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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to Ms. Deepa Kamra, who always gave valuable suggestions and guidance for the completion of my project. She helped me to understand and remember important details of the project that would have otherwise been lost. I also take the opportunity to thank all those people who have directly or indirectly helped me in making this project. I would like to thank my colleagues for their feedbacks and suggestion about the project.

Pom Project

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to Ms. Deepa Kamra, who always gave valuable suggestions and guidance for the completion of my project. She helped me to understand and remember important details of the project that would have otherwise been lost.I also take the opportunity to thank all those people who have directly or indirectly helped me in making this project. I would like to thank my colleagues for their feedbacks and suggestion about the project.

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What is a business process?

If you have ever encountered delays with your application for a new telephone service (i.e., activate your phone line to your new apartment or home at a specific date), you can appreciate the need for process improvement. In this case the "process" is called the requesting a new telephone service process, and the purpose of the process is to activate your phone line, perform on-site service (if appropriate) and bill the services you requested. The process begins with you (as a customer) requesting a new telephone service and ends with you receiving the phone service bill.The process steps are the activities that you and the telephone company personnel need to complete the transaction. In this simple example, we have described a business process.Hammer and Champy [HC 1993] defines a business process as "a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer." A business process is not the same as a business function. A process may be contained within a departmental function; for example Forecast Customer Consumption. However, a lot of meaningful business processes cuts across departmental functions and boundaries; for example Request New Telephone Service spans Customer Service, Technical Services, Credit Control and Invoicing.

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An Example: Telephone Service Process

The process begins when a customer calls a service representative to order telephone service. The service representative takes all the details of the order and initiates the process.The customer may have all the physical requirements for the telephone service (i.e., phone lines to the property, phone jacks in desired locations, etc.).

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Why re-engineer a business process?

Re-engineering assumes that the current business process is wrong or irrelevant. It means that the current business process has a lot of activities that does not add value to the customer. Re-engineering requires fundamental rethinking to challenge tradition by asking the question: why? (e.g., Why does the service technician have to work in the morning, i.e., from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.?); it also requires a radical redesign by assuming that there are no business and technical constraints (e.g., existing organization unit have limited skills and knowledge and existing legacy system is running in a vendor-specific computer, etc.); it expects dramatic improvement in orders of magnitude (i.e., 200% improvement and not 20%). BPR is enabled by the dramatic improvements in information technology. New technologies such as workflow management systems are rapidly bringing new capabilities to businesses, thereby raising the competitive standards and the need to improve business process dramatically.

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What is a process definition?

Business Process Modeling (BPM) defines how the activities of a business process inter-connect. The result of BPM is the process definition.The Workflow Handbook 97 [WFH 1997] defines a process definition as "the representation of a business process in a form which supports automated manipulation, such as modeling, or enactment by a workflow management system. The process definition consists of a network of activities and their relationships, criteria to indicate the start and termination of the process, and information about the individual activities, such as the participants, associated IT applications and data, etc."It shows the relationships among basic terminology that relates to Business Process. Note that the Business Process is defined in a Process Definition and Business Process is managed by a Workflow Management System.

A Process definition is composed of activities and sub-processes. Sub-processes will be defined in the later sections. An activity can be manual (i.e., requires human intervention such as perform onsite service) or automated (does not need human intervention such as generate statement).To automate the business process, a workflow management system (WFMS) is used. WFMS uses the process definition to create process instances which includes one or more activity instances. Each activity instance can have work items, invoked applications, or both. A discussion of WFMS will be made in the Four Basic Workflow Concepts section.

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BPM Activities

By defining the process definition, process improvement can be made by eliminating duplicate activities, introducing parallel activities and eliminating unnecessary movement of work. In the more extreme case of BPR, the process can be totally reorganized such that multiple activities are combined into one activity enabled by leading edge technology (i.e., shared databases, expert systems, decision support systems, telecommunication networks,wireless data communication and portable computers and workflow management systems).For example the four different activities of Telephone Service Process can be rationalized into a single process-based function Provide Customer Service. This "re-engineered" process assigns all activities (except perform on-site service, if required) to the Service Representative.

Functional to Process Orientation

Based on the key BPR principles discussed above, we now have to rethink the way work is done within a business. The hierarchical structuring of organizations into functional units and sub-units has historically been the main focus of organizing businesses. Each unit in each level which has a defined function within a company is responsible for this function and has directly assigned resources for accomplishing it.One effect of this is that people belonging to one unit start thinking in a narrow way concerning only their own functions. They no longer have the company as a whole in mind and therefore build organizational barriers between them and other units. This leads to a lack of communication between units and people, slower working and more intensive administration.

