symbols, so there is not much to learn. This in fact makes the notation simple. Diagrams can be extended for more granularities as needed, such as with an IT implementation. Further, BPMN is designed to model both human-centric and IT processes with equal accuracy. It also has the power and precision to display a clear vision of how your business works, saves time by showing unnecessary tasks, and reduces your employees’ rates of overlooked, forgotten, or poorly executed work.

BPMN diagrams have certain capabilities that other modeling languages do not. According to Silver, “Restricting BPMN to the part that is familiar from traditional process mapping is to miss its essence, which is the expressiveness required to describe not only the process’s normal or ‘happy path,’ but the various exception paths as well, and to do so with the semantic precision needed by IT to translate any proposed improvement into a working implementation.”

Essentially, Silver is saying that while it is well and good to model the few simple elements, the real value of BPMN lies in its capacity for the unusual circumstances (the exception paths) and to have those translated for automation. (Note: A happy path is the default scenario that features no exceptions or error conditions — the sequence of events where everything goes as expected.)

Even with the criticisms leveled at BPMN, it is still one of the most widespread and desired standards for process modeling available today. According to “ The State of Business Process Management 2016 Report” from BPTrends, 64 percent of businesses surveyed are interested in adopting BPMN.

Guidelines of Process Modeling

Process modeling guidelines are the same for any language or notation. In a 2009 paper on process modeling, authors Mendling, Reijers, and van der Aalst explain the main guidelines of modeling, regardless of the language used. They outline guidelines that may be considered best practices:

Use as few elements as possible in the model. This aids readability and decreases errors.

Minimize the routing paths per element. BPMN regulates routing paths via gateways.

Use one start event and one end event. BPMN requires this, and depending on the software it does not allow more than one. BPMN does give intermediate events where required.

Model as structured as possible. This means that the diagrams are balanced. In BPMN, gateways should not be used to join and split at the same time; they should be balanced and joined equivalently. Further, the same type of gateway should be used to split and join the flow.

Avoid or routing elements. This means that elements in models should not be an either/or question, but modeled such that the decision is an and or an xor . An xor gives mutually exclusive answers. In BPMN, gateways are not capable of being and .

Use verb-object activity labels in your naming convention. This decreases ambiguity.

Draw your models left to right (not top to bottom) unless the bulk of your stakeholders write ideographic languages (such as Japanese, Chinese, etc.) for easier understanding.

Decompose the model if it has more than 50 elements. That is, break a system into its component subsystems, processes, and subprocesses. This is related to guideline number one, in that having the least amount of elements keeps the errors low. BPMN has sub-processes that can decompose a model.

How to Select a BPMN Modeling Tool

To take full advantage of the BPMN modeling language, use a tool. Although you can draw BPMN with a pencil and paper, doing so does not take advantage of the majority of its benefits. Software programs that specialize in BPMN allow users to model faster and easier, and it enforces the majority of the BPMN rules automatically. Software tools also decrease errors in the diagram, allow for easier reading on the human eye, and give the all-important capacity to capture the associated XML.

What are the recommended criteria in choosing a BPMN tool? At last count by BPMtips.com , there were anywhere from 70-100 tools that could fully support BPMN modeling. These include free, open source, and proprietary tools, as well as tools whose sole function is not BPMN, but support it anyway. To further complicate the selection process, a number of plugins to existing programs support BPMN modeling. The choice you make is critical because much time and money will be invested in not only learning BPMN, but in the production of the models.

Experts agree that if your business needs the standardization of BPMN, then the tool should first be able to claim BPMN compliance. For BPMN 2.0, compliance is defined within the ISO/IEC 19510:2013 standard. This ISO standard represents the best practices in business modeling. If the language is meant to be consistent in its meaning, it must first be standardized. In this, the tool must have four types of conformance:

Process Modeling Conformance supports the elements and attributes of three subclasses: the descriptive, analytical, and common executable. The descriptive and analytical subclasses provide the information necessary to visually represent the diagrams. The common executable is the description of the data for the XML and meta-model.

Process Execution Conformance tools must fully support the import of process diagrams. This is the support and interpretation of the meta-model via the semantics and activity lifecycle.

BPEL Process Execution Conformance supports full mapping, from BPMN models to BPEL.

Choreography Modeling Conformance tools provide elements, appearance, semantics, and interchange, as well as BPMN choreography types.

Aside from actual BPMN conformance, one method to choosing a modeling tool is as follows:

Define your business objectives and requirements. Know ahead of time what functional and nonfunctional requirements your business will have for BPMN.

Define the selection criteria and the weight of each. Do your users need syntax checks? Do they need pop-up menus? Do they need help in documentation? Develop a chart that delineates your business’s required criteria, so you can pick a program that meets your needs.

Identify some candidate tools. With as many tools available to date, it is impossible to test-drive all of them. Once you delineate and weight your selection criteria, some of the potential tools will not be feasible. From there, if demos are available, order them. Evaluate how easy it is to install, identify any operability problems, and explore the support in the BPMN tool.

Test-drive one model. Once you discover the best candidates, use a consistent model that represents your company to test across the remaining applications.

Select your winner. Once you have multiple examples of the same model, you will have notes on each program, how easy the model was to develop, and the end look and feel. This should lead to your choice of BPMN tool.

How to Implement a BPMN Process Map

It is clear that BPMN is a relatively simple, straightforward language that professionals use to standardize their process maps. If you have existing process maps, you could start by standardizing them with BPMN symbology. If you haven’t mapped processes before, start by creating the maps:

Mapping processes

Download Mapping Processes Checklist

Optimizing a proces checklist

Download Optimizing a Process  Checklist

Quintessential Tips for Working with Business Process Modeling Notification

There is little doubt that learning BPMN is complicated, but it appears to be a worthwhile venture. Some BPMN experts have formal education, and some do not. Reading the current specification manual from OMG is not considered the best way to learn to model BPMN. Most, if not all, experts agree that learning through doing is best, putting the elements into understandable context.

Model with a top-down approach. According to Stephen White in an interview on the Leonardo Blog , “The top-down approach will ensure that the depth of modeling is consistent throughout the effort of process modeling in your organization. I'm not saying that every single process model needs to be the same amount of granularity. It depends on the purpose.”

Every BPMN symbol should have a label.   

Events should be labeled object + past participle . For example, “Process started.”

  • Start events should have how the process is activated.
  • End events should have the process “end state.”

The pool should always be labeled with the process name and role (for lanes).

Tasks should be labeled as verb + object . For example, “Eat lunch.”

Gateways should be labeled with a question. For example, “Packaging complete?”

Outgoing sequence flows should be labeled with answers to the gateway questions. For example, “yes” or “no.”

Avoid crossing flows as much as possible. A good process layout with few crossing lines is easier to read.

Symmetric structures are easier for the human brain to understand.

Draw equal task sizes. However, the size of the task element does not indicate the size of the task in BPMN.

Show exception handling explicitly.

Use message flows consistently. Attach the message flows to the boundary of the process pool at all levels of the diagram to add to your business context.

Consider using sub-processes to define scope. Sub-processes can be wrapped around part of your sequence when exceptions occur without penalty.

Limit the number of concepts in the model. Since most BPMN users are describing business processes, users should keep it simple and only use the required elements for maximum readability.

Set standards for your organization. Clear, regularly used conventions, such as elements, naming, methodology, and layout should be developed per business so that there is additional consistency for stakeholders.

Consider using a legend that explains the symbols for stakeholders who are not often exposed to BPMN.

Try not to simply send diagrams out to stakeholders, but take the time to explain the processes to those not trained in BPMN.

Consider making two models of the same process if you have a large number of stakeholders without BPMN experience: one model for business users (with less elements), and one executable model.

BPMN Diagram Samples

The following models are from OMG, and they represent most of the elements described in this guide. This should give you an understanding of how a BPMN diagram looks.

Pizza Model

The Pizza Collaboration

Hardware Model

Shipment process of a hardware retailer

Other Business Process Modeling Languages

No discussion of BPMN would be complete without reviewing other modeling languages, such as BPEL, YAWL, and UML. These languages have been used in the evolution of BPMN, to make it more applicable and garner wider use in the industry.

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and BPMN

BPEL (officially known as web services - business process execution language, WS-BPEL) is an XML-based orchestration language that allows companies to seamlessly work together by using web services to share data. It was created to standardize how processes are executed. Generally, it is meant for completely automated processes, especially when companies want to turn processes into XML for automation, even robotic process automation (RPA).

BPEL is based on web services in that each of the business processes involved are considered to be a web service. BPEL specifies the order in which web services should be invoked. An orchestration language identifies the executable process of message exchanges with other systems. BPEL supports two types of business processes: executable and abstract processes. BPEL is mainly meant to be employed by IT users, primarily because there is no graphical notation associated with it. BPEL is not meant to be accessed by business analysts or end users.

BPEL was often used in conjunction with earlier versions of BPMN. Users wrote BPMN notation, and BPEL was the execution language. Although there was and currently is a very high degree of correlation between BPMN and BPEL, there is no perfect system for one-to-one mapping between them. Some business processes may map in a way that is not executable. With the release of BPMN 2.0, BPEL was no longer necessary as the core XML language. BPMN 2.0 came with its own XML specification language.

Current trends in the industry suggest that more businesses are leaning toward using BPMN 2.0, and BPEL adoption has decreased considerably since 2007. According to “ The State of Business Process Management 2016 Report ,” only 8 percent of businesses are interested in adopting BPEL.

There are arguments within the industry that revolve around when to use BPEL vs. BPMN, especially since there is overlap between the two, and many problems could be solved using either BPMN or BPEL. Most large enterprises do not consider using only BPMN or BPEL; instead, they use both, depending on the scenario. Experts recommend that if your organization needs both, keep the BPEL worker processes in separate composites from the BPMN business processes. The following is a chart, culled from countless sources around the web, that details different scenarios where either BPMN or BPEL are recommended.

BPMN or BPEL

Yet Another Modeling Language (YAWL)

YAWL (yet another modeling language) may be considered an alternative language to BPEL. YAWL is based on Petri nets, which are part of a mathematical modeling and reasoning language. It is also open source, which means that the original source code is available to anyone to change and use. YAWL is considered easier in communicating to stakeholders than BPEL because of the intuitive user interface. YAWL and BPMN have some concepts in common — namely, tasks, gateways (as a decorator in YAWL), and flow.

Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose modeling language also managed by OMG and published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an approved language standard. UML is similar to BPMN in that it is an open source modeling language. Whereas the whole of BPMN is devoted to business process modeling, only UML’s activity diagram is suitable for business process modeling. Overall, UML is object-oriented, while BPMN is process-oriented.

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The complete guide to business process modeling (BPM)

business model process means

If you’ve been in business for a while, then you understand the importance of your processes. Your profitability is completely tied to your ability to design, manage, and optimize your business processes and operations.

Sadly, many business owners never take the time to actually map and model their processes in a visual way, leading to a lack of understanding of their own business. In this blog, we’ll take you through why business process modeling is essential for modern organizations and how to implement it today. Let’s start with the basics.

What is business process modeling?

First, we need to make sure we’re all in sync about what a process is.

A business process  is the logical sequence of events that lead to a particular outcome relevant to your organization. A process includes all the activities or tasks in a chain of events that accomplishes something. Some examples of common business processes are issuing purchase orders, product assembly, shipping products,  invoicing clients , and estimating project costs.

Business process modeling is the practice of back-engineering each process in your business to understand the different components needed to achieve the goal and finding potential improvements for each component.

It’s a business analysis and continuous improvement discipline that helps you maximize any process through critical examination. For example, a typical business process model might look something like this:

( Image Source )

Though the above is only one example, there are other popular techniques for business process modeling. We’ll discuss some of these techniques more in-depth a bit later, but first, we’ll look into how process modeling can impact your company.

Benefits of business process modeling

As organizations evolve, so do their processes. We live in a hyper-accelerated world where businesses face massive changes almost overnight. If you don’t have a strategy in place to adapt to this constantly changing environment, your organization won’t survive for long. Cultivating a culture of learning and innovation within your organization is paramount. This fosters an environment that not only adapts to change but also anticipates it, staying one step ahead of industry dynamics.

In short, if you don’t model your processes, you’ll never know whether you’re operating at your best, and you’ll miss out on huge opportunities.

Some key benefits of process modeling are:

  • Better alignment:  align your activities with the core goals of your business
  • More control:  improve the way you control your activities and resources
  • Better productivity:  maximize your time and focus on what really matters
  • Improve your bottom line:  reduce inefficiencies, costs, and bottlenecks
  • Produce better products and services:  build more efficient production processes that delight your customers

A solid process model isn’t just a drawing or visual representation of your process—you’ll need other elements to really get the most out of this strategy.

8 critical elements of business process modeling

Diagrams —like the example we saw above—are just one of the many elements involved. To fully model a process, you must create a document with the following elements:

  • Scope statement:  a relevant description of the process name, as well as when the process starts and ends
  • Outcome:  a definition of the desired outcome of the process
  • Description:  a step-by-step walkthrough of the process description (i.e., the different steps that need to be executed to achieve the desired outcome)
  • Exceptions and variations:  a description of potential alternative process paths based on conditional data or action triggers
  • Entry criteria and inputs:  the elements you must have in place to execute the business process
  • Exit criteria and output:  what must be true once the process is completed
  • Dependencies:  a description of any other process or activity that’s dependent on this one
  • Process flow diagram:  a visual representation of the business process and its components

By documenting the entire process using these elements, you’ll have a clearer idea of where to start, as well as be able to communicate your full plan to your team and stakeholders.

It’s important to remember that business process models should include both visual and textual information to analyze each process at a more granular level. With that said, let’s look at some examples.

What are 5 business process modeling techniques?

Now that you understand the elements of a business model, let’s examine how can you represent your processes visually, starting with these five techniques:

  • BPMN diagram
  • UML diagram
  • Gantt chart
  • PERT diagram

1. Business process modeling notation (BPMN) diagram

BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling Notation, and it’s a technique that helps you represent your processes in a visual manner through 100+ proprietary objects.

Some of these objects include:

  • Process flow object:  represents the sequence flow and execution of tasks
  • Pool:  represents process participants
  • Swimlane:  define sub-groups and divisions within pools
  • Data object:  represents information flowing through the process
  • Artifacts:  used to define how tasks and activities are organized

BPMN provides you with clear specifications for each diagram. By having a unified strategy or “language” to model your processes, you can make sure everyone is on the same page.

The example we shared earlier is a fairly simple business model diagram. Here’s an example of a more complex one:

Complex BPMN diagram of a research process

2. Flowchart

Flowcharts are one of the simplest and most widely-used techniques for process modeling. As the name suggests, flowcharts help you map out the sequence flow of activities you need to perform to complete a specific process.

In a flowchart, you should represent each step in the process with a shape. Then, you should connect those shapes with lines or arrows to indicate the logical progression of each step.

Here’s a simple process model example:

As you can see, flowcharts can use different process diagram shapes to represent different stages of the process. In the example above, we have two different shapes:

  • Rectangle:  represents start and end points
  • Diamond:  represents specific activities

In practice, you can use many different shapes to represent the different components of your processes — especially when you’re dealing with a complex process.

Flowcharts are simple yet powerful tools to communicate a business process in a way everyone can understand.

3. UML diagram

Communicating the value of software design isn’t always easy, especially when you’re dealing with a non-technical audience.

This is where UML comes in handy.

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It’s a modeling technique that helps you describe the elements that make up a specific software system and how such elements interact with each other.

UML involves different types of diagrams, which can be broken down into 2 main categories: structural diagrams and behavioral diagrams.

Structural diagrams represent the structure of a system. That is, the different elements and objects that make up the software. Some of the most popular structural diagrams include:

  • Class diagram:  mainly used for data modeling in a system
  • Component diagram:  describes the physical structure of the system in question
  • Deployment diagram:  describes the execution strategy and structure of the system

Behavioral diagrams, on the other hand, focus on the relationship between the objects in a system — how the different objects interact with each other to achieve a particular goal. A few common behavioral diagrams are:

  • Use case diagram:  describe the possible interactions between user and system
  • Activity diagram :  graphical representation of a user’s activities and actions when using a system
  • State machine diagram:  represent the behavior of an object within a system

4. Gantt charts

Gantt charts are used to plan a project’s schedule against tasks and dependencies on a horizontal bar chart.

Setting up a Gantt chart is easy on monday.com because you have access to a built-in Gantt View and a widget for your project dashboard . You can also make changes to tasks directly in the Gantt View.

5. PERT diagrams

Similar to Gantt charts, PERT, or Program Evaluation and Review Technique, is a framework to map out task dependencies and estimations for a project’s duration.

This type of flowchart is useful for the early stages of planning when sorting through how all the pieces go together.

Example PERT flowchart for a fictional project.

Let’s pause quickly; we’ve already covered the importance of business process modeling, as well as some of the most common techniques for visual process representation.

But if you want to achieve the highest level of performance in every one of your processes, you need the right system — a system that helps you centralize all your workflows onto a single place and can automate repetitive activities.

Business modeling processes and monday.com — how to

monday.com is a powerful Work OS that helps you build a custom digital workspace for any type of process, regardless of its complexity. To show you how it works, let’s follow a four-step process to model, manage, and improve your processes and operations.

1. Streamline the process

To improve any existing process, you must break it down into components. Consider what you need to achieve the goal. With the answer to that question in mind, you then need to prioritize those activities based on the impact they make on your bottom line.

Once you organize your activities in a progressive order, coordinate the execution with your team. You may also want to identify which activities can be automated and how.

To achieve all this, you need a flexible system that adapts to your needs and helps you streamline your processes. With monday.com Work OS, you can access fully customizable, pre-built templates to structure different processes in various industries, including:

  • Advanced Project Management Template
  • CRM Template
  • Recruitment and Onboarding Template
  • Social Media Planner Template

You can explore our complete list of templates in our  Templates Center . We also provide you with over 250,000 automations, so you can speed up your operations and improve your productivity. A few tasks you can easily automate include:

  • Recurring activities
  • Notifications
  • Item creation
  • Dependencies
  • Integration recipes

For more on monday.com Work OS automations, watch this short video below:

Finally, monday.com helps you centralize your entire organization into a single workplace, which makes it easier for you to streamline your workflows and improve your processes. You can create or add documents, files, automations, various views, data, and more all from monday.com Work OS.

2. Implement

Once you’ve defined your processes, it’s time to implement them. Start with a platform that allows you to collaborate with your entire team, remove silos between departments, and track progress with ease.

For instance, on monday.com Work OS, you can invite your entire team from the start and access powerful collaboration tools to improve your communication, including:

  • File sharing
  • Instant-messaging
  • Video conferencing

For instance, you can click any of your items on your boards and add context to each task in real-time. This way, you can brainstorm ideas, get direct feedback from your peers, and improve your operations much faster.

monday.com's collaboration features in action

From task management to resource allocation, you can structure and manage all your business processes more efficiently.

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s why you need a system that helps you monitor all the information that’s important to you and analyze your progress.

Access powerful reporting dashboards that help you track everything from revenue to productivity, time, sales, tasks, performance, and more on monday.com.

monday.com's reporting dashboards in action

Dashboards make it easy to understand the overall performance of your processes and optimize accordingly. The best part? These dashboards are fully customizable, and you can adapt them to your exact needs.

4. Optimize

Finally, you should schedule a meeting with your team to analyze the data you collected in the last step and brainstorm how to improve current process. Consider asking:

  • Where are the major bottlenecks?
  • Is the team working productively?
  • Are you using your resources wisely?
  • Where are your biggest revenue leaks?

By answering these questions, you’ll be able to spot major issues in your processes before they start snowballing and fix them fast. Since monday.com Work OS is fully customizable, optimizing and adapting your processes to your new process ideas is completely feasible for any type of organization.

monday.com's drag-and-drop features in action

Frequently asked questions

What are the four phases of business process modeling lifecycle or bpm, what are the basic elements of bpmn.

Four elements of BPMN are flow objects, connecting objects, swimlanes, and data.

Ready to improve your business processes?

Hopefully, now you have enough understanding of the overall process, as well as why it’s crucial for the success of your business. And if you’re looking for a platform that helps you optimize each of your processes with surgical precision, then monday.com Work OS may be a great fit for you.

To see for yourself, we suggest you start with our  Advanced Project Management Template . It’ll help you get your business process modeling off to a great start.

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Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits and How-to Guide

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The goal of every business owner is to ensure their businesses perform to their full potential throughout the year. You can only achieve continuous business growth by understanding your business processes and how to achieve optimal outcomes from them.

Having a pictorial representation of all aspects of your business is important for running a successful business. You can create data-driven visualization of your business workflows and gain full visibility of your business process lifecycle through business process modeling.

This technique helps businesses to document workflows, provides transparency into business processes, track key metrics , identify potential risks and problems, and automate business processes for more efficiency.

Business process modeling can bring about radical changes that improve your business productivity and efficiency. Professionals across different work areas such as sales, marketing, and project management, use business process modeling software to map out specific processes.

In this article, you will learn everything about business process modeling, including its use cases and the key features of business process modeling software.

Let’s get started.

What is Business Process Modeling?

Business process modeling (BPM) is the analytical or graphical representation and illustration of the business processes or workflow of an organization. This is mostly in the form of a flowchart developed to visualize the various business approaches and information dissemination.

The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) developed the business process modeling technique to depict business processes simply and easily for stakeholders, business partners, developers, managers, and others to understand.

Process modeling defines the methods with which business is carried for the sole purpose of achieving the set down goals of an organization. Business modeling tools assist organizations to improve business operations and manage workflow.

You can implement BPM in different areas such as marketing, accounting, sales, technical support, manufacturing, and others.

Business Process Modeling Infographic

Why Use Business Process Modeling

Business process modeling (BPM) is essential for understanding your business processes and maximizing positive outcomes from them.

Organizations or enterprises that use business process modeling enjoy objective business intelligence which they can use to make data-driven decisions to improve business processes, allocate resources, and create workable business strategies .

BPM provides a clear view of business processes which helps teams to properly track their workflows and ensure they achieve the desired results. This helps to reduce operating costs, generate higher ROI , and secure stronger business outcomes.

1. Improved Operational Efficiency

Business process modeling is an essential tool for optimizing business processes. Further optimization increases productivity, agility, efficiency, staff training, and utilization of resources.

Implementing business process modeling assures executives in organizations of consistency and the ability to achieve set goals.

2. Transparency

Process modeling shows how work activities are carried out in detail. This helps to promote trust between the workers and stakeholders. With business process modeling, you can easily detect errors and find solutions to tackle them on time.

3. Documentation and Control

The business process model helps to provide necessary and proper documentation for analysis. Documentation including the detailed description of a business guides the development, maintenance, and improvements to be made on various systems.

With process modeling in place, business processes become well designed which results in better decisions that give project managers, engineers, and team members adequate control of events

4. Streamlining and Automating Business Processes

Streamlining and automating business processes makes it easier to complete tasks . This helps to improve efficiency, simplify processes and make predictions. Unnecessary repetitions are avoided, and goals are achieved quickly and easily.

5. Aligning Business Processes with IT Strategy

Business process modeling promotes the combination of business processes with IT strategy to improve the business. This means every aspect of IT contributes to the progress of the business thereby making it more valuable. Excellent communication and a better focus on business objectives are established.

6. Reduced Costs

BPM helps you to quickly detect and correct errors to avoid additional expenses. With itsprocess automation feature, you can optimize business processes thereby reducing manual work that can lead to errors. Business process models do not cost a lot of investment and are cheaper to maintain.

Business Process Modeling Techniques

There are many techniques through which you can implement business process modeling in your organization.

1. Flowchart Technique

Flowcharts are visual representations that show the process of solving a task or workflow. The basic flowchart is a simple, popular, and widely used technique. Flowcharts are based on sequences. They help to find out and understand a particular process.

A flowchart is a generic tool that can be used in various fields to inform, improve, plan, and separate complex processes into simpler terms. It helps in decision-making. Business process modeling uses flowcharts to visualize work processes for analysis, adjustments, and easy understanding.

Flowchart Technique

2. Unified Modeling Language (UML) Diagram

A UML diagram is a type of diagram based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for representing all the roles, actions, and classes of a system for better understanding, maintenance, and analysis of information about the system.

UML focuses on the software components and business processes documentation. This technique was initially used as a general modeling language in software engineering until it became implemented in documenting business workflow or processes. There are different types of UML such as class diagram, activity diagram, use case diagram, and others.

Unified Modeling Language diagram

3. Business Process Modeling Notations

Business process modeling notations (BPMN) is an advanced form of the flowchart model. B PMN is a graphical representation that depicts the steps of business processes from the beginning to the end.

This technique allows businesses to understand their business methods and discuss these methods in a standard manner. BPMN makes use of standardized symbols to simplify, analyze and discuss business processes with all parties involved like employees, managers involved.

Business Process Management Notation

Business process modeling notation is a flexible tool for achieving business process modeling tasks. This modeling notation is better for design and process analysis compared to flowcharts and UML because it is more explanatory and understandable.

The BPMN technique consists of several elements.

  • Swim lanes are useful for organizing different activities and grouping primary modeling objects.
  • Flow objects are graphical elements for defining the behavior of business processes.
  • Data symbols represent element types such as data objects, data inputs, data outputs, and data stores.
  • Connecting objects control the sequence of activities and workflow processes. They connect flow objects together and to other information.
  • Artifacts are additional information about business processes. For example, texts and groups annotation.

4. Gantt Charts

A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart designed by Henry Gantt to illustrate project schedules. Gantt charts assist team members in planning, scheduling, managing, and organizing projects. This technique shows the starting date, duration, and progress at which a project is attaining.

Gantt charts are used to control and keep projects on track. Similar to spreadsheets, you can create Gantt charts through the use of Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Gantt chart software , or by downloading Gantt charts templates on the internet.

Sales Process Template Gantt Chart

Business Process Modeling Use Cases

Business process models are a key business process management tool that offers full transparency into your business workflows. Although you can use business process models to analyze business processes for any scenario, here are some of the most common use cases.

1. Gaining All-round Insight into Business Processes

A single business process model contains lots of workflow data which enables team members to study and analyze workflows in different ways. Business process modeling is used in analyzing four major workflow components.

  • Control Flow: This is the first component that shows the order of executing a business process. Team members get to easily identify the steps of the business process through the use of a flowchart.
  • Organization: This is the arrangement and assignment of individual tasks to each team member. It shows the connection and dependence of these components on each other. Examples of those involved are the teams, devices, systems, managers, stakeholders, and more.
  • Time: A business process model records the time taken to complete a whole process and to accomplish each step in the process. Time records are taken to track delays, progress, and performance levels.
  • Case: This is the overview of a workflow. A process model summarizes the whole process and helps to analyze outcomes.

2. Optimizing and Standardizing Processes

Business process models depict the shortcomings of workflow to easily identify ways to optimize the processes. After optimizing workflows, you standardize them throughout the organization. Team members use the process model as a guide to predict results and workflows.

3. Analyzing New Processes

New processes are analyzed, evaluated, and predicted through the use of business process models. These process models of new processes are created to display the effectiveness of the workflow, give room for adjustments, and help to achieve optimization of the business process.

4. Analyzing Resource Usage

Business process models track resource usage, the total amount of money spent, and investments made. The purpose of tracking expenses is to know if profits are gained.

With business process modeling, you can monitor the uses of devices and systems. If a particular system is unused or not beneficial, the organization might decide to not invest or divert fundings to a better and more productive option.

5. Communicating the Business Processes

Process models are an integral element of the business environment . They make it easier to send or receive information and share ideas or proper solutions . This is achievable because process models break down complex business processes into simpler forms that are easy to understand, discuss, and pass across the organization.

Key Features of Business Process Modeling Software

A business process modeling (BPM) software helps non-IT professionals to build business workflows easily by uniting different systems. Before you choose a business process modeling software, you need to look out for certain key features.

  • Collaboration: Business processes require teamwork, cooperation, discussions, sharing of ideas through many forms of communication. Collaboration is necessary for maintaining focus, making improvements, and getting effective results. Team members can connect through the software to make long-term improvements.
  • Process Modeling and Design: BPM software is capable of representing business processes in a way that they can be easily analyzed and improved. This software must be able to shape and design business processes into digital workflows. Business process modeling is mainly for facilitating the discovery of information in an organization.
  • Process Mapping: A good BPM software must be capable of visualizing or illustrating the details of the business process of an organization from the beginning to the end. Process mapping is for showing work activity, outlining task owners and expected timelines and workflows. This helps to identify potholes and areas of improvement.
  • Easy Integration: Integrating business process model software with other software systems promotes business success. Doing this helps you automate manual tasks and data transfers. This software allows easy integration and the use of data across other systems.
  • Workflow Management: BPM tools can manage tasks, automate business processes, coordinate tasks execution, track data, and performance level. Workflows can also be customized and modified for efficiency, eliminating errors, and increasing work output.
  • Form Generator: Business process modeling software tools allow you to code, design graphics, and generate custom forms without any technical skills. Other features that can be offered by the BPM solutions are calendar fields, attachments of documents, dropdown menus, signature fields, and more.
  • Data Management and Analysis: A BPM solution must be capable of managing and making analyses of business data. It is important that the software supplies analytics that show new insights and data reporting. Reports must also be customizable and generated at any time.

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Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

Explore the key elements of BPMN models and how they help bridge the communication gap between business and IT teams.

Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) is the global standard for modeling business processes, a fundamental part of business process management . BPMN diagrams allow different stakeholders to visualize business processes, making it easier to make workflows more effective and efficient. Everyone from business analysts to developers to business managers can “speak the same language” to adapt to new circumstances with total confidence.

What is Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)?

Originally developed by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), BPMN is a precise, graphical notation for documenting business processes. It resolves the ambiguities of textual process specifications by visually depicting the sequence of business activities and information flows needed to complete a specific process:

BPMN has been maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG) since 2005. This open consortium helps ensure that BPMN diagrams can be easily exchanged in a standardized format across different modeling tools. The ultimate goal is to help organizations model ways to improve efficiency, account for new circumstances and/or gain a competitive advantage.

BPMN 2.0 is part of OMG’s “triple crown” of process improvement standards, which also includes case management model notation (CMMN) and decision model notation (DMN). The standards differ from unified modeling language (UML) used in software design. OMG’s BPMN 2.0.1 specification has been published as International Standard ISO/IEC 19510:2013.

The value of BPMN

BPMN provides a common modeling language that’s readily understandable by all business stakeholders. This includes the business analysts who create and refine processes, the technical developers responsible for implementing them and the business users who monitor and manage them.

The BPMN specification is designed to help organizations do the following:

  • Reach faster agreement on current and future processes through unambiguous models
  • Encourage stakeholder participation through graphically expressive notations
  • Facilitate the analysis and improvement of operations
  • Create a library of process flows, case definitions and business rules to train new employees

In addition, BPMN diagrams help teams create the XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents needed to execute various processes, such as contract approvals or reminders for monthly financial reports. A related XML standard is the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for web services.

How BPMN works

The BPMN language is based on flowcharts and graphical notations. The notations are separated into four categories for diagramming:

  • Flow objects: Descriptive objects that are used to define a process, such as events, activities and gateways. Typically, processes are triggered by a start event, have activities/tasks and gateways (decision points) in the middle and conclude with an end event. Complex processes also include sub-processes and intermediate events, as well as different types of gateways to show how workflow moves through the diagram. For example, an exclusive gateway has only one option for movement, an inclusive gateway has options based on the decision made at the gateway and parallel gateways represent two concurrent tasks in a workflow.
  • Connecting objects: Symbols that are used to connect flow objects, such as message flows, sequence flows and associations. The flows are represented by dashed or straight lines with arrows, while associations use a dotted line to show that specific documents or artifacts are linked to an event or gateway.  
  • Swimlanes: Containers that separate a set of activities from others, such as pools and lanes. In BPMN diagrams, pools represent the major participants in a process. A different pool may be a different company, department or customer involved in the process. Lanes within a pool show the activities and flow for a certain role or participant, defining who is accountable for specific parts of a process.
  • Artifacts: Supplemental information about the process, such as data objects, groups and annotations. A data object shows what data is necessary for an activity, a group shows a logical grouping of activities and an annotation provides details about what’s happening in a part of the diagram.

The following BPMN diagram shows the process of a customer ordering checks from a bank. The customer and bank are shown as process participants in their own pools. Different events and tasks are connected by sequence flows, as seen in this example from the IBM Documentation :

Types of BPMN diagrams

BPMN diagrams can be simple or complex and depict both internal and external processes. These are some of the types of diagrams:

  • Collaboration diagrams show the interactions between two or more processes, using more than one pool (like in the check-ordering example above). The collaboration diagram focuses on work performed by each pool, and in turn, each pool can pass messages between each other. 
  • Choreography diagrams show the interactions between two or more participants. The choreography diagram can be contained within a collaboration, adding tasks and sequences that establish how the participants interact more fully.
  • Conversation diagrams are a simplified version of a collaboration diagram. They show a group of related message exchanges in a business process.

BPMN and IBM

To begin creating your own BPMN diagrams, check out IBM Blueworks Live . It’s a cloud-based tool that makes it easy for modelers to discover processes, analyze them and refine them. The business process diagrams can then be used within a BPM tool like IBM Business Automation Workflow to improve efficiency, productivity and consistency across multiple workflows and business groups.

Get IBM Business Automation Workflow as part of the IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation . With the end-to-end automation platform, you can eliminate repetitive tasks and reallocate your resources toward higher-value work. The solution is also ideal for exploring the future of intelligent automation.

To learn more about BPMN modeling, read “ How to Take Business Process Modeling to the Next Level ” and sign up for the IBM Business Automation Workflow software trial .

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The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Modeling

May 5, 2021 - 10 min read

Yuvika Iyer

Want to improve your organization's overall productivity? 

Before you get started, take some time to analyze the gap between the existing and desired state of performance. If there is none, pat yourself on the back. If there is, it’s time to figure out how to close it and get your teams closer to your ideal performance standards.

To achieve consistent and stable business growth, employees need a clear picture of how the organization works. Did you know that using visual tools can lead to an increase of 23%–89% in human performance? Utilizing a graphical tool can stimulate our imagination and enhance individual and team outcomes.

This article will explore how business process modeling can help illustrate and improve your organization’s internal workflows and, in turn, boost team productivity.

What is business process modeling?

Business process modeling (BPM) is a business process management technique that depicts an organization's internal workflows to help identify areas for improvement. It utilizes various graphical representation techniques such as data-flow diagrams, flowcharts, Gantt charts , etc.

Most business process modeling tools help in mapping two states for every process:

  • As-is : In the as-is state, the current process is depicted as it exists, without any changes
  • To-be : To-be is the ideal state of a process after the suggested changes are completed

You can use old-fashioned pen and paper or spreadsheets for the modeling process, but having specialized business process modeling tools can help.

Why use business process modeling?

Every company wants to achieve the best results and consistently operate at peak efficiency. By embracing process modeling, organizations have a chance to take a deeper look at their internal processes and workflows.

Mapping the processes in a visual format benefits teams as they are able to clearly see the importance and structure of each workflow. It gives them a better position from which to identify the steps required to streamline the processes. Here are five more reasons why an organization should consider using business process modeling.

Align strategies with business objectives

No strategy can work well unless it's aligned with the overall company goals and objectives. Process modeling ensures teams work within the broader organizational framework.

Process modeling techniques explore the reason ‘why’ any task is performed in a specific process. They evaluate whether the task is required or if it can be done away with to optimize the broader business process.