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We have discussed that functional orientation can slow down work and adds organizational barriers which are non-value-added activities for the customer. Automating each function does not solve this problem.Process Orientation is a means to solve this problem. Instead of asking "what are the departmental functions? and how can we make each function more efficient?", we now ask "what are the key business processes? and how can we improve the process?".Business processes are used to define the flow of work, typically across organizational boundaries, in order to add value for the customer (i.e., to meet business goals). Process-based applications automates the process definition and uses (or re-use) workflow enabled applications to accomplish activities of each process instance. Figure 5 shows how a process based application is structured to meet business requirements.Process orientation also means that people from various units work together for a specific business process assigned to them. This is called the process team. BPR and BPI encompass a whole range of techniques. Modeling techniques for BPR can involve workflow analysis, simulation, value chain analysis, critical path analysis and performance measurement.

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How to specify a business process?

Defining a business process involves identifying external business events and primary results. Each business process is analyzed as a chain of activity for each pair of triggering events and results.A business process often involves multiple users and activities that take place over a period of time. Not only do we need to examine the activities in which inputs are converted into outputs, we need to be able to identify the correct activities in the first place. A common approach is to attempt some form of functional decomposition, by asking what are the system functions of each department and breaking these functions down to a level where it can be coded (i.e., subprogram definition). This approach is not helpful because not all thefunctions within the department is required to satisfy a specific business process. Business processes therefore, is appropriately modeled using event-driven approaches.Event-driven approaches to identify activities of a business process recognizes the fact that identifying the correct activities has to be done "outside-in" (event-driven / horizontal) rather than "top-down" (functional decomposition / hierarchical). An event-driven approach naturally considers passage of time as an important event in the model. This means that event sequences can be modeled based on the business process definition. CSC Catalyst methodology [SELECT 1997] uses the event-driven approach to identify the activities of the business process.A business process consists of groups of activities performed in response to a set of related business events. Business Processes are value chains (i.e., generates work that is of value to the customer) of a business. Process Definitions are used to model the flow of activities, initiated by a single business event. Flow of activities is controlled by sequence dependency, iteration, concurrence and process breaks. A result from one process definition may be a business event relative to

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another process definition. An example would be the result of the Telephone Service Process (i.e., new phone request activated and billed) is used for another process: Credit and Collection Process.A business event is a stimulus which triggers an activity. In our Telephone Service Process example, the activity "Enter Order" is triggered by business event "Customer Calls In".Business events may be input or output-driven. Input-driven business events are signaled by the arrival of an input information flow; they can be external or internal; for example Customer Calls In (external) or Clerk request Onsite Service (internal). Output-driven business events may be temporal or conditional. Temporal events are signaled by the arrival of a predefined point in time (e.g., Time to Activate Telephone Line). Conditional events report the sensing of a particular circumstance which triggers another activity (e.g., Credit limit exceeded) [SELECT 1997].In sum, business processes can be thought of as a family of activities which together collaborate in different event driven groups to fulfill the business goals. These groups ofactivities are decomposed by events that denote essential constraints imposed by the business, not by technology. This allows us to identify activities that can be used on different process definitions.The dependencies (i.e., transitions) between activities are subjected to pre-conditions and post-conditions. Pre-condition must evaluate to "true" to start the activity. On the other hand, the post condition must evaluate to "true" before the activity can be completed. Preconditions and post-conditions are important because they will help to govern the behavior of required services (i.e., application components), when we model our system interface (i.e., use cases).

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When (at what level) do we stop business process decomposition?

Since there is no criteria for establishing a bottom level process component, the process analyst/designer is faced with the problem of when to stop business process decomposition (i.e., at what level should activity decomposition stop). One rule of thumb is to specify the activities such that a task is performed by one person in one place at one time, and which adds measurable business value and leaves the data in a consistent state.Task granularity and task generalization is beyond the scope of this paper.

Defining Sub-processes

Multiple levels of sub-process may be supported. A sub-process is useful for defining reusable components within other processes. A sub-process will have its own process definition [WFH 1997].A sub-process can be defined by creating another process definition (such as Onsite Service Process) that can be called by another (initiating) process. Figure shows a sample Onsite Service sub-process which includes Schedule Visit and Onsite Service activities.