Enhance process efficiencies

In process modeling templates, each task is represented step by step, allowing teams to understand how resources can be optimized. 

Completion of this detailed simulation identifies any potential bottlenecks that can then be removed to enhance business processes.

Boost internal team communications 

Since human talent is one of the most important resources for success, you must help staff communicate better for optimum performance and productivity.

Internal team communications are crucial for activities such as:

  • Eliminating a redundant process
  • Sharing a new process with other teams
  • Creating a standardized process for all teams to follow

Increase market competitiveness 

Innovation can make or break a business. Research has proven that highly innovative organizations have an average of 11% higher annual revenues and 22% higher Earnings Before Interest Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) than companies that don't innovate.

By embracing process modeling, companies will be able to stay resilient in the dynamic business landscape and handle change management more effectively.

Foster best practices

Are you managing a mid-size or large enterprise? You may have multiple teams performing the same process differently. Creating a standardized process design ensures that the entire company follows the same best practices.

Are there different business modeling techniques?

There are more than 12 different kinds of BPM techniques. While some have been tried and tested for decades, others are relatively new.  Below, we take a closer look at some of the most widely used and accepted process modeling techniques.

Flowchart technique

Flowcharts depict a business process using different shapes and symbols. One flowchart typically showcases an independent workflow in a detailed layout. If your team wishes to represent the complete business process, they need to consolidate multiple flowcharts into one design.

Each team will have its own method for designing flowcharts, but they can be created using pen and paper, specialized business process modeling tools, or versatile workflow management software .

Data flow diagrams

Data flow diagrams (DFD) graphically represent the flow of information from one process to another, portraying the interdependencies between them.  

Developed by Edward Yourdon , DFDs is a data-focused process modeling technique with limited applicability in complex business process modeling that focuses more on activities done or to be done.

IPO Model 

An input-process-output (IPO) technique is a real-world graph used to categorize the inputs and outputs of a particular process . In this method, there are three principal elements:

  • Inputs : Information, data, or materials added into the process
  • Outputs : The final outcomes or results obtained upon completing a specific business process
  • Process : The particular business activity being improved or streamlined SIPOC diagrams 

SIPOC diagrams is a business process modeling framework in which the significant stakeholders classify the most critical elements of the process improvement into the following categories:

SIPOC is a globally accepted synonym and part of the Six Sigma framework .

Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is a process modeling procedure in which a complex activity is subdivided into smaller sub-activities, linked by interdependencies.

Gantt charts are perfect for representing business activities with tighter deadlines as they quickly let teams know the pending tasks and the estimated time required to complete them. Use them to stop any vital tasks from slipping through the cracks and keep your process modeling project on track.

PERT diagrams

Program Evaluation and Review Technique ( PERT ) diagrams are one of the most globally accepted process modeling techniques.

PERT diagrams are simple illustrations that portray an accurate timeline for completing a business process. Process modeling teams can quantify the estimated time needed to complete the business process and all its consequent tasks.

Unified Modeling Language diagrams (UML)

Unified Modeling Language (UML) was originally designed for software development processes, but with its robust facets and dynamic use cases, it’s now a highly popular and globally accepted process modeling tool.

UML diagrams are a multi-dimensional process modeling technique that illustrate the close relationship between the elements and systems of a business process.

With over 14 UML diagrams in circulation, interpreting them requires significant expertise and practice. These diagrams include:

  • Sequence Diagram
  • Activity Diagram
  • Deployment Diagram
  • Use Case Diagram
  • Package Diagram
  • Communication Diagram
  • Component Diagram
  • Interaction Overview Diagram
  • State Diagram
  • Timing Diagram
  • Class Diagram
  • Object Diagram
  • Composite Structure Diagram

Introducing business process model and notation

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a visual framework that uses standardized elements and symbols to represent a business process. 

BPMN is one of the best ways to make business process modeling easier for all project stakeholders. The predefined symbols mean that all team members working on the business process model will be able to understand the process maps. Let’s take a look the four primary elements of BPMN:

Flow objects

Flow objects in BPMN refer to the primary visual foundations that outline the nature and scope of a business process: Events, Activities, and Gateways.

Activities : Activities are flow objects that initiate, alter, or end a business process. Different activity triggers can be:

  • Compensation

Events : Events are specific tasks executed by an individual or system and illustrated using a rectangle with curved edges. These tasks can include loops, compensations, multiple instances and sub-processes.

Gateways : Gateways are decision-making points based on the condition or an event that is represented in a diamond shape. These flow objects can be based on multiple events or diverse data points.

Artifact objects

Artifact objects are elements that add detailed nuances to process modeling diagrams. Developers can add any of the three kinds of artifacts such as data objects, annotation or groups.

Data objects : Data objects represent the most essential data required to perform a specific activity.

Group : Group aligns the tasks in the business process in a rational manner without altering the flow of the diagram.

Annotation : An annotation adds diverse facets to a section of the diagram.  

Connections

Connecting objects join primary data with other relevant information to manage the overall process flow. These objects can regulate the sequence of tasks and can be either associations, message flows, or sequence flows.

Association : Associations are depicted using a dotted line and connect a text or artifact to an activity, gateway or event.

Sequence flow : Sequence flow connects objects that classify the activities to be done. They are illustrated with a default or conditional flow in a straight line.

Message flow : Message flow objects join together different events or tasks in different pools. They include messages that transcend organizational limitations, teams, or departments.  Message flow is drawn in a dashed line starting with a circle and ending with an arrow.

Swimlanes group business modeling essentials into pools and lanes.

Lane : Lanes represent the tasks included in a specific pool for an individual role or contributor. Doing this helps outline responsibility and accountability for that particular part of the process.

Pool : A pool refers to the primary members of a business process. A different department, team, or company can be illustrated in a separate pool within the same process.

Process mapping vs. process modeling: what is the difference?

Even though many teams use business process mapping and process modeling interchangeably, they are not the same.

One of the biggest similarities is that process modeling and process mapping are part of the same broader concept of business process management. Both of these terms also support in defining business processes.

However, business mapping is a tool that emphasizes documenting existing processes, while process modeling illustrates what an ideal business process looks like or how it should be done. Process mapping is static and does not have any scope for managing change agents. Process modeling lets teams reflect and adapt to changes in the process or its broader environment.

If you want to showcase diverse stakeholder perspectives in your business improvement initiatives, process modeling tools can help your teams illustrate different viewpoints. Teams using process modeling typically centralize communication with a single source of truth . On the other hand, teams that select process mapping end up with multiple variations of one process. Doing this is both expensive and unnecessary, and can cause duplication of work.

Process mapping would be a good fit if a once-off evaluation of a business process is required. But if your team wants a long-term reusable asset that maximizes the process lifecycle, picking business process modeling would give a better ROI.

How to perform business process modeling

If you wish to streamline internal workflows and boost team productivity, BPM must be on your to-do list.

There's no one-size-all fits modeling technique — the key is in understanding the overall objectives the team wants to achieve by completing this exercise.

Here's a simple three-step plan that can help your team perform business process modeling successfully.

Document the as-is process

Before starting business process modeling, make sure your team documents the complete process as it stands. They can use anything they're comfortable with to do this, such as a simple notepad or a robust business modeling software .

Identify what can be improved

Once the team has listed the current process clearly, it’s time to identify the bottlenecks, issues, and inefficiencies plaguing it. Prompt your team members to brainstorm by asking critical questions such as:

  • Is this step really required?
  • Does a specific task help in generating any measurable outcome?
  • Do the current tasks in the process meet the predefined operational goals?

Design the ideal to-be process

Once the results of the previous step are in place, put them into action. Develop the newer, more streamlined version of the process by incorporating all the findings. 

Using this process modeling method in alignment with the Business Process Management (BPM) framework can make your company’s business processes more efficient.

Top tips for planning a business process modeling project

Are you all set to start a business process modeling project? There are many small but critical steps that can ensure that your team is set up for BPM success.

Keep it simple but detailed

Even the most qualified process modeling specialists tend to make this common mistake: In simplifying a particular process, they end up leaving out some of the most vital steps. Simple is good, but make sure your team doesn't miss the finer details.

Business modeling is a collaborative effort involving many stakeholders who have different opinions, interpretations, and levels of understanding. The team creating the modeling charts may assume these smaller details are insignificant and fail to document them. 

However, for the team assessing the modeling diagrams, these points may be essential in understanding the process and making valuable recommendations for improvement.

Utilize a suitable BPM Software

Business process modeling is so much more than just diagrams. Every element, shape, and symbol in a business process model has a specific meaning. Each one of them outlines a particular process or action.

A robust BPM software such as Wrike supports the new-generation advanced business process modeling standard BPMN 2.0. Wrike provides everything your teams need for a successful process modeling project, including standardizing intake, accelerating internal processes with automation, and optimizing processes with custom dashboards.

Create precise titles that clarify user intent

When your company has a process modeling project underway, you must ensure that it is simple and easy to understand for all stakeholders. One way to do this is by creating precise titles that clarify user intent and lead to the desired action.

Here’s a process modeling example that shows how to do this. For a particular action that represents a portion of the money utilized for a specific process, the title can be “budget utilization” to make it easy to understand for all stakeholders.

Give a diverse set of options

There can be several ways to streamline a particular process. Just adding a title to the alternative option will not help — make sure your teams are outlining and describing the alternative routes for optimization too. 

Remember that the objective of the entire business process modeling exercise is to improve the process, even if it means choosing a different path.

Standardize processes using premade templates

Starting with Wrike's premade business process model templates can save company resources, effort and precious time. 

Your teams can customize the templates for every digital transformation project instead of using an ad-hoc approach based on previous experiences.

What are process modeling tools available for business process modeling projects?

Teams can create their process model entirely on paper or even a spreadsheet. 

However, leveraging automated business process modeling tools lets your teams digitize processes and sets them up for success.

Discovering areas for improvement is easier with business process modeling software. 

Here are a few process modeling tools that can help your teams excel at process modeling projects.

If your teams struggle to find the latest version of a critical document or spend hours documenting processes, choose a process management tool such as Tallyfy . 

Use Tallyfy to track progress, automate monotonous tasks, and save hours of manual effort. It uses a mobile-first platform, gives a real-time Business Intelligence (BI) feed, and has industry-leading features such as Single Sign-On.

Boost process compliance and enhance competitive advantages for your company with an intelligent process automation tool such as Bizagi. 

Bizagi brings together robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, and digital process automation to organize, automate, and integrate business processes.

Facilitate end-to-end process modeling automation by organizing people, systems, and processes to create more optimized, accurate, and Agile workflows.

ProcessMaker  

Support your teams in creating and deploying low-code business processes with Processmaker's award-winning BPM and digital process automation software. 

ProcessMaker helps you eliminate departmental silos, minimize manual efforts, and boost progress visibility across the entire company.

This BPMN 2.0 compliant process modeling tool allows team members to quickly create decision points, drag and drop tasks, and add project-specific users, forms, and more.

Need a smart diagramming tool for your team? With SmartDraw's intelligent formatting engine, your team members will be able to create, edit, and publish diagrams in a flash with over 4500 templates and 34,000 symbols.

Smartdraw also has a unique and industry-leading functionality that can automatically resize shapes to match the shape of a given diagram. Teams can use it to create class diagrams, organization charts with in-built extensions, or produce manifests and enhance diagrams.

Why Wrike is the process modeling software you need

Companies can’t just "set and forget" their business processes in today's ever-changing landscape. They need to constantly review the tasks that work while cutting the ones that don’t.

A business process modeling software such as Wrike could be a great fit for your organization, whatever its size. 

Minimize process bottlenecks and enhance resource optimization by using Wrike to boost productivity across teams. Automate internal approvals, streamline process workflows , and drive better results with Wrike's business process management software .

Empower your teams with dynamic integration capabilities and custom reporting tools to effortlessly achieve their process modeling goals. Start your next process modeling project today with a free two-week trial .

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Yuvika Iyer

Yuvika is a freelance writer who specializes in recruitment and résumé writing.

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What Is a Business Model?

Understanding business models, evaluating successful business models, how to create a business model.

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business model process means

Katrina Ávila Munichiello is an experienced editor, writer, fact-checker, and proofreader with more than fourteen years of experience working with print and online publications.

business model process means

Investopedia / Laura Porter

The term business model refers to a company's plan for making a profit . It identifies the products or services the business plans to sell, its identified target market , and any anticipated expenses . Business models are important for both new and established businesses. They help new, developing companies attract investment, recruit talent, and motivate management and staff.

Established businesses should regularly update their business model or they'll fail to anticipate trends and challenges ahead. Business models also help investors evaluate companies that interest them and employees understand the future of a company they may aspire to join.

Key Takeaways

  • A business model is a company's core strategy for profitably doing business.
  • Models generally include information like products or services the business plans to sell, target markets, and any anticipated expenses.
  • There are dozens of types of business models including retailers, manufacturers, fee-for-service, or freemium providers.
  • The two levers of a business model are pricing and costs.
  • When evaluating a business model as an investor, consider whether the product being offer matches a true need in the market.

A business model is a high-level plan for profitably operating a business in a specific marketplace. A primary component of the business model is the value proposition . This is a description of the goods or services that a company offers and why they are desirable to customers or clients, ideally stated in a way that differentiates the product or service from its competitors.

A new enterprise's business model should also cover projected startup costs and financing sources, the target customer base for the business, marketing strategy , a review of the competition, and projections of revenues and expenses. The plan may also define opportunities in which the business can partner with other established companies. For example, the business model for an advertising business may identify benefits from an arrangement for referrals to and from a printing company.

Successful businesses have business models that allow them to fulfill client needs at a competitive price and a sustainable cost. Over time, many businesses revise their business models from time to time to reflect changing business environments and market demands .

When evaluating a company as a possible investment, the investor should find out exactly how it makes its money. This means looking through the company's business model. Admittedly, the business model may not tell you everything about a company's prospects. But the investor who understands the business model can make better sense of the financial data.

A common mistake many companies make when they create their business models is to underestimate the costs of funding the business until it becomes profitable. Counting costs to the introduction of a product is not enough. A company has to keep the business running until its revenues exceed its expenses.

One way analysts and investors evaluate the success of a business model is by looking at the company's gross profit . Gross profit is a company's total revenue minus the cost of goods sold (COGS). Comparing a company's gross profit to that of its main competitor or its industry sheds light on the efficiency and effectiveness of its business model. Gross profit alone can be misleading, however. Analysts also want to see cash flow or net income . That is gross profit minus operating expenses and is an indication of just how much real profit the business is generating.

The two primary levers of a company's business model are pricing and costs. A company can raise prices, and it can find inventory at reduced costs. Both actions increase gross profit. Many analysts consider gross profit to be more important in evaluating a business plan. A good gross profit suggests a sound business plan. If expenses are out of control, the management team could be at fault, and the problems are correctable. As this suggests, many analysts believe that companies that run on the best business models can run themselves.

When evaluating a company as a possible investment, find out exactly how it makes its money (not just what it sells but how it sells it). That's the company's business model.

Types of Business Models

There are as many types of business models as there are types of business. For instance, direct sales, franchising , advertising-based, and brick-and-mortar stores are all examples of traditional business models. There are hybrid models as well, such as businesses that combine internet retail with brick-and-mortar stores or with sporting organizations like the NBA .

Below are some common types of business models; note that the examples given may fall into multiple categories.

One of the more common business models most people interact with regularly is the retailer model. A retailer is the last entity along a supply chain. They often buy finished goods from manufacturers or distributors and interface directly with customers.

Example: Costco Wholesale

Manufacturer

A manufacturer is responsible for sourcing raw materials and producing finished products by leveraging internal labor, machinery, and equipment. A manufacturer may make custom goods or highly replicated, mass produced products. A manufacturer can also sell goods to distributors, retailers, or directly to customers.

Example: Ford Motor Company

Fee-for-Service

Instead of selling products, fee-for-service business models are centered around labor and providing services. A fee-for-service business model may charge by an hourly rate or a fixed cost for a specific agreement. Fee-for-service companies are often specialized, offering insight that may not be common knowledge or may require specific training.

Example: DLA Piper LLP

Subscription

Subscription-based business models strive to attract clients in the hopes of luring them into long-time, loyal patrons. This is done by offering a product that requires ongoing payment, usually in return for a fixed duration of benefit. Though largely offered by digital companies for access to software, subscription business models are also popular for physical goods such as monthly reoccurring agriculture/produce subscription box deliveries.

Example: Spotify

Freemium business models attract customers by introducing them to basic, limited-scope products. Then, with the client using their service, the company attempts to convert them to a more premium, advance product that requires payment. Although a customer may theoretically stay on freemium forever, a company tries to show the benefit of what becoming an upgraded member can hold.

Example: LinkedIn/LinkedIn Premium

Some companies can reside within multiple business model types at the same time for the same product. For example, Spotify (a subscription-based model) also offers free version and a premium version.

If a company is concerned about the cost of attracting a single customer, it may attempt to bundle products to sell multiple goods to a single client. Bundling capitalizes on existing customers by attempting to sell them different products. This can be incentivized by offering pricing discounts for buying multiple products.

Example: AT&T

Marketplace

Marketplaces are somewhat straight-forward: in exchange for hosting a platform for business to be conducted, the marketplace receives compensation. Although transactions could occur without a marketplace, this business model attempts to make transacting easier, safer, and faster.

Example: eBay

Affiliate business models are based on marketing and the broad reach of a specific entity or person's platform. Companies pay an entity to promote a good, and that entity often receives compensation in exchange for their promotion. That compensation may be a fixed payment, a percentage of sales derived from their promotion, or both.

Example: social media influencers such as Lele Pons, Zach King, or Chiara Ferragni.

Razor Blade

Aptly named after the product that invented the model, this business model aims to sell a durable product below cost to then generate high-margin sales of a disposable component of that product. Also referred to as the "razor and blade model", razor blade companies may give away expensive blade handles with the premise that consumers need to continually buy razor blades in the long run.

Example: HP (printers and ink)

"Tying" is an illegal razor blade model strategy that requires the purchase of an unrelated good prior to being able to buy a different (and often required) good. For example, imagine Gillette released a line of lotion and required all customers to buy three bottles before they were allowed to purchase disposable razor blades.

Reverse Razor Blade

Instead of relying on high-margin companion products, a reverse razor blade business model tries to sell a high-margin product upfront. Then, to use the product, low or free companion products are provided. This model aims to promote that upfront sale, as further use of the product is not highly profitable.

Example: Apple (iPhones + applications)

The franchise business model leverages existing business plans to expand and reproduce a company at a different location. Often food, hardware, or fitness companies, franchisers work with incoming franchisees to finance the business, promote the new location, and oversee operations. In return, the franchisor receives a percentage of earnings from the franchisee.

Example: Domino's Pizza

Pay-As-You-Go

Instead of charging a fixed fee, some companies may implement a pay-as-you-go business model where the amount charged depends on how much of the product or service was used. The company may charge a fixed fee for offering the service in addition to an amount that changes each month based on what was consumed.

Example: Utility companies

A brokerage business model connects buyers and sellers without directly selling a good themselves. Brokerage companies often receive a percentage of the amount paid when a deal is finalized. Most common in real estate, brokers are also prominent in construction/development or freight.

Example: ReMax

There is no "one size fits all" when making a business model. Different professionals may suggest taking different steps when creating a business and planning your business model. Here are some broad steps one can take to create their plan:

  • Identify your audience. Most business model plans will start with either defining the problem or identifying your audience and target market . A strong business model will understand who you are trying to target so you can craft your product, messaging, and approach to connecting with that audience.
  • Define the problem. In addition to understanding your audience, you must know what problem you are trying to solve. A hardware company sells products for home repairs. A restaurant feeds the community. Without a problem or a need, your business may struggle to find its footing if there isn't a demand for your services or products.
  • Understand your offerings. With your audience and problem in mind, consider what you are able to offer. What products are you interested in selling, and how does your expertise match that product? In this stage of the business model, the product is tweaked to adapt to what the market needs and what you're able to provide.
  • Document your needs. With your product selected, consider the hurdles your company will face. This includes product-specific challenges as well as operational difficulties. Make sure to document each of these needs to assess whether you are ready to launch in the future.
  • Find key partners. Most businesses will leverage other partners in driving company success. For example, a wedding planner may forge relationships with venues, caterers, florists, and tailors to enhance their offering. For manufacturers, consider who will provide your materials and how critical your relationship with that provider will be.
  • Set monetization solutions. Until now, we haven't talked about how your company will make money. A business model isn't complete until it identifies how it will make money. This includes selecting the strategy or strategies above in determining your business model type. This might have been a type you had in mind but after reviewing your clients needs, a different type might now make more sense.
  • Test your model. When your full plan is in place, perform test surveys or soft launches. Ask how people would feel paying your prices for your services. Offer discounts to new customers in exchange for reviews and feedback. You can always adjust your business model, but you should always consider leveraging direct feedback from the market when doing so.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, consider what competing companies are doing and how you can position yourself in the market. You may be able to easily spot gaps in the business model of others.

Criticism of Business Models

Joan Magretta, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, suggests there are two critical factors in sizing up business models. When business models don't work, she states, it's because the story doesn't make sense and/or the numbers just don't add up to profits. The airline industry is a good place to look to find a business model that stopped making sense. It includes companies that have suffered heavy losses and even bankruptcy .

For years, major carriers such as American Airlines, Delta, and Continental built their businesses around a hub-and-spoke structure , in which all flights were routed through a handful of major airports. By ensuring that most seats were filled most of the time, the business model produced big profits.

However, a competing business model arose that made the strength of the major carriers a burden. Carriers like Southwest and JetBlue shuttled planes between smaller airports at a lower cost. They avoided some of the operational inefficiencies of the hub-and-spoke model while forcing labor costs down. That allowed them to cut prices, increasing demand for short flights between cities.

As these newer competitors drew more customers away, the old carriers were left to support their large, extended networks with fewer passengers. The problem became even worse when traffic fell sharply following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 . To fill seats, these airlines had to offer more discounts at even deeper levels. The hub-and-spoke business model no longer made sense.

Example of Business Models

Consider the vast portfolio of Microsoft. Over the past several decades, the company has expanded its product line across digital services, software, gaming, and more. Various business models, all within Microsoft, include but are not limited to:

  • Productivity and Business Processes: Microsoft offers subscriptions to Office products and LinkedIn. These subscriptions may be based off product usage (i.e. the amount of data being uploaded to SharePoint).
  • Intelligent Cloud: Microsoft offers server products and cloud services for a subscription. This also provide services and consulting.
  • More Personal Computing: Microsoft sells physically manufactured products such as Surface, PC components, and Xbox hardware. Residual Xbox sales include content, services, subscriptions, royalties, and advertising revenue.

A business model is a strategic plan of how a company will make money. The model describes the way a business will take its product, offer it to the market, and drive sales. A business model determines what products make sense for a company to sell, how it wants to promote its products, what type of people it should try to cater to, and what revenue streams it may expect.

What Is an Example of a Business Model?

Best Buy, Target, and Walmart are some of the largest examples of retail companies. These companies acquire goods from manufacturers or distributors to sell directly to the public. Retailers interface with their clients and sell goods, though retails may or may not make the actual goods they sell.

What Are the Main Types of Business Models?

Retailers and manufacturers are among the primary types of business models. Manufacturers product their own goods and may or may not sell them directly to the public. Meanwhile, retails buy goods to later resell to the public.

How Do I Build a Business Model?

There are many steps to building a business model, and there is no single consistent process among business experts. In general, a business model should identify your customers, understand the problem you are trying to solve, select a business model type to determine how your clients will buy your product, and determine the ways your company will make money. It is also important to periodically review your business model; once you've launched, feel free to evaluate your plan and adjust your target audience, product line, or pricing as needed.

A company isn't just an entity that sells goods. It's an ecosystem that must have a plan in plan on who to sell to, what to sell, what to charge, and what value it is creating. A business model describes what an organization does to systematically create long-term value for its customers. After building a business model, a company should have stronger direction on how it wants to operate and what its financial future appears to be.

Harvard Business Review. " Why Business Models Matter ."

Bureau of Transportation Statistics. " Airline Travel Since 9/11 ."

Microsoft. " Annual Report 2021 ."

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The Definitive Guide to Business Process Modeling

Last Updated on January 5, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

Business Process Modeling

Featured Bonus Content: Download the FREE Checklist for Business Process Modeling! You will get access to a complete worksheet to help you map your current as-is business process and determine your to-be business process. Click Here To Download It.

Introduction

To say that we are living in an era of plenty would be a colossal understatement. But we seldom stop to reflect and appreciate how all the amenities we take for granted today make it to our hands. While it may seem that many of the technological breakthroughs that enable high-quality goods to be created and distributed only started around the middle of the 20th century, the science of business process has existed and been evolving far longer than commonly known.

Even though means, materials and efficiencies have no doubt increased manifold since, the underlying principle remains essentially the same. But business process modeling as a concept wouldn’t take shape until the early 20th century when gantt charts, flowcharts, functional flow block diagrams, etc started being used to document and affect business methodologies.

Whether it was Henry Ford’s Model T that halved the price of cars or Just-in-Time manufacturing that greatly reduced the time it takes to manufacture and distribute goods, every quality of life improvement can be traced to an innovative business process.

But even as business process models have helped power many industry trends, companies today are confronted with challenges that until recently were non-existent. Just look what Airbnb, Uber and Lyft have done to their respective industries. With newer methods of working such as BYOD, digital nomadism and remote working gaining popularity, companies are being forced to work in asymmetrical ways that both challenge older business process models and present interesting new advantages.

Since remote working is expected to at least equal fixed location working by 2025, companies have to adapt and update their business process models to function efficiently in this new dynamic. In the interest of self-preservation, companies are best to anticipate radical, sometimes devastating changes unless they want to be caught unprepared. But such challenges also demand that we answer some perplexing questions:

  • How does a company opt for a business process model if there is no guarantee it will remain useful as markets or work practices change?
  • If a company does come up with a set of business process models, can they be updated on the fly?
  • Are the company’s current processes really inefficient to the point they have to be replaced?
  • Is new technology presenting newer models that can be leveraged to provide a competitive advantage?

In the following sections, we will attempt to answer each one of these questions (among others) to help you find and implement the best business process for your business’s unique way of working and challenges. Let’s begin.

The Definitive Guide to Business Process Modeling – Content Index

Chapter 1: defining a business process model, chapter 2: four business process modeling techniques, chapter 3: how to select a business process modeling technique for your company, chapter 4: how you’re probably underestimating business process modeling, chapter 5: five questions to ask before creating your business model, chapter 6: tools for business process modeling, concluding thoughts, defining a business process model.

Defining a Business Process Model

Despite the best of intentions, businesses rarely operate at their highest efficiency. Important things get overlooked: office politics, power games, people getting sick and lost opportunities all play an unfortunate, albeit inevitable, role in a company’s life. A business process model is therefore a tool that can be used to graphically present how a company works and identify opportunities to improve processes.

The term first appeared in 1967 in S. William’s paper titled Business Process Modeling Improves Administrative Control which explored physical control systems for understanding business processes. The strategy uses graphing methods such as flowcharts, Gantt charts, data-flow diagrams, Petri nets, etc., to illustrate all the different business functions and how they interact with one another. The following is a simple illustration of a BPM.

Defining a Business Process Model 2

Two types of business process models are drawn: as-is models that represent how a company works presently, and to-be models that denote how a company should look in the future.

As-is Business Models: An as-is model defines and lists out all the functions of a business as they exist today, complete with their strengths and weaknesses. These consist of all the roles, responsibilities, steps, exceptions, etc. While as-is business models aren’t necessary, creating one can be extremely beneficial to tracking the company’s performance over time. Certain situations also require as-is business models to be obtained before moving forward. For instance:

  • The company is facing issues such as customer service inquiries not getting processed in time.
  • Orders are taking an inordinate amount of time to get processed, far more than the industry standard.
  • There is palpable confusion regarding responsibilities and users often overstep their boundaries.
  • The management has discovered methods to improve efficiency in certain processes or automate them entirely.

These are some of the more common reasons, and many more such scenarios can be added here. Documenting business processes is a good practice in itself as it can uncover many issues that may plague a company, often unknowingly.

To-be Business Models: These models define the state that an organization wishes to be in. Oftentimes, a to-be model is an as-is model with procedural improvements. However, if a company wishes to rewrite how it works entirely, then a completely new model can be created.

For instance, if a company grows, then it might have to add a new department or a warehouse that will come with its own set of processes. The company will then need to document all the new functions and processes into its existing business process model and assess how each of them affects the rest of its functions.

Over the years, many different business process modeling techniques have come up, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ones and what advantages they have to offer.

Four Business Process Modeling Techniques

Business Model Integration

Even a cursory online search will reveal a plethora of modeling tools you can use to get a good idea of what your company’s processes look like. The problem, however, is that many of these tools are either untested or simply ideas without any sound real-world applications. While you are encouraged to find as many actionable insights online as possible, let’s take a look at four of the most well-known business process modeling tools.

Business Process Model and Notations (BPMN)

By far the most common business process modeling technique, BPMN uses flowchart based graphical notations and is similar to activity diagrams found in the Unified Modeling Language.

BPMN is popular because the notations used within it are intuitive and simple for business users, yet provide enough technical semantics for some of the more complicated processes.

The notations are standardized so they can be understood by all stakeholders.

The model was developed by Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) which merged with the Object Management Group in 2005 and is ISO 19510 compliant.

As part of its standardization, BPMN uses five categories for denoting business functions. They are:

  • Connecting Objects: Connects different tasks via lines. Solid lines represent task transfers; dotted ones are for messaging.
  • Flow Objects: Represents events with circles; activities with rectangular boxes; gateways and control points come in diamond shape.
  • Swimlanes: Details how different responsibilities are to be shared within a process. Here, a sub-task is denoted as a “pool” and lanes represent people or departments.
  • Artefacts: Used to show extra information that isn’t part of the process but can help illustrate it better.
  • Data Objects: Are used to denote four data types. A page icon is used for singular data objects; page icon with arrow is for data input and outputs; and a container is used for data stores.

BPMN is an evolving system that is being added to all the time. For the most updated version of BPMN, check out bpmn.org/ .

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM)

A communication based tool, S-BPM is derived from CCS-Calculus by Robin Milner which was designed to provide a mathematical framework to understand communication systems. S-BPM uses a simple five-symbol system to model any process. The underlying premise of S-BPM is that every system is built up of subjects which can be a locus of activity, a process or a computational unit. Notations here can be mapped as follows:

  • Subject (who): the subject
  • Object (with what): data
  • Predicate (what): action

A subject executes an action on an object. The notation is best illustrated with a flowchart of a quiz, where an asker asks a question to a responder, who then provides an answer which is then responded to with feedback (if it’s needed).

Flowchart Technique

Everyone knows of the humble old flowchart and its many uses. Most of the other business process models are essentially just a different iteration of flowcharts with a few features added for greater flexibility. While flowcharts have been superseded, they still remain relevant due to their simplicity.

Flowcharts are used for documenting sequential actions, simple processes and functions. A standard flowchart can be made with just two symbols: a rectangular box to denote an action, and a diamond-shaped box to highlight decisions. Even so, over the years many symbols have been added including oval rectangles for start/end functions, parallelograms for input/output, circles for connectors, triangle for inventory, rectangle with rounded corners for alternate processes, and so on.

Even though more advanced tools are certainly available today, the simplicity of flowcharts make them an ideal starting point for companies looking to get into business process modeling. Their intuitive nature makes them easy to understand with little or no training, which is why they are still being used in business and technological applications even to this day.

Activity Diagrams (UML)

Unified Modeling Language was created in 1994 by Grady Brooch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh primarily for documenting software systems. Despite being complicated due to the sheer amount of information and techniques added to it since its inception, UML has use cases beyond software and has been successfully applied to business functions as well.

Activity diagrams that are a part of behavioral diagrams in UML offer a very efficient way to record business processes as they are designed to document flow of actions. Even in UML, activity diagrams are the second most popular tool after class diagrams. Activity diagrams can be created using five basic components:

  • Start node: uses a black circle to symbolize the beginning of an activity
  • Action: uses a box (sometimes with rounded edges) to denote an action taken by an actor
  • Decision node: represented by a diamond, has one input and two or more outputs
  • Control flows: uses arrows, join and fork symbols to connect the different steps
  • End node: Uses a black within a white circle symbol to denote the end of a process

Other symbols used include the hourglass symbol to highlight the amount of time between processes, arrow box to represent outgoing events, an arrow fletch symbol for incoming events, and a document symbol for annotations.

How to Select a Business Process Model for Your Company

How to Select a Business Process Model for Your Company

Your company’s business process is a subset of its entire business process management lifecycle and as such needs to fit into your strategy. As Gartner says, “Processes span organizational boundaries, linking together people, information flows, systems and other assets to create and deliver value to customers and constituents.” A typical BPM lifecycle looks like:

Typical BPM Lifecycle

As the model itself will be a small part of your productivity equation, it’s best to consider all the other variables that will play here. As such, you must:

Generate organization wide buy-in: Your business process model needs to document every step of your value chain. Most of these steps will be known best to the people who perform them every day, i.e., your team members. Asking everyone to share how they do what they do and what they might want to improve will be not only a great way to communicate the need for documenting your business process model, but involve everyone too which will help implementing any new model(s) all the more easier.

Map your as-is processes: Once you have some buzz built around your BPM initiative, it’s time to create a database of all the existing processes you are currently using. Consider sending a form to all your team members with a series of questions that helps them define their roles, responsibilities, processes they follow and any issues that they might be facing.

Relate the processes to your business strategy: Many processes are thought of and implemented in the spur of the moment as and when the need arises. Since there is no guarantee that these processes actually help achieve the company’s goals efficiently, they should be mapped against the latter.

Define your to-be processes: By now you should have a good idea on what your overall process chain looks like, which processes add the most value to your organization, which can be replaced and which are simply dead weight. Your ideal to-be BPM should therefore include the processes that your company has mastered, upgrade legacy processes that are falling behind, and replace those that are obsolete. You can also add processes that new technologies are enabling at this stage.

Implement Continuous Process Improvement (CPI): If you haven’t already, that is. The idea behind CPI can be traced back to the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen which highlights the importance of continually improving yourself, your service/product and your organization’s culture. The primary focus of CPI is to continuously look out for and remove sub-optimal processes from the value chain. This can be accomplished via constantly reflecting on the processes, the value they add to your organization, and how they can be used as a foundation to build something even better. Improvements can be added in an iterative manner or in one fell swoop as needed.

While the steps mentioned above will help you with the cultural aspect of organizational change, selecting the right business process modeling tool will need a different approach. Wenhong Luo and Y. Alex Tung in their paper titled A Framework for Selecting Business Process Modeling Methods give an excellent strategy on how to go about finding the right process modeling tool for your organization. They highlight five steps that can help you do so:

Identification of modeling objectives: List out the reason why modeling business processes is required. Are you trying to get a better idea of how your business runs? Do you want to improve certain processes/sub-processes only? Do you feel that your legacy processes are facing obsoletion? Have you discovered inefficiency in your value chain? Several reasons can also coexist throughout the process reengineering effort as well.

Identification of required perspectives and desired characteristics: Once the modeling objectives have been ascertained, you can determine from which perspective a model will be crafted. Luo and Tung suggest that models can either be from the object perspective , which emphasizes the objects being manipulated, i.e. data, documents or physical items, or from the activity perspective which highlights the activities being performed and the relationship between each activity.