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Strengthening the Process Definition

The Onsite Service Process defined in Figure will be accurately followed if all scheduled onsite visits have successful onsite service conducted by the technician originally assigned. As soon as the technician cannot conduct a successful onsite service, the process definition says nothing about what happens next.To make the definition more robust, an optional dependency ("on abort" condition) is introduced. This is shown in Figure 8 as a conditional transition from Perform Onsite activity to Allocate Resource activity. A new Schedule Onsite activity has to be created because the activity needs to distinguish between the schedule onsite for the first time and the succeeding time. In the actual implementation, however, they may use the same application component with different parameters (to distinguish first and succeeding schedule). This is the concept of task generalization which allows different activities to re-use the same application component.

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To add more robustness to the Onsite Service Process, a timer can be set once the Perform Onsite activity has started; for example, the timer can be set for two business days. If the Perform Onsite activity is completed before the timer expires (in two business days), the timer is reset and the process ends. If the timer expires and the Perform Onsite activity is not yet completed, a new activity such as Handle Delay activity will be initiated (i.e., this will actually show up as a work list item for the supervisor). This process of checking and reporting exceptions is called escalation. . The timer (two business days) and Handle Delay activity are not shown on the diagram to limit complexity; though they could be shown if required.

BPR and Workflow

BPR proposes the obliteration of existing work processes and the establishment of new business methods based on new sets of assumptions regarding desired business objectives.Workflow is the analysis, compression, and automation of information-based process models that make up a business.With this definition, workflow provides the metrics for reengineering. It can measure which business processes and information systems are less efficient in order to pinpoint the opportunities for reengineering. Therefore, workflow can be used for non-radical changes.

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Four Basic Workflow Concepts

With many competing workflow products today, it is important to understand the key Workflow concepts which are as follows:

Process Logic

A workflow management system (WFMS) provides computer-based support for business process logic. Using a WFMS, a business can both enforce and document the business rules it uses [WFH 1997].WFMS controls the flow of business processes by: representing the definition of each process keeping track of the state of each instance of the process as it progresses through its defined task stages pushing the process along to the next task that needs to be performed, according to the logic that is defined in the processIn our Phone Service Process example, all the activities and dependencies can be defined using a WFMS. Creation of process instances and tracking the state of the process and activity instances is also done by the WFMS.

Match-Making between People and Tasks

WFMS take responsibility for ensuring that the tasks that need to be done are matched up with the resources needed to perform them. When a task needs a person in order to be completed, the WFMS will support the necessary match-making between people and tasks [WFH 1997].In our Phone Service example, Enter Order can be matched with users that have Service Representative roles. Activate Line and Generate Statement activities can be done automatically (i.e., assign an application service component to complete the task).

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Providing Information Resources for Tasks

Tasks may require both human resources and information resources. When these information resources are computer based, WFMS can make sure that the tasks which need to be done are matched up with the information resources that are needed to complete the task [WFH 1997].In our Phone Service Process example, we can expect the WFMS to provide the customer information to the generate statement application (instead of re-keying this information).

Process Management

Process management is a key concept in WFMS; organizations are under constant pressure to make better use of resources [WFH 1997].WFMS can be used to manage and control business processes. WFMS helps process management by:

Making process logic explicit, discrete layer of design representation, which can be reasoned about independently and , within limits, altered independently.

Allowing designers to create, collect and evaluate metrics relating to the time, cost or quality of performing a process and its constituent tasks, thus enabling intelligent improvements to be made to process design.

Business Processes and Object Orientation

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BPM usually arises from a compelling business need or opportunity. Often this will require software solutions to be rapidly developed or assembled. Information collected from BPM must therefore be usable in systems analysis and design, and software development, with as little translation or rework as possible.Consistent with the CSC Catalyst methodology, objects are viewed as service providers to business processes. The analysis in terms of business activities gives the starting point for identifying system use cases. System use cases are essentially the ways in which actors are going to use the proposed system.

Case I

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The Xerox Non-Production Procurement Project BPR Project

A good example of a large scale Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project is the redesign undertaken by Xerox Corporation in 1994. This project was studied by the author in 1996 when it the solution was being implemented and has been described several times since.

The Problem

Non-Production Procurement (NPP), at Xerox, covers all purchases of supplies other than supplies used in the actual production of copying machines. Thus, all office supplies, from desks and personal computers to pencils and stationary comes under the category of non-production procurement.In early 1994, Xerox was spending about $4.3 billion dollars a year on NPP. Xerox realized that the redesign of this process represented a major opportunity to save money.

The Redesign

A business process redesign team was created that included managers, supervisors and clerical personnel from the various organizations involved in NPP. The redesign team members involved in the work explained how, initially, procurement had been spread throughout the various corporate departments and groups. Moreover, different groups had been established to handle expensive items like desks, or complex items, like computers, while other groups handled more routine items like paper and pencils. Specialists had been established to handle exceptions and rush orders.