So if the objective of your modeling initiative is to help employees understand their roles better, then your models should be from the activity perspective. The model should ideally be simple to understand as non-technical people will be required to study and implement it. On the other hand, if your model is to examine process performance, then it should be drawn from the object perspective.

Identification of alternative BPM methods: In this step, all the viable BPM tools, complete with their respective strengths and weaknesses, are listed. From the example above, let’s assume your objective is to enhance employee performance. You therefore consider BPMN, activity diagrams and flowcharts as potentially ideal modeling tools. Both offer great activity perspective potential and have a plethora of features to help you achieve your goal.

Evaluation of modeling methods: Your selected models are now weighed against their respective strengths. Upon deeper analysis, you discover that activities that BPMN can highlight with a single symbol sometimes require several symbols (and steps) in AD. The conclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, as AD being a derivative of UML is, in fact, object based at its heart since it was created to model software systems.

That being said, BPMN is far more complex than needed and you realize that many of its core features such as swimlanes won’t even be needed. You only need enough visualization to help employees picture the entire process better. Flowcharts, on the other hand, are perfectly adequate as they are simple, and your staff is also well familiar with it, making implementation and buy-in easy.

Selection of the appropriate method: It is entirely possible that more than one tool will be needed. However, in our given example, flowcharts are the clear winner.

The decision making process that most companies will face will no doubt be far more complex, and recreating a detailed account of what it might look like is beyond the scope of this article. The research paper goes into more depth on how to decide which business process modeling tool to select, so be sure to give it a read.

There is hardly a business process out there that cannot be documented with one of the four modeling tools mentioned above. That being said, here are a few honorable mentions you can look into.

  • Cognition enhanced Natural Language Information Analysis Method : CogNIAM attempts to integrate different classes of data, rules, processes, and semantics, and is also known as the “Knowledge Triangle.”
  • Event Driven Process Chain : A simple ordered graph of events and functions, EDPC can be thought of as the flowchart technique on steroids.
  • Formalized Administrative Notations : Useful for helping managers identify and describe responsibilities and operations.

How You’re Probably Underestimating the Benefits of Business Process Modeling

How You’re Probably Underestimating Business Process Modeling

Documenting business processes is incredibly easy to underestimate. So often, we end up getting carried away by daily goals, deadlines, and handling customer issues to the point where we forget about how the underlying processes can be enhanced.

Even if documenting and modeling business processes may seem like a fairly mundane chore, neglecting it can have catastrophic consequences for a business. According to market research firm IDC, companies can lose 30% every year due to inefficiencies.

Companies are often guilty of continuing with the same processes simply because they have become too accustomed to them as well. Such practices result in inefficiencies getting deeply entrenched into the organization’s culture and can hurt its performance in the market. The opposite is true as well. General Electric reported that a one percent increase in oil production led to an additional 80 billion barrels of oil per year.

James Proctor , director of professional services at the Inteq Group, in his white paper on Misconceptions of Censuring Current State Mapping , suggests four reasons companies give when ignoring current state mapping and analysis:

We already have a process, it works, so there’s no need to evaluate and improve: Beyond  the processes that are explained in onboarding tours, rule books and management sessions, a company’s staff also maintains procedural knowledge gained by experience over time. This deep business knowledge is almost always maintained in the minds of the people and rarely documented, even though it has a very high say in how a company produces its output. The consequence here is twofold:

  • The knowledge is lost when an employee leaves the company. Or,
  • The processes remain inefficient as they are never discussed openly.

One of the advantages of mapping current processes is that they can help a company mine its intuitive, subjective knowledge. It can also help answer the processes what and how, thereby enabling the company to build on top of it.

We know our processes don’t work, so let’s move to the latest, greatest thing: Also known as “shiny object syndrome,” this line of reasoning is again given to jump to a new solution without trying to understand what the underlying problem is. Oftentimes, there will be salvageable knowledge that can serve an organization, or the processes itself will need some fixing. Organizations also ignore the human element in their processes where vested interests and poor allocation of resources can come together to wreak havoc on the output. As most companies will follow industry specific processes, they can misdiagnose problems.

Mapping business processes can help companies understand where they are going wrong, what they can do to fix it, and how to go about affecting their solutions. Consequently, they may uncover solutions that do not require a complete overhaul, making new process implementation both easier and more affordable.

We are outsourcing our business process to a third party, so we don’t need to look into our processes ourselves: Many times, companies will look to specialized vendors to help them come up with better business processes—no doubt a great way to fast forward to a new desired step. But simply relying on another company’s solution can also result in lost knowledge and overlooked opportunities to increased efficiency.

A desired future state can only be attained once the current state has been understood. In fact, even after implementing a radically different method, 60% to 80% of a business’s existing concepts continue to apply . Reason being, while the processes themselves may be altered slightly, their fundamental premise (i.e., business logic) will remain the same. Moving to a third-party solution will require an astute understanding of a company’s current processes and how they can coexist with the vendor’s solution, making business process mapping all the more necessary.

We have industry best practices already at work, so we don’t need to innovate: While existing workflow templates are no doubt a great, well-tested source to draw your organizational design from, they are best not taken at face value. Most such instructions draw from their respective sources experience, business challenges, and subjective views on how to go about solving certain problems. These insights may or may not apply to your company’s particular operation. You may find utility in some parts of the template and rely on your existing models for other functions.

The best organizations use templates to create their own business processes that are tailored to their strengths while helping them overcome their weaknesses. A business model becomes more than a tool to complete a process as quickly as possible and can be used to differentiate a business from its competitors.

The bottom line here is that there is never a good reason not to document your processes and procedures. Even if a business process model doesn’t seem necessary now, there are plenty of scenarios that may prove to be invaluable.

Five Questions to Ask Before Creating Your Business Process Model

Five Questions to Ask Before Creating Your Business Process Model

Even though the importance of having a business process model in place is well established, there needs to be a well-defined use case starting out. The following five business analysis questions are a great way to create a framework for mapping business processes:

What are you currently doing?

Essentially you list out all the processes, activities and sequences that are currently being carried out by the company to create its product/service. Consider listing each activity and process in detail, who is responsible for it, and any issues you may be facing in executing it.

What are you currently doing that is not needed?

In other words, of all the activities and processes listed, which can you do without and/or can be replaced? Many organizations have business processes and policies that either have little or no value.

More often than not, these will be legacy ware that has been in practice for a long time and can be replaced with more modern tools. On other occasions, procedures and policies may have been put in place to comply with legislations that have since been removed, making said policies obsolete.

What are you currently doing that can be improved?

When obsolete processes are discovered, the first impulse is usually to replace them quickly. However, analysis can reveal that certain business policies, processes, and procedures can be improved with minor modifications. Improvement is always best prioritized over replacement as it can lead to substantial improvement in performance at lower costs.

What are you not doing that you should be doing?

Many times, stakeholders become aware that a procedure, policy or process is proving to be a bottleneck. They may also be aware of certain actions or tools that can help to iron out the kinks and drive up productivity but are unable to implement them either due to financial or time constraints. Listing out such problems along with available known solutions will be a good start toward getting more people involved and thereby putting them into practice.

What are you not doing that you don’t know you should be doing?

Not all requirements can be known ahead of time, and the same can be said for potential solutions. This question is to coax stakeholders into looking out of their immediate vicinity to find solutions that may exist they are currently unaware of. Asking third party specialists and analysts, researching online, and keeping up-to-date with industry news, are all great ways to get some new ideas flowing in house.

Business Process Modeling Software

Obviously, creating modeling for your business processes is an involved and tedious task that is going to take some time. And if you are planning on using spreadsheets, emails, document files and PDFs to document your processes, then it will take longer than it really has to. A number of cloud-based business process tools exist today that are designed from the ground up to help companies create, distribute, and track their processes, all from one place. Not only do these tools greatly speed up documentation, but also act as a central repository for all the company’s knowledge, making process implementation all the more efficient.

Here are five such tools:

SweetProcess

SweetProcess

Features: Document processes, procedures and policies, steps can be added to each as checklists and can include videos and/or pictures, enables training on the job

Price: Starting at $99/Month for team of twenty with $5/additional member

Free trial: 14 days

The software above is designed for process mapping and documentation. But none of them really delve into the basic components of BPM. In fact, most business process modeling tools only deal with the process part of the equation while ignoring its two siblings: policies and procedures. And yes, all three are very different in definition and application. An organization’s business schematics needs the proper implementation of all three in order to be implemented successfully. The difference between them is:

  • Policies : A list of rules and guidelines that need to be followed to accomplish a goal.
  • Procedures : The outline on how to carry out a task.
  • Processes : The exact step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task.

Essentially, processes make up a procedure, and procedures make up a policy . All three components work best when they use the preceding tool as context. This is where SweetProcess shines. The platform allows users to systematically create their policies, procedures, and processes, and assign them to teams and/or users.

SweetProcess also allows companies to capture information in real time and integrate it into their overall business model effortlessly. People can be trained on new procedures on the spot and all their feedback can be recorded on the job card for future reference.

Users can implement a document-as-you-go process model where their business process model can be revised and adapted based on new information, technique, or technology. In other words, companies need not assign a huge part of their time and manpower to revising their business process—it can be done on the fly as and when needed.

ProcessMaker

ProcessMaker

Features: Highly intuitive and personalizable dashboards, output document builder, easy to track KPIs

Price: $1,500/month for standard package

Free trial: 30 days

Some of the biggest challenges that a company faces when coming up with new processes appear mundane on the surface. For instance, maintaining paper records and backups, signing soft copies digitally and coming up with a unified design that everyone in the company can work with can give managers more than a headache. ProcessMaker takes care of these issues (among many others) by providing a simple interface to both create and distribute process-related documents.

ProcessMaker is a drag and drop BPMN-based process-making tool that allows users to create their own process models without needing to know any programming knowledge. Entire processes can be created offline and synced with the company’s database when the user goes online. BPMN elements such as Gateways can be designed on customized conditions and form-fields can be created print-ready with definable variables.

ProcessMaker also comes with a responsive dynamic forms designer which can be customized to any requirements, have sub-forms and can be integrated with outside variables and files. Their dynaforms function uses the same drag and drop functions that the BPMN tool does, but developers can edit the forms in JavaScript if they so choose. The forms can auto-adjust to desktop, laptop or smartphone screens.

By far the most interesting feature that ProcessMaker comes with is their awesome dashboards. The Process Efficiency Index (PEI) is an intelligent system that learns from your processes over time and establishes better performance levels using resource costs and comparative rankings, among other factors. The Employee Efficiency Index (EEI) carries out a similar analysis of every user, and suggests ways they can improve their performance.

KissFlow

Features: Unique five-step app wizard, attaching Google Docs, prebuilt reports, hands-off workflows

Price: Starts at $149/month for 30 users

With over 10,000 customers in 121 countries, Kissflow is easily one of the most popular BPM tools out there. If there’s one constant theme in all the reviews that it has garnered, it is that the software offers unprecedented ease in helping users create and use workflows.

True to its name, nothing in Kissflow requires elaborate coding knowledge. All forms and process workflows can be created with drag and drop items. The software is built from the ground up to be scalable and can easily add users, data objects, and complexity with ease. It also offers out-of-the-box integration with Zapier so documents can be moved to and from any of the 1,500 web apps online.

Kissflow has some very well thought-out access controls and lets process creators define and implement accesses at each step of a process based on a users rights and responsibilities. The app can send out updates to all the users within a process based on predefined conditions automatically. Tasks can be escalated to certain teams and individuals if predefined conditions are triggered.

With the app’s robust reporting features, your entire auditing process can easily be carried out online. Custom reports can be created right down to specific processes with the same drag and drop functionality that Kissflow is known for. Even so, the app allows you to create a paper trail for manual audits or backups if necessary.

Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator

Features: Smart reports, collaboration tools, multi-language tools, custom reports

Price: Starts at $5/user/month

Free trial: 15 days

Like Kissflow and ProcessMaker, Zoho creator is billed as a code-free process creation tool that users can jump into and start fiddling with. Unlike the previous two, however, Zoho is ideal not only for small, medium and large businesses, but freelancers as well, thanks to a very low starting price of $5 per month.

Zoho has one of the most inclusive workflow management features, including access control, a robust approval process control system, advanced workflow configuration, and business process automation that allows emails and predefined messages to be sent at each step of the way and many more.

Even though Zoho creator can easily be used by non-technical users easily, the platform has one of the best app creator features in the business. If your work requires building custom apps, then Zoho can not only provide you with a workflow management suite, but an app development platform as well. Combining both the features can drastically decrease development time.

Nintex

Features: Proprietary Nintex connectors, heavy emphasis on mobility and automation, easy to create process-friendly forms

Price: Starts at $950/100 processes/month

While Zoho Creator and Zoho offer process documentation and modeling features as part of an elaborate cloud based productivity suite, Nintex is wholly dedicated to process management only. Consequently, it offers far more “process management” oriented features than most other competing products. Nintex allows users to plan, map, and share processes with a few simple clicks.

Furthermore, Nintex allows processes to be automated without any coding knowledge. The software can help users identify processes that can be automated. The processes can then be automated using Nintex’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots. RPA is usually thought of as a daunting, expensive task, which is why Nintex allows users to choose the number of processes they want to automate, rather than the number of bots they implement. This stands in stark contrast to typical RPA pricing that is often very confusing and is implemented differently from one vendor to the other. 

Business process reengineering is all the rage today because companies are coming face to face with the truth that change is becoming ever more pervasive. The slow, steady-as-we-go approach that has served organizations so well until the cloud took over is now decidedly obsolete and needs to be replaced with a forward thinking, faster model that adapts to newer market conditions and changes on the fly.

The most obvious question here is, do time tested processes become obsolete also, and whether companies really need to start from scratch? Obviously, we’d all want our hard-earned knowledge to stick around, and there’s always the danger of poorly understanding whether change really serves a purpose and carry any short/long term value.

Business process modeling done the old way would require far too intensive an effort to really understand the value of a new direction. Cloud-based tools such as the ones mentioned above become an utterly indispensable tool to speed up the process and keep up with the new reality that we work in.

Business process modeling means documenting every step that your company takes and there’s plenty that can be overlooked or missed. Download our free checklist on creating a business process model to stay on track!

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How to Design a Winning Business Model

  • Ramon Casadesus-Masanell
  • Joan E. Ricart

Smart companies’ business models generate cycles that, over time, make them operate more effectively.

Reprint: R1101G

Most executives believe that competing through business models is critical for success, but few have come to grips with how best to do so. One common mistake, the authors’ studies show, is enterprises’ unwavering focus on creating innovative models and evaluating their efficacy in standalone fashion—just as engineers test new technologies or products. However, the success or failure of a company’s business model depends largely on how it interacts with those of the other players in the industry. (Almost any business model will perform brilliantly if a company is lucky enough to be the only one in a market.) Because companies build them without thinking about the competition, companies routinely deploy doomed business models.

Moreover, many companies ignore the dynamic elements of business models and fail to realize that they can design business models to generate winner-take-all effects similar to the network externalities that high-tech companies such as Microsoft, eBay, and Facebook often create. A good business model creates virtuous cycles that, over time, result in competitive advantage.

Smart companies know how to strengthen their virtuous cycles, undermine those of rivals, and even use them to turn competitors’ strengths into weaknesses.

The Idea in Brief

There has never been as much interest in business models as there is today; seven out of 10 companies are trying to create innovative business models, and 98% are modifying existing ones, according to a recent survey.

However, most companies still create and evaluate business models in isolation, without considering the implications of how they will interact with rivals’ business models. This narrow view dooms many to failure.

Moreover, companies often don’t realize that business models can be designed so that they generate virtuous cycles—similar to the powerful effects high-tech firms such as Facebook, eBay, and Microsoft enjoy. These cycles, when aligned with company goals, reinforce competitive advantage.

By making the right choices, companies can strengthen their business models’ virtuous cycles, weaken those of rivals, and even use the cycles to turn competitors into complementary players.

This is neither strategy nor tactics; it’s using business models to gain competitive advantage. Indeed, companies fare poorly partly because they don’t recognize the differences between strategy, tactics, and business models.

Strategy has been the primary building block of competitiveness over the past three decades, but in the future, the quest for sustainable advantage may well begin with the business model. While the convergence of information and communication technologies in the 1990s resulted in a short-lived fascination with business models, forces such as deregulation, technological change, globalization, and sustainability have rekindled interest in the concept today. Since 2006, the IBM Institute for Business Value’s biannual Global CEO Study has reported that senior executives across industries regard developing innovative business models as a major priority. A 2009 follow-up study reveals that seven out of 10 companies are engaging in business-model innovation, and an incredible 98% are modifying their business models to some extent. Business model innovation is undoubtedly here to stay.

business model process means

  • RC Ramon Casadesus-Masanell is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author, with Joan E. Ricart, of “How to Design a Winning Business Model” (HBR January–February 2011).
  • JR Joan E. Ricart ( [email protected] ) is the Carl Schroder Professor of Strategic Management and Economics at IESE Business School in Barcelona.

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What is BPMN? The Easy Guide to Business Process Modeling Notation

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In this guide, we will delve into what is BPMN, including its history, when and how to use it, and the benefits it brings to the table. We’ll explore BPMN diagrams, their elements, and symbols, and provide examples to illustrate their practical applications. Additionally, we’ll discuss the challenges of creating BPMN diagrams and how tools like Creately can simplify the process.

What is BPMN?

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standardized diagramming language that provides a graphical representation of business processes, enabling organizations to document, analyze, and optimize their workflows. Unlike traditional flowcharts, BPMN diagrams are rich with specific symbols and notations that cater to the complexities of modern business activities.

Here’s what sets BPMN apart:

  • Standardization : BPMN is a globally recognized standard, ensuring consistency and clarity across various stakeholders and software tools.
  • Expressiveness : With a comprehensive set of symbols, BPMN can illustrate complex process dynamics such as parallel tasks, events, and decision gateways.
  • Versatility : It’s suitable for both technical users who design and implement processes and business stakeholders who need to understand them.

While other process modeling languages exist, BPMN’s widespread adoption is due to its balance of simplicity and expressiveness. It bridges the gap between the technical implementation of processes and the business strategy that guides them.

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History of BPMN

Here are some key milestones that have shaped BPMN into the robust framework it is today. These milestones not only reflect the technical advancements but also the collaborative efforts of key organizations and figures dedicated to the development of BPMN.

History of BPMN

When to Use BPMN

BPMN diagrams are particularly beneficial in scenarios where clear communication and detailed process mapping are essential. Here are some appropriate use cases for BPMN diagrams:

Complex workflow visualization : When dealing with intricate workflows that involve multiple stakeholders, BPMN diagrams provide a standardized method to visualize and communicate the processes.

Business process improvement : BPMN is ideal for identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies in existing processes, helping teams to optimize and refine their workflows.

System integration planning : For projects that require the integration of various systems, BPMN diagrams can outline the interactions and data flow between these systems, leading to a smoother integration.

BPMN Examples

BPMN diagrams serve as a universal language, bridging the gap between process design and implementation. Let’s delve into some illustrative examples from various industries:

  • Healthcare : A BPMN diagram can map out patient admission processes, making sure that each step from registration to discharge is clearly defined and optimized for efficiency and patient care.
  • Manufacturing : BPMN diagrams are used to streamline production workflows, identifying bottlenecks and enabling seamless coordination between different departments, from procurement to shipping.
  • Banking : In the banking sector, BPMN diagrams facilitate the visualization of loan approval processes, making it easier to identify areas for improvement and ensure compliance with regulatory standards.

Explore more BPMN templates here.

Features of BPMN

Business Process Model and Notation is renowned for its extensive set of elements and symbols. Each element represents different activities, decisions, and flows within a business process, ensuring that every detail can be captured.

  • Task and activity symbols : From simple tasks to complex subprocesses, BPMN includes a variety of symbols to denote work being done.
  • Gateway symbols : Decision points in a process are clearly depicted with gateway symbols, guiding the flow based on conditions.
  • Event symbols : Events that trigger or result from process steps are represented with distinct symbols, indicating start, intermediate, and end states.
  • Connecting objects : Sequence flows, message flows, and associations are the lifelines that connect elements, illustrating the interaction between different parts of the process.

BPMN 2.0 Diagram Elements and Symbols

Understanding the core elements of BPMN 2.0 diagrams is crucial for anyone involved in business process modeling. These elements are represented by a variety of symbols, each with a specific meaning and purpose within the BPMN framework.

BPMN 2.0 Diagram Elements and Symbols

Benefits of BPMN

BPMN offers many benefits that streamline organizational processes and improve operational efficiency. Here are some of the key advantages:

Streamlining process management and communication : BPMN diagrams serve as a universal language, allowing stakeholders from different departments or even different organizations to understand and manage complex processes with ease. This common visual language eliminates ambiguity and fosters clear communication.

Improving documentation and compliance tracking : With BPMN, documenting processes becomes more structured and standardized, which is crucial for maintaining compliance with industry regulations. The BPMN diagram can be used as a reference point to make sure all regulatory requirements are met.

Facilitating process automation and improvement : BPMN is not just about mapping out current processes; it’s also a tool for identifying areas of improvement. Inefficiencies become obvious when you visualize the workflow, so you can automate and continuously improve it.

How to Create a BPMN Diagram

Creating a BPMN diagram involves visually representing the steps and components of a business process.

Step 1: Identify the Process

Clearly define the boundaries and scope of the business process you want to model using BPMN.

Step 2: Choose a Tool

Choose a BPMN-compliant modeling tool. For example, you can use Creately’s BPMN software to quickly visualize your business processes. It comes with pre-made templates and an extensive shape libraries for BPMN 2.0, flowcharts, & process maps, real-time collaboration and powerful diagramming and AI capabilities.

Step 3: Draw the BPMN diagram

  • Begin your BPMN diagram with a start event. This represents the initiation point of the process.
  • Use rounded rectangles to represent activities or tasks within the process. Place them in sequence to show the flow of the process.
  • Use diamond-shaped gateways to represent decision points in the process. These indicate where the flow can take different paths based on conditions.
  • Use arrows to connect activities in the order they occur. Sequence flows represent the flow of the process from one task to the next.
  • Use parallel gateways to show parallel paths in the process. Use exclusive gateways for mutually exclusive paths based on conditions.
  • Represent the completion points of the process using end events. There can be different types of end events, such as normal end, error end, or cancel end.
  • Use data objects to represent data exchanged between activities. Include artifacts such as annotations or groups to provide additional information.
  • If your process involves collaboration between different entities, use pools to represent separate participants and lanes to represent their specific responsibilities.

Step 4: Annotate and Document

Add annotations to provide additional information or details about specific elements in the diagram. Document any relevant information that enhances understanding.

Step 5: Validate and Review

Share the BPMN diagram with stakeholders to validate its accuracy and completeness. Address any feedback or questions.

BPMN Subprocesses

In BPMN, sub-models or subprocesses are used to represent a modular and hierarchical structure within a larger process. Subprocesses make complex processes more manageable and understandable. There are two main types of subprocesses in BPMN:

Collapsed subprocess

A collapsed subprocess represents a subprocess at a higher level of abstraction. It is shown as a single shape, often a rounded rectangle, with a plus sign inside. This indicates that there is more detail hidden within the subprocess. When a BPMN diagram is intended for a higher-level overview, collapsed subprocesses provide a concise representation.

Expanded subprocess

An expanded subprocess provides a detailed view of the subprocess within the main process. When you expand a subprocess, you reveal the internal activities, events, and gateways that make up that subprocess. The expanded subprocess allows for a more in-depth understanding of the contained activities and their relationships.

Key points about sub-models in BPMN

Reusable components : Subprocesses can be reused in multiple places within a BPMN diagram or even in different BPMN diagrams. This promotes modularity and consistency across processes.

Separation of concerns : Subprocesses support the separation of concerns by breaking down a complex process into smaller, more manageable parts. Each subprocess can represent a specific aspect or functionality of the overall process.

Encapsulation : Subprocesses encapsulate a set of activities, events, and gateways, providing a higher-level abstraction. This can improve the readability of the main process and make it easier to focus on specific aspects.

Call activities : BPMN includes a specific element called a “Call Activity” to represent the invocation of a reusable subprocess. A Call Activity can reference a subprocess defined elsewhere, allowing for modular design and consistent use of subprocesses across processes.

Transaction subprocess : BPMN also supports a special type of subprocess called a “Transaction Subprocess,” which allows for the modeling of transactional behavior, including compensation activities in case of failures.

Quick Tips for Drawing More Effective BPMN Diagrams

Understand your process : Gain a deep understanding of the business process before starting the diagram. Clearly define the scope, objectives, and key activities.

Follow BPMN standards : Adhere to BPMN standards to maintain consistency and compatibility with BPMN-compliant tools.

Sequence flow clarity : Clearly define the sequence flow between activities. Ensure a logical and easily understandable order of execution.

Correctly use gateways : Understand and correctly use gateways (decision, inclusive, exclusive) to represent branching and merging points in the process.

Use swimlanes wisely : Pools and lanes help visualize collaboration, so use them when appropriate for your process.

Annotate and document : Add annotations to explain complex parts of the process. Use comments or documentation to provide additional details.

Simplify complex processes : Break down complex processes into subprocesses or use expansion markers to simplify the view.

Consider process improvement : Use the BPMN diagram as a basis for process improvement discussions within your organization.

The Goal of BPMN

The goal of BPMN is to establish a standardized visual language to represent business processes, fostering collaboration and clear communication. BPMN provides a universally accepted notation, facilitating the modeling and documentation of complex processes, as well as analysis, optimization, and automation. From design to execution and continuous improvement, it supports business processes throughout their lifecycle, bridging the gap between business and technical professionals. Ultimately, BPMN serves as a powerful tool to improve understanding, streamline communication, and drive efficiency in business process management.

Why Use BPMN

Organizations use BPMN to improve communication, collaboration, and understanding of their business processes. Here’s why they are important;

1. Standardized notation

BPMN provides a standardized notation that is widely accepted in the business process management domain. This common language ensures consistency and clarity in communicating business processes.

2. Clear visualization

It allows for the clear and intuitive visualization of complex business processes, making it easier for stakeholders to understand, analyze, and improve workflows.

3. Communication

BPMN serves as a communication tool between business and technical stakeholders. It bridges the gap between business analysts and IT professionals by providing a shared visual language.

4. Process improvement

Organizations use BPMN to model existing business processes and identify areas for improvement. It supports the analysis and optimization of workflows to boost efficiency and effectiveness.

5. Process automation

BPMN is often used in conjunction with business process automation tools. The standardized notation allows for a smoother transition from process design to automated execution.

6. Training and onboarding

BPMN diagrams serve as valuable training materials for new employees, providing a visual guide to understand how various processes within an organization work.

7. Risk management

BPMN allows organizations to identify potential bottlenecks, risks, and inefficiencies in their processes, enabling proactive risk management strategies.

Challenges of Creating a BPMN Diagram

It can be hard to create a BPMN diagram, even for the most technically savvy product managers. Intricacies of BPMN notation combined with complicated business processes can lead to these problems:

BPMN vs. UML

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is designed for modeling business processes, focusing on visualizing and improving workflows. In contrast, UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a broader modeling language used in software engineering for designing and documenting software systems. BPMN is tailored for business stakeholders, while UML is primarily used by software developers and technical stakeholders. While both use standardized notations, BPMN emphasizes business processes' temporal aspects, and UML covers a wider range of software design aspects. Organizations may use one or both depending on their project needs.

BPMN Vs. Flowchart

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is specialized for modeling business processes with standardized symbols, focusing on clarity and communication for business stakeholders. Flowcharts, more versatile in application, doesn’t have strict standardization and can represent various processes beyond business, providing flexibility in detail and symbols. The choice depends on the specific purpose and audience of the diagram.

How Creately Can Help You to Create a BPMN Diagram

Creating a BPMN diagram can be a complex task, but with Creately, the process becomes significantly more manageable. Here’s how you can use Creately to draw a comprehensive BPMN diagram;

Easily create complex BPMN diagrams

With standard BPMN 2.0 shapes and ready-to-use templates to create complex BPMN diagrams easily. Quickly change visual attributes of the diagrams using the quick toolbar and host multiple templates to analyze them side by side on the infinite canvas.

Capture process requirements effectively

Use the integrated notes for each shape to capture and document process details and embed documents, add images, and attach links for better context. Or embed images, documents, videos, etc. relevant to the process directly on the canvas for quick reference. Keep track of changes made to the diagram with version control.

Collaborate and share easily across teams

Easily control access to public & private process details for external stakeholders with advanced workspace sharing options and collaborate with cross-functional teams & clients on a shared canvas. Connect with your existing tools and workflows with powerful integrations for Confluence, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, etc.

Learn how to create a BPMN diagram with Creately .

As we wrap up our exploration of BPMN, it’s clear that this standardized language has a significant impact on business efficiency. By providing a clear and consistent way to document processes, BPMN helps organizations to analyze and improve their operations effectively.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

More Related Articles

The Complete List of BPMN Symbols and Their Meanings

Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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Business Process Modelling

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Business Process Modelling (BPM) is a modern term and methodology which has evolved through different stages and names, beginning during the 'division of labour' of the late 1700s, when manufacturing first moved into factories from cottage industry.

Broadly the term 'business' in Business Process Model/Modelling/modelling is interchangeable with 'organisation'. Business Process Modelling is not only carried out in conventional businesses; the methodology is increasingly applicable to all sorts of other organisations, for example government agencies and departments, charities, mutuals and cooperatives, etc.

Confusingly, the acronym BPM can mean different things, some closely related to Business Process Modelling; others less so. 'Business Process Management' is an example of a different and related meaning. More details are in the  glossary  below.

Business Process Modelling is a method for improving organisational efficiency and quality . Its beginnings were in capital/profit-led business, but the methodology is applicable to any organised activity .

The increasing transparency and accountability of all organisations, including public service and government, together with the modern complexity, penetration and importance of ICT (information and communications technology), for even very small organisations nowadays, has tended to heighten demand for process improvement everywhere. This means that Business Process Modelling is arguably more widely relevant than say Time and Motion Study or Total Quality Management (to name two earlier 'efficiency methodologies') were in times gone by.

Put simply Business Process Modelling aims to improve business performance by optimising the efficiency of connecting activities in the provision of a product or service .

Business Process Modelling techniques are concerned with ' mapping ' and ' workflow ' to enable understanding, analysis and positive change. Diagrams - essentially 'flow diagrams' - are a central feature of the methodology.

The diagrammatic representation of Business Process Modelling is commonly called 'notation'. Many and various proprietary software (off-the-shelf computer programs) exist to enable this, but the basic principles of Business Process Modelling can also be applied using a pen and a table-napkin or a flip-chart or a bunch of sticky notes, and in some cases these are still effective aids for creating and communicating fundamental ideas. Computers sometimes get in the way, over-complicate simple things, and exclude groups. So choose your devices wisely. Business Process Modelling generally needs support from people to work in practice.

While Business Process Modelling relates to many aspects of management (business, organisation, profit, change, projects, etc) its detailed technical nature and process-emphasis link it closely with  quality management  and the analytical approaches and responsibilities arising in the improvement of quality.

Business Process Modelling is a quality management tool, like for example  Six Sigma , and is useful especially in  change management .

SWOT Analysis ,  Balanced Scorecard  and  Project Management methods  provide further examples of change management tools, and Business Process Modelling can be regarded as working alongside these methods.

The term Business Process Model (also abbreviated to BPM) is the noun form of Business Process Modelling, and refers to a structural representation, description or diagram, which defines a specified flow of activities in a particular business or organisational unit.

A Business Process Model (BPM) is commonly a diagram representing a sequence of activities. It typically shows events, actions and links or connection points, in the sequence from end to end.

Sequence is significant and essential to most aspects of business process modelling, but there are exceptions to this especially at the higher level of organisational operations (see the note about  sequence ).

Typically but not necessarily, a Business Process Model includes both IT processes and people processes.

Business Process Modelling by implication focuses on processes, actions and activities, etc. Resources feature within BPM in terms of how they are processed. People (teams, departments, etc) feature in BPM in terms of what they do, to what, and usually when and for what reasons, especially when different possibilities or options exist, as in a flow diagram.

Business Process Modelling is cross-functional, usually combining the work and documentation of more than one department in the organisation.

In more complicated situations, Business Process Modelling may also include activities of external organisations' processes and systems that feed into the primary process.

In large organisations operations Business Process Models tend to be analysed and represented in more detail than in small organisations, due to scale and complexity.

Business Process Modelling is to an extent also defined by the various computerised tools or software which are used in applying its methods. These methods and the standard features within them continue to evolve, which means that we should keep an open and curious mind as to how BPM can be used, and what people actually mean when they refer to it.

A Business Process Model diagram is a tool - a means to an end, not a performance outcome in its own right.

The final output is improvement in the way that the business process works.

The focus of the improvements is on 'value added' actions that make the customer service and experience better, and on reducing wasted time and effort.

There are two main different types of Business Process Models:

  • the  'as is'  or baseline model (the current situation)
  • and the  'to be'  model (the intended new situation)

which are used to analyse, test, implement and improve the process.

The aim of modelling is to illustrate a complete process, enabling managers, consultants and staff to improve the flow and streamline the process.

The outcomes of a business process modelling project are essentially:

value for the customer, and

reduced costs for the company,

leading to increased profits.

Other secondary consequences arising from successful Business Process Modelling can be increased competitive advantage, market growth, and better staff morale and retention.

There are no absolute rules for the scope or extent of a Business Process Model in terms of departments and activities covered.

Before committing lots of resources to Business Process Modelling proper consideration should be given to the usefulness and focus of the exercise - ask the questions:

  • Does the modelling have the potential to produce gains that will justify the time and effort?
  • Will the modelling be structured so that people will understand the outputs (not too big and complex as to be self-defeating)?
  • Do people understand why we are doing it, and "what's in it for them"?

As with other management tools, there is no point producing a fantastically complex model that no-one can understand or use, just as it is a bit daft to spend hundreds of hours analysing anything which is of relatively minor significance.

Business Process Modelling is a powerful methodology when directed towards operations which can benefit from improvement, and when people involved are on-board and supportive.

Adding Value for the Customer

Adding value for customers, whether internal or external customers, is at the centre of a Business Process Model. It starts with a customer need and ends with the satisfaction of that need. Unlike a workflow diagram, which is generally focused on departmental activities, a BPM spans departments and the whole organisation.

This point about customers being internal as well as external is crucial:

Staff are among the internal customers of modern right-minded organisations.

If you approach Business Process Modelling purely from a systems and 'things' viewpoint with a fixation on costs and profitability, and squeezing every activity to its theoretical optimum, then people (notably staff) tend to get squeezed too.

Organisations work well when people enjoy and support the processes that they are required to perform, and you will only add sustainable value for your customers, when you also add value for your staff too.

Successful BPM added value for customers is self-sustaining because for staff it contains the magical  WIIFM  element - 'What's In It For Me'.

BPM Added Value: Example

An example could be the actions involved in processing a customer order from an internet-based mail order company.

Starting with a customer placing an order  (the customer need)

send IT-based information to the warehouse

stock picking

packing and recording

sending the appropriate IT-based information to the distribution hub

sending IT-based information to the accounts department

generation of an invoice

allocation and organisation of shipment for the vehicle drivers

delivery of the item and invoicing  (the customer need fulfilled).

This is a simple 'high-level' example. In practice each part or sub-process (for example, stock-picking) may require a 'low-level' BPM of its own.