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The group approached the redesign by trying to think of major changes and simultaneously trying to document what was currently being done to assure that all aspects of the problemwould be covered. At the same time, Xerox contracted with an outside consulting group, to survey other organizations to determine the best procurement practices at companies that had a reputation for doing things efficiently. The redesign team studied the results and set its own goals accordingly.The outside consulting group was also involved in helping the redesign team create a process flow plan that described all of the activities of all of the groups involved in the NPP process. The consultants used diagrams similar to those described in this book, listing customer contacts at the top and departments along the side. Access to databases were listed on separate swim lanes at the bottom of the chart. The initial chart was huge and identified hundreds of different activities. Most were found to be non-value adding activities and were eliminated.In hindsight, the redesign team spoke lightly of the struggles between different groups as they worked to consolidate activities. Initially, each team member tried to explain why a specific sequence was necessary for handling the unique types of problems his or her specific group faced. As time went on, however, the team members gradually agreed that most of the activity sequences were really just variations on a few basic themes. One sequence, for example, involved letting contracts to vendors that would then supply items at a set price.

The Solution

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When it was finally completely implemented, the new Xerox NPP process reportedly saved Xerox a very significant portion of the money formerly spent administrating purchasing. Hundreds of activities had been reduced to dozens and numerous redundant sub-processes were now combined into three major sub-processes. Hundreds of suppliers, with all the overhead involved in managing them, had been reduced to four major suppliers, and emergency purchases had been delegated to departments that now relied on credit cards.A complex system of dozens of paper forms had been eliminated and the entire process was now handled, online, by a new NPP software system.The Xerox NPP process improvement effort is a great example of what one can do when one simply looks for redundancies and duplications and simplifies down to the really basic activities one actually needs. In this case the company didn’t completely reinvent the process, but they simplified it and improved it in many different ways.

Case II

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Blackadders

Introduction

Headquartered in Dundee, Scotland, Blackadders is a long-established, expanding and ambitious law firm with a Scottish and international client base, providing a range of services for business and private individuals. The firm has two branch offices in Arbroath and Forfar and a further three offices in Dundee, employing around 160 staff in total.

Problem

Blackadders’ IT team is responsible and committed to supporting the firm in adhering to regulatory compliance requirements, and improving the firm’s competitive position through a long-term IT strategy using the latest cost-effective information technologies. Historically, the development team has focused on small-scale projects involving the integration of legacy applications into the firm’s practice management system. However, the firm wished to further utilise their internal resource to deliver complete functional systems using the latest Microsoft technologies. They selected to work with FloSuite Ltd. and our Adaptive Business Solutions to achieve these aims.Having undertaken a review of internal business processes, the firm identified that there were opportunities to make significant improvements within Private Client. The key targets for improvement were: to enable a greater element of management control, to reduce cycle times, to achieve efficiency gains and to improve the overall client experience. The new system would also have to work seamlessly with the firm’s Pilgrim LawSoft practice management system.

Solution

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Wendy Miller, a senior application developer at Blackadders, was tasked with leading thedevelopment of the Executries/Probate system, working in conjunction with the Executry Project Team, consisting of Private Client Partner Donald Gordon, the Director of Executry Services Moira Shepherd, Director of IT Graham Thoms, and a Technology Partner. This team worked in conjunction with FloSuite personnel and other Blackadders staff.The project team worked with FloSuite’s consultants to design and deliver an Executries/Probate Solution, developed using FloSuite’s flexible BPM/Case Management Framework.The project was a major success and the resulting system includes the following functionality:1. Manages the complete Executry process (testate and intestate) after

matter creation, and the key milestones of Investigation, Exhibition, Realisation and Finalisation.

2. Ensures a standardised process is followed for each Executry.3. Manages all Executry contact(s) information such as executors,

beneficiaries, legatees, charities, etc.4. Creates and maintains a central and comprehensive database of

organisations communicated with, e.g. financial institutions, insurance companies, utility companies etc.

5. Assembles documents or pre-populates letters as appropriate and stores them within the

practice management system.6. Pre-populates regulatory forms such as C1, C5, IHT200, etc.

7. Automatically sends emails to relevant internal parties, such as share and property

valuation requests.

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8. Automatically produces an inventory and three-columned final account (giving date of

death and realisation values).9. Alerts fee earners when responses from various parties have not

been received within specified timescales.10. Integrates, and simplifies, fee earner posting with the practice

management system.11. Is an integral part of the firm’s ‘buddy system’, allowing colleagues

to easily