Please note that : Added value for internal customers, notably staff, does not have to be financial , as is commonly imagined by many top business executives. 

Consider  Maslow ,  Herzberg ,  McGregor  and  Adams  and what these concepts teach about motivation and reward, and attrition. Business Process Modelling has enormous potential to address many of the critical demotivators among staff (e.g., poor working relationships, confused structure, failure, etc) and also many strong motivators (e.g., the quality of work itself, recognition, advancement, new responsibilities, etc). 

Think beyond merely adding value for external customers, and optimising efficiency and profit -  make a special effort to look for added value for staff too , and then the BPM methodology will work on a much more effective level.

Sequence: Significance in Business Process Modelling

Sequence can have a pivotal influence on business process activities, but sequence is not always pivotal, and indeed certain situations are best analysed from a non-sequential viewpoint. As a general guide, sequence is usually vital for elemental processes, but sequence tends to become less significant - and require more 'cause and effect' flexibility - when elements such as already sequenced processes and resources are brought together in a bigger picture of organisational operations.

This Business Process Modelling summary necessarily concentrates on modelling systems which can be defined using sequence based techniques, since at an elemental level sequence is crucial to quality and related factors of process, quality, monitoring, management, and change, etc. Also, at an elemental level, i.e., when a big activity is broken down into its constituent parts, sequence can have a vital effect upon the effectiveness of each of the individual processes.

However a wider consideration is that many large scale systems commonly contain related processes and resources for which a fixed related sequence is not a specific or crucial or predictable aspect, and for which consequently it is not always possible or easy (or in many cases necessary) to define the exact sequential relationship of processes on a big systemic scale. An example could be the bringing together of separate sub-assemblies, or the buying in of stock, or the recruitment of sub-contract staff. This is especially so where demand is unpredictable. Importantly for these sorts of related process, a bigger priority is to focus on understanding and creating the necessary flexible connections between  cause and effect  relationships (see and make use of  other project management tools  for analysing and improving non-sequential elements), rather than try to force a fixed sequence into the analysis or modelling approach.

As with many other tools and methodologies, be mindful of the need for flexibility; use tools and methods as far as they are helpful, but do not blindly force a tool to fit your purposes if it is inappropriate or could distort common sense, or be too constraining, whether for planning, analysis, communications or implementation.

Sequence is always an important consideration, especially when trouble-shooting. Sometimes - at any level - it can be the key to finding dramatic improvements, but sequence is not a mandatory feature, and there is no need to search for and apply sequential conditions within any stage of process modelling or other type of project or change management, if doing so is unhelpful.

Background and History

The quest for standardisation and efficiency in business processes is a long one. Its history is characterised by surges of enthusiasm followed by disillusionment, when the fashionable idea of the moment tends to be dumped for a while before the next generation of process efficiency methodology makes the subject more exciting again. Well, as exciting as business processes can be.

CEOs, consultants and change managers get all fired up about an improvement push (mainly about profits and change and fees). And there lies the central problem: the people who actually put process improvements into practice have never been that excited by the concept. The explicit agenda is about the employer and organisation while the benefit for ordinary employees is not immediately obvious, if at all. For most staff, a new efficiency initiative looks like change, hard work and discomfort, and feels like a threat. Instead workers ideally need to be engaged, involved and included from the start. Like other top-down initiatives and trends over the years, the most common reason for the failure of business process improvement is generally poor internal marketing, poor implementation and poor follow-through. A theoretical model for success devised among senior managers, rarely looks like the same thing further down the organisation.

The origins of BPM principles can be traced back as far as Adam Smith's idea of the division of labour in manufacturing (in 'An Inquiry into the Nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations', 1776). Originally, one person would make one item from beginning to end in a cottage industry situation. When factories became the norm, employing many people who all made items from beginning to end proved time-consuming and inefficient.

Specialisation - 'Division of Labour', 1776

Using the example of a pin maker, Adam Smith argued that breaking up the whole process and creating specialised tasks (or peculiar tasks, as he called them) would simplify and speed up the whole process. 

He showed that if the different stages of the manufacture were completed by different people in a chain of activities, the result would be very much more efficient. The business process was born.

Analysis of Specialised Tasks - 'Time and Motion', early 1900s

Over a century later, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), the US engineer and business efficiency theorist, moved with the future. He merged his 'time study' with the 'motion study' work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (early US theorists on productivity and workplace science), resulting in new scientific management methods (1911) and the infamous 'time and motion' studies. 

These studies documented and analysed work processes with the aim of reducing the time taken and the number of actions involved in each process, improving both productivity and workers' efficiency. This was enthusiastically embraced by employers and viewed with scepticism and animosity by workers. The term 'Taylorism' still generally refers to a highly scientific and dehumanised approach to efficient operation in business, organisations, economies, etc.

Work Process Flow - 'The One Best Way', early to mid-1900s

Meanwhile, Frank Gilbreth was busy developing the first method for documenting process flow. 

He presented his paper 'Process charts - First Steps to Finding the One Best Way' to the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1921. 

By 1947, the ASME Standard for Process Charts was universally adopted, using Gilbreth's original notation.

Disenchantment with the Assembly Line, 1930s

In the first decade of the 20th century, 'time and motion' was a familiar concept, in tune with the modern 'scientific' age. 

However, by 1936, disenchantment had set in, reflected in Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times. The film satirised mass production and the assembly line, echoing cultural disillusionment with the dreary treadmill of industry during the great depression. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that theories for optimising productivity, and those who profit most from them, are more strongly questioned or criticised when the economic cycle moves into recession.

Workflow, mid-1970s

Research and development of office automation flourished between 1975 and 1985. Specialist workflow technologies and the term 'workflow' were established. 

While BPM has its historical origins in workflow, there are two key differences:

Document-based processes performed by people are the focus of workflow systems, while BPM focuses on both people and system processes.

The Quality Era, 1980s

In the 1980s, Quality or Total Quality Management (TQM) was the fashionable management and business process theory, championed by Deming and Juran. Used initially in engineering and manufacturing, it is based on the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen or continuous improvement. The aim was to achieve incremental improvements to processes of cost, quality, service and speed. Key aspects of Total Quality Management have now become mainstream and successfully adapted to suit the businesses of the 2000s. Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing are the best-known of these methodologies.

Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR), 1990s

In the early 1990s, Business Process Re-engineering made its appearance and started to gain momentum in the business community. While TQM (at this point facing a decline in popularity) aimed to improve business processes incrementally, BPR demanded radical change to business processes and performance.

In 1993, Michael Hammer (US professor of computer science) and James Champy (a successful corporate CEO, consultant and author) developed the concept in their book 'Re-engineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution' (1993). 

Hammer and Champy stated that the process was revolutionary, fast-track and drastic rather than evolutionary and incremental. It was a huge success and organisations and consultants embraced it with fervour. The re-engineering industry grew and triumphed before it began to wane.

By the end of the 1990s, BPR, as a whole-organisation approach, had fallen dramatically out of favour. It proved to be too long-winded for most organisations, was therefore poorly executed and has consequently been sidelined as a whole-organisation approach.

Critics of this completely 'new broom' methodology would say that it is impossible to start from a clean slate in an already established organisation. 

Other criticisms were that it was dehumanising and mechanistic, focusing on actions rather than people - Taylorism by another name. Crucially, it is associated with the terms 'delayering', 'restructuring' and 'downsizing' of organisations, all lumped together as euphemisms for layoffs. Not what Hammer and Champy had envisaged..

Business Process Modelling, 2000s

The best principles of this approach still survive in BPM, on a less drastic, less brutal and more manageable scale. Lessons have been learnt. Business Process Modelling can and does work, but it must be treated with caution. The key is in the implementation. When it is conducted and implemented sensitively and inclusively, it can be good for the company, and its staff too.

For a workforce drowning in administration, much of it repeated or re-entered into multiple databases, BPM can be a great thing. It can free up time to focus on the 'value added' tasks that are empowering and rewarding: talking and listening to customers, making decisions or doing what they are good at rather than dealing with dull and meaningless duties.

BPM is effective like any other tool can be. In the hands of an idiot BPM can suffocate and hinder an organisation and its people.

The tool doesn't produce the results - what matters is how you use it.

A Business Process Model is central to a host of other related activities, briefly outlined below. Redesigning a process and implementing it is not a speedy enterprise. It can take months and occasionally years, depending on the extent of the process and sub-processes, how many people and systems are involved and how much of it needs to be redesigned.

As the project develops, the business will change and new requirements will surface, so the approach must be flexible and frequently reviewed and re-prioritised. It is advisable to stage the process in a succession of 'builds', each one completed within a business quarter, so that it can be reviewed and measured for return on investment.

It is essential that the people involved in the process, at all levels, are engaged, all the way through. Not only because their input is vital, but also because they need to be fully 'on board.' Senior management buy-in is important to ensure that the resources are available to involve managers and staff members and overcome any resistance to the change. Without this, the redesign cannot work. Focus groups, formal and informal discussions and workshops are useful at each stage and 'build'.

Stages in Development

Developing the models in practice follows the sequence:

Identify the process and produce an 'as is' or baseline model.

Review, analyse and update the 'as is' process model.

Design the 'to be' model.

Test and implement the 'to be'.

Continuously update and improve the new model.

Creating a Business Process Model

This section provides a guide to creating an initial, 'as is' or baseline model, in other words - the current situation.

Component Parts

An 'as is' or baseline model gives an overall picture of how the process works, now. Any structural, organisational and technological weak points and bottlenecks can then be identified, along with possible improvements at the next stage.

You will need the following information before you start to construct your model:

The desired outcome of the process.

The start and end points (customer need and customer need fulfilment).

The activities that are performed.

The order of activities.

The people who perform the activities.

The documents and forms used and exchanged between functions and from customers and suppliers.

First Draft

The first draft of the model will involve a lot of positioning and repositioning of events and activities, so make sure you use a method that is flexible and easily changed. Use a flipchart, pens and some sticky notes or a whiteboard and a rubber. If you're working with a group of users, everyone needs to be able to see it.

Second Draft

Once you have established an agreed sequence of events, you can create it as a flowchart on generic software or on specialised proprietary software.

At this stage, you will need to check your model with the users by carrying out 'live' observations of the sequence in practice. People in focus groups or meetings invariably either forget their exact actions or say what should be happening rather than what does happen!

Symbols and Notation

The diagrammatic representation of Business Process Modelling is commonly 'notation'.

If you are using generic software, decide on the visual symbols you will use for the different activities.

There is no definitive system for Business Process Modelling notation (note the small 'n'), although efforts persist to standardise one.

The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) system (note the upper-case 'N', since this is like a brand name), is an example of an attempt to establish a standard BPM notation system. The BPMN system is maintained the OMG consortium (Object Management Group) which comprises a few hundred computer-related corporations).

Organisations may develop their own notation systems or use the notation of their chosen proprietary software.

Importantly - whatever notation system/software you use - its symbols must be understood within your own group or organisation.

The example below uses four symbols that are widely understood:

It's a flowchart, which makes it very easy to see the process and the key elements within it.

Here is a  better quality picture of the same Business Process Model diagram example in PDF format .

Note that while most Business Process Modelling diagrams necessarily include a strong sequencing dimension, there are circumstances where sequence is not so crucial and more of a 'mapping' perspective is appropriate. 

Refer to the  note about sequence , and see  other project management tools  for examples of analysis methods which enable non-sequential activity 'mapping'.

BPM Glossary

Different organisations refer to the elements related to Business Process Modelling in different ways. This is complicated by the fact that acronyms can stand for more than one thing, and are often used interchangeably. 

For example, BPR stands for Business Process Re-engineering as well as Business Process Redesign. BPM itself stands for Business Process Modelling/Modeling, Business Process Model, and Business Process Management. In the healthcare sector incidentally BPM would more readily be interpreted to mean Beats Per Minute, relating to pulse rate, which emphasises the need to explain acronyms when you use them.

Organisations develop their own ways of referring to the different elements. They know what they mean, but someone from another organisation could become very confused! This glossary may help anyone feeling lost.

Broadly the term 'business' below is interchangeable with 'organisation'. Business Process Modelling is not only carried out in conventional businesses; the methodology is increasingly applicable to all sorts of other organisations, for example government agencies and departments, charities, mutuals and cooperatives, etc. 

' As is' and 'To be' models -  The common two perspectives of a modelling exercise - Where are we now?, and Where do we want to be? -

The  'as is'  or  baseline  model is an accurate depiction of what actually happens now. Once the model is developed, it is used to analyse and improve the process.

The  'to be'  model is a proposed diagram of how the future process could look, incorporating improvements. This is used to demonstrate, model and test the new process and then to implement it.

Brainstorming  - Not usually part of BPM technical language, but actually a very useful initial stage in mapping or attempting to represent/understand/agree/scope a BPM project given little or no information to begin with. Also a useful way to achieve essential involvement, input, support, etc., from people affected by the modelling exercise. See  Brainstorming .

Business Architecture  - A vague and widely used term basically referring to the structure of a business.

Business Model  - A vague term used to refer to how a business aims to operate and make money in a given market. This term is not directly related to Business Process Modelling. A detailed business model might typically contain descriptions of basic business processes implied or necessary for the the model to operate, but a business model is mainly concerned with strategy and external market relationships, rather than the internal processes which feature in BPM.

Business Process -  A structured series of work activities, IT interventions and events that generate one complete service or product for an organisation's customers.

Business Process Model  - A representation - usually computer-generated and diagrammatic, but can be a low-tech whiteboard or flipchart and marker pens and sticky notes - of a process within a business. Two models are usually produced: an 'as is' and a 'to be'. The process(es) featured in a Business Process Model can be very simple or highly complex, and will typically involve different departments working (hopefully) together while the provision or creation of a product or service flows through different stages and decision-points in an organisation on its way to the customer. A Business Process Model for a large process can be comprised of other smaller modelled processes which contribute to the whole. In theory an entire huge business can be modelled, although for the modelling to be useful and meaningful to people it is normally built in sections, each representing a self-contained process alongside potentially scores, hundreds or even thousands of others, all inter-relating, hopefully smoothly, efficiently and enjoyably. (The 'enjoyable' part is not a technical necessity, but is actually important for any model to translate from theory into sustainable practice.)

Business Process Modelling/Business Process Modeling  - The term which refers to the methodology and techniques of producing a Business Process Model, or several Business Process Models, in the course of business improvement/development or quality management or change management, etc. (Modelling is UK-English; Modeling is US-English.)

Business Process Change Cycle  - An overall term for the life cycle of business processes, including the external environment in which the organisation operates. This external environment drives change in the business processes and the organisation responds to it by adjusting its strategy and goals. As the external environment keeps changing, the cycle also changes, prompting continuous change and improvement to business processes.

Business Reference Model  - A (usually computerised and diagrammatic) key to understanding and using a Business Architecture Model. It presents certain core structural elements as fixed, thereby encouraging and enabling others using or developing the model to understand and adhere to essential aspects of structural policy and foundation. In this respect a Business Reference model may be relevant to Business Process Modelling

BPR  -  Business Process Re-engineering  (also known as  BPI  -  Business Process Innovation ) - A radical approach to restructuring an organisation in every area, starting with what the organisation is trying to achieve, rethinking its core processes and redesigning every one. It is a way of reassessing and restructuring the whole organisation, all at once, starting from scratch.

BPI - Business Process Improvement -  This refers to improving existing processes, continuously and incrementally, reducing waste and driving efficiency. Six Sigma is currently one of the most popular of many BPI approaches in use today.

BPM - Business Process Management -  Used in two different ways by two different groups within the business processing community:

Firstly, it is used by the people and process management group to describe the overall management of business process improvement, aligning processes with an organisation's strategic goals: designing, implementing and measuring them and educating managers to use them effectively.

Secondly, it is used by IT people to describe the systems, software and applications that provide the process framework.

BPM - Business Process Mapping  - Often used interchangeably with Business Process Modelling, Business Process Mapping is also used to mean documenting all the processes in the business, showing the relationships between them. This provides a comprehensive visual overview of the processes in an organisation.

BPM  -  Business Process Model/Business Process Modelling -  See Business Process Model/Modelling above.

BPMN - Business Process Modelling Notation  - A 'branded' Business Process Modelling notation system of the OMG Consortium, representing several hundred primarily US computer-related corporations. (UK-English 'Modelling'.)

BPR  -  Business Process Redesign -  Rethinking, redesigning and implementing one complete process using Business Process Modelling tools.

Enterprise Architecture  - Basically the same as Business Architecture. Enterprise is a relatively modern term for a business organisation or company than 'business', probably because business has quite specific associations with profit and shareholders, whereas the word enterprise can more loosely encompass all sorts of business-like activities which might be constituted according to mutual or cooperative rather than traditional capitalistic aims. Enterprise is also a popular way to refer to business development and entrepreneurial creativity. The relevance of all this to BPM is merely the use of the word enterprise in BPM terminology, where previously the word 'business' would have been used.

Gateway -  A stage in a Business Process Model diagram or notation at which decision or choice is made because more than one main option or outcome exists.

Notation  - The technical term for a Business Process Model diagram or computer-generated map or flowchart.

OBASHI  - A methodology, and related aspect of BPM, for mapping and developing how IT systems relate to organisational operations (OBASHI stands for Ownership, Business Processes, Applications, Systems, Hardware, and Infrastructure).

UML  -  Unified Modeling Language  - a visual representation/design system for software-led modelling, overseen by the OMG Consortium (as with BPMN).

What if? (scenario)  - A popular term given to discussion or modelling of possible shapes, structures, resourcing and any other options that are available to people considering change in businesses and organisations. The 'What if?' principle extends far beyond Business Processes, but is a useful technique in team-working and attempting to make BPM methods more consultative and involving. This is especially important given that the nature of BPM (the computer systems, terminology, highly detailed aspects) often tend to position the methods as a lone job away from people and groups affected by its implications and opportunities. BPM works best when people are involved - considering questions like 'What if?' - and often fails when it guarded and developed secretively by technocrat minority.

Value-added/Added-value  - The principle of increasing the usefulness, attractiveness and benefits of a product or service, which in the context of BPM, ideally improves progressively with each modelling exercise. Added-value is commonly represented as benefiting customers and shareholders (via reduced costs, and increased efficiencies and profits) but should also benefit staff/employees too.

Zachman Framework  - In this list mainly because an interesting listing under the letter Z is irresistible. This is a computerised diagrammatic notation system for representing an enterprise (or business or other organisation) - notably its 'enterprise architecture'. It was devised by John Zachman, a US ex-naval officer computer scientist, while working for IBM in the 1980s.

Deming, W.E. (1982), Out of the Crisis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian (1924), The Quest of the One Best Way, Purdue University Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Papers.

Hammer, Michael and Champy, James (1993), Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Harper Business.

Juran, J.M. (1988), Juran on Planning for Quality, Free Press, New York, NY.

Smith, Howard and Fingar, Peter (2003) Business Process Management, The Third Wave, MK Press.

Taylor, F.W. (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers. New York and London.

With thanks to Melanie Allen, and to Tony Markos for raising the matter of sequence in the practical application of business process modelling.

  • ETHICAL MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
  • PEOPLE PERFORMANCE POTENTIAL MODEL
  • PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS AND TECHNIQUE
  • PROJECT SPONSORSHIP
  • THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT
  • QUALITY MANAGEMENT, HISTORY, GURUS, TQM, PROCESS IMPROVEMENT, ETC
  • SIX SIGMA - DEFINITIONS, HISTORY, OVERVIEW
  • TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS
  • TREE SWING CARTOON PICTURES (EARLY VERSIONS)
  • STRESS AND STRESS MANAGEMENT
  • DECISION-MAKING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING
  • DELEGATION - HOW TO

Our next-generation model: Gemini 1.5

Feb 15, 2024

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SundarPichai_2x.jpg

A note from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai:

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Introducing Gemini 1.5

By Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, on behalf of the Gemini team

This is an exciting time for AI. New advances in the field have the potential to make AI more helpful for billions of people over the coming years. Since introducing Gemini 1.0 , we’ve been testing, refining and enhancing its capabilities.

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Context lengths of leading foundation models

Highly efficient architecture

Gemini 1.5 is built upon our leading research on Transformer and MoE architecture. While a traditional Transformer functions as one large neural network, MoE models are divided into smaller "expert” neural networks.

Depending on the type of input given, MoE models learn to selectively activate only the most relevant expert pathways in its neural network. This specialization massively enhances the model’s efficiency. Google has been an early adopter and pioneer of the MoE technique for deep learning through research such as Sparsely-Gated MoE , GShard-Transformer , Switch-Transformer, M4 and more.

Our latest innovations in model architecture allow Gemini 1.5 to learn complex tasks more quickly and maintain quality, while being more efficient to train and serve. These efficiencies are helping our teams iterate, train and deliver more advanced versions of Gemini faster than ever before, and we’re working on further optimizations.

Greater context, more helpful capabilities

An AI model’s “context window” is made up of tokens, which are the building blocks used for processing information. Tokens can be entire parts or subsections of words, images, videos, audio or code. The bigger a model’s context window, the more information it can take in and process in a given prompt — making its output more consistent, relevant and useful.

Through a series of machine learning innovations, we’ve increased 1.5 Pro’s context window capacity far beyond the original 32,000 tokens for Gemini 1.0. We can now run up to 1 million tokens in production.

This means 1.5 Pro can process vast amounts of information in one go — including 1 hour of video, 11 hours of audio, codebases with over 30,000 lines of code or over 700,000 words. In our research, we’ve also successfully tested up to 10 million tokens.

Complex reasoning about vast amounts of information

1.5 Pro can seamlessly analyze, classify and summarize large amounts of content within a given prompt. For example, when given the 402-page transcripts from Apollo 11’s mission to the moon, it can reason about conversations, events and details found across the document.

Reasoning across a 402-page transcript: Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can understand, reason about and identify curious details in the 402-page transcripts from Apollo 11’s mission to the moon.

Better understanding and reasoning across modalities

1.5 Pro can perform highly-sophisticated understanding and reasoning tasks for different modalities, including video. For instance, when given a 44-minute silent Buster Keaton movie , the model can accurately analyze various plot points and events, and even reason about small details in the movie that could easily be missed.

Multimodal prompting with a 44-minute movie: Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can identify a scene in a 44-minute silent Buster Keaton movie when given a simple line drawing as reference material for a real-life object.

Relevant problem-solving with longer blocks of code

1.5 Pro can perform more relevant problem-solving tasks across longer blocks of code. When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works.

Problem solving across 100,633 lines of code | Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason across 100,000 lines of code giving helpful solutions, modifications and explanations.

Enhanced performance

When tested on a comprehensive panel of text, code, image, audio and video evaluations, 1.5 Pro outperforms 1.0 Pro on 87% of the benchmarks used for developing our large language models (LLMs). And when compared to 1.0 Ultra on the same benchmarks, it performs at a broadly similar level.

Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high levels of performance even as its context window increases. In the Needle In A Haystack (NIAH) evaluation, where a small piece of text containing a particular fact or statement is purposely placed within a long block of text, 1.5 Pro found the embedded text 99% of the time, in blocks of data as long as 1 million tokens.

Gemini 1.5 Pro also shows impressive “in-context learning” skills, meaning that it can learn a new skill from information given in a long prompt, without needing additional fine-tuning. We tested this skill on the Machine Translation from One Book (MTOB) benchmark, which shows how well the model learns from information it’s never seen before. When given a grammar manual for Kalamang , a language with fewer than 200 speakers worldwide, the model learns to translate English to Kalamang at a similar level to a person learning from the same content.

As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities.

For more details, see our Gemini 1.5 Pro technical report .

Extensive ethics and safety testing

In line with our AI Principles and robust safety policies, we’re ensuring our models undergo extensive ethics and safety tests. We then integrate these research learnings into our governance processes and model development and evaluations to continuously improve our AI systems.

Since introducing 1.0 Ultra in December, our teams have continued refining the model, making it safer for a wider release. We’ve also conducted novel research on safety risks and developed red-teaming techniques to test for a range of potential harms.

In advance of releasing 1.5 Pro, we've taken the same approach to responsible deployment as we did for our Gemini 1.0 models, conducting extensive evaluations across areas including content safety and representational harms, and will continue to expand this testing. Beyond this, we’re developing further tests that account for the novel long-context capabilities of 1.5 Pro.

Build and experiment with Gemini models

We’re committed to bringing each new generation of Gemini models to billions of people, developers and enterprises around the world responsibly.

Starting today, we’re offering a limited preview of 1.5 Pro to developers and enterprise customers via AI Studio and Vertex AI . Read more about this on our Google for Developers blog and Google Cloud blog .

We’ll introduce 1.5 Pro with a standard 128,000 token context window when the model is ready for a wider release. Coming soon, we plan to introduce pricing tiers that start at the standard 128,000 context window and scale up to 1 million tokens, as we improve the model.

Early testers can try the 1 million token context window at no cost during the testing period, though they should expect longer latency times with this experimental feature. Significant improvements in speed are also on the horizon.

Developers interested in testing 1.5 Pro can sign up now in AI Studio, while enterprise customers can reach out to their Vertex AI account team.

Learn more about Gemini’s capabilities and see how it works .

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The Body Shop UK in administration - what went wrong?

While there is a focus on what the restructuring process will mean for workers, Sky News takes a look at The Body Shop's history for clues to where the rot started to set in for the UK business.

business model process means

Business reporter @SkyNewsBiz

Tuesday 13 February 2024 15:11, UK

business model process means

The Body Shop was an innovative, fiercely ethical and thriving part of the British high street for almost five decades.

To enter a store was an assault on the senses from colour to exotic names and fragrances. We had never seen the like before.

Though confirmation on Tuesday that the UK arm had been placed in the hands of administrators came as no surprise.

Money latest: Inflation to rise on Wednesday, experts say - here's what it could mean for interest rates

Sky News revealed on Saturday how the group's latest owners were preparing the ground for an insolvency process of the UK business.

So, what went wrong for The Body Shop?

From small beginnings...

The business was founded in 1976 by environmental campaigners Anita Roddick and her husband Gordon.

business model process means

They looked to champion ethical products while their opposition to the animal testing of cosmetics was also a unique selling point within the industry.

It was also a feminist brand that, over the decades, challenged the industry's perceived view of how women and girls should look.

The Body Shop grew from a single outlet in Brighton with just 25 products and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1984.

No longer in full control

Roddick admitted in 2001 that the flotation was a double-edged sword.

While it gave the company the money to continue its expansion, she said investor appetite for profits and rewards meant the company had effectively lost its soul.

She stepped away from day-to-day management of the firm in 2002 and it was sold in 2006 to L'Oreal for £652m.

She and Gordon made about £130m from the sale, three years after she was made a dame.

Roddick died in 2007 following a brain haemorrhage. She was 64.

business model process means

Life after the Roddicks

While The Body Shop brand lived on, and continued to grow its international presence, L'Oreal's ownership was dogged by questions from customers on whether their values were aligned.

The French cosmetics firm sold The Body Shop in 2017 to Brazil's Natura for £877m.

It was at this point that things took a big turn for the worse, with the strain of increased competition in the ethical products sphere from the likes of Lush being exacerbated by huge disruption to demand from the COVID pandemic.

business model process means

Natura sold the brand to the private equity firm Aurelius last November.

The price tag was just £207m. At that time, The Body Shop employed about 10,000 people and operated roughly 3,000 stores in 70 countries.

Another owner...

Aurelius said it wanted to "re-energise" the company but it later emerged that it had sold off its Body Shop at Home division, which was struggling financially.

business model process means

It concluded that more drastic action was needed as the company had insufficient working capital and was trading more weakly than it had anticipated over Christmas and early January.

The UK operation, with its 200 stores, was said to be struggling more than elsewhere, culminating in the restructuring process being handled by FRP Advisory.

In conclusion

You could certainly argue that Dame Anita Roddick was the beating heart of The Body Shop and that her loss meant that the brand was no longer the fierce champion for the many causes that attracted customers in the first place.

Financial analysts say that its failure to attract new customers in a crowded market was key.

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free

business model process means

Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "In the 1980s, The Body Shop was the place to go for young shoppers to splash out on fresh scented bubbles and beauty ranges, with a deep environmental conscience and a focus on social justice and conserving nature.

"But now stores like Lush hold the bigger pocket money draw for tweens and teens, lured in by fragrant bath bombs and innovative product ingredients.

"Rivals have stolen a march on what used to be The Body Shop's unique eco-credentials."

IMAGES

  1. 10 Business Process Modelling Techniques

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  2. 10 Business Process Modelling Techniques

    business model process means

  3. 10 Business Process Modelling Techniques

    business model process means

  4. 10 Business Process Modelling Techniques

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  5. 10 Business Process Modelling Techniques

    business model process means

  6. The complete guide to business process modeling (BPM)

    business model process means

COMMENTS

  1. What Is Business Process Modeling?

    A business process model is a graphical representation of a business process or workflow and its related sub-processes. Process modeling generates comprehensive, quantitative activity diagrams and flowcharts containing critical insights into the functioning of a given process, including the following:

  2. Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits, and Examples

    Business process modeling (or) process modeling, is the analytical representation or put simply an illustration of an organization's business processes. Modeling processes is a critical component for effective business process management.

  3. What is Business Process Modeling

    Business Process Modelling is cross-functional, usually combining the work and documentation of more than one department in the organisation. Resources feature within BPM in terms of how they are processed.

  4. Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) 101

    Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standardized graphical notation that is used globally for business process modeling. It is open source, which means that the original code is available for anyone to change and use. The specification defines its symbols and shapes precisely. BPMN starts and ends with the business process flow diagram.

  5. Business Process Modeling (BPM) Definition & Techniques

    Business process modeling is the practice of back-engineering each process in your business to understand the different components needed to achieve the goal and finding potential improvements for each component. It's a business analysis and continuous improvement discipline that helps you maximize any process through critical examination.

  6. What Is a Business Model?

    Summary. A look through HBR's archives shows that business thinkers use the concept of a "business model" in many different ways, potentially skewing the definition. Many people believe Peter...

  7. Business Process Modeling: Your Guide to Visualize Success

    Studying business process modeling diagrams means stakeholders can analyze and perfect existing processes to augment operational efficiencies. Enhanced business process. With the added transparency acquired through a business process model, supervisors can discover opportunities to make operations even better. Armed with the knowledge of ...

  8. Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits and How-to Guide

    Business process modeling (BPM) is the analytical or graphical representation and illustration of the business processes or workflow of an organization. This is mostly in the form of a flowchart developed to visualize the various business approaches and information dissemination.

  9. The Basics of Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN)

    BPMN 2.0 is part of OMG's "triple crown" of process improvement standards, which also includes case management model notation (CMMN) and decision model notation (DMN). The standards differ from unified modeling language (UML) used in software design. OMG's BPMN 2.0.1 specification has been published as International Standard ISO/IEC ...

  10. The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Modeling

    Business process modeling is so much more than just diagrams. Every element, shape, and symbol in a business process model has a specific meaning. Each one of them outlines a particular process or action. A robust BPM software such as Wrike supports the new-generation advanced business process modeling standard BPMN 2.0. Wrike provides ...

  11. What is a Business Model with Types and Examples

    The term business model refers to a company's plan for making a profit. It identifies the products or services the business plans to sell, its identified target market, and any anticipated...

  12. The Definitive Guide to Business Process Modeling

    S-BPM uses a simple five-symbol system to model any process. The underlying premise of S-BPM is that every system is built up of subjects which can be a locus of activity, a process or a computational unit. Notations here can be mapped as follows: Subject (who): the subject. Object (with what): data.

  13. Business process modeling

    Example of business process modeling of a process with a normal flow with the Business Process Model and Notation. Business process modeling (BPM), mainly used in business process management; software development or systems engineering, is the action of capturing and representing processes of an enterprise (i.e. modeling them), so that the ...

  14. Business Process Modeling: Definition, Benefits and Techniques

    Business process modeling is the graphical representation of a company's business processes or workflows, as a means of identifying potential improvements. This is usually done through different graphing methods, such as the flowchart, data-flow diagram, etc. BP modeling is used to map 2 different states of the process: As-is , the state of ...

  15. Business Model

    The essence of a business model is that it defines the manner by which the business enterprise delivers value to customers, entices customers to pay for value, and converts those payments to profit: it thus reflects management's hypothesis about what customers want, how they want it, and how an enterprise can organize to best meet those needs, get ...

  16. How to Design a Winning Business Model

    Ramon Casadesus-Masanell is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author, with Joan E. Ricart, of "How to Design a Winning Business Model" (HBR January-February 2011). JR. Joan E ...

  17. Business model

    In theory and practice, the term business model is used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of an organization or business, including purpose, business process, target customers, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, profit structures, sourcing, trading practices, and operat...

  18. What is BPMN? The Easy Guide to Business Process Modeling Notation

    Creating a BPMN diagram involves visually representing the steps and components of a business process. Step 1: Identify the Process. Clearly define the boundaries and scope of the business process you want to model using BPMN. Step 2: Choose a Tool. Choose a BPMN-compliant modeling tool.

  19. Why Model Business Processes?

    "A [business] process model is a visual representation of the sequential flow and control logic of a set of related activities or actions." (9.21.2)" We model to see how multiple people or groups collaborate over a period of time to perform work. These processes are often complex.

  20. What is Business Process Modeling (BPM)?

    Business process modeling (BPM) refers to the creation of a model of a business process in order to better understand that process. Business process modeling relies on conventions like Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) or Unified Modeling Language (UML) to set up models or simulations of a business process for evaluation and possible ...

  21. Business Process Modelling

    Business Process Modelling (BPM) is a modern term and methodology which has evolved through different stages and names, beginning during the 'division of labour' of the late 1700s, when manufacturing first moved into factories from cottage industry. Broadly the term 'business' in Business Process Model/Modelling/modelling is interchangeable ...

  22. What is a Business Process? Key Components, Types & Examples

    A business process is a set of repeatable tasks and activities that produce specific business outcomes. Creating standardized processes empowers companies of all sizes to accomplish goals and strategic initiatives. Executing and optimizing these processes is what drives profitable business operations and growth.

  23. Business Process Model and Notation

    Example of a Business Process Model and Notation for a process with a normal flow. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model.. Originally developed by the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), BPMN has been maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG) since the two organizations merged in 2005.

  24. 20 Hurdles Organizations Face When Implementing A New Business Model

    3. Poor Product-Market Fit. When implementing a new business model, businesses should really nail the product-market fit. Experiment quickly with a minimum viable product to drill down on the ...

  25. Business process engineering (with steps and factors)

    Business process engineering is a method in which organisations analyse their current business practices and create new strategies to increase overall efficiency, productivity and operational costs. The aim of BPE is to discover the issues with a company's operations and redesign, recreate and implement new processes to ensure higher productivity.

  26. Business Analyst Job Description (With Examples)

    Christine is a non-practicing attorney, freelance writer, and author. She has written legal and marketing content and communications for a wide range of law firms for more than 15 years.

  27. Introducing Gemini 1.5, Google's next-generation AI model

    An AI model's "context window" is made up of tokens, which are the building blocks used for processing information. ... This means 1.5 Pro can process vast amounts of information in one go — including 1 hour of video, 11 hours of audio, codebases with over 30,000 lines of code or over 700,000 words. In our research, we've also ...

  28. The Body Shop UK in administration

    While there is a focus on what the restructuring process will mean for workers, Sky News takes a look at The Body Shop's history for clues to where the rot started to set in for the UK business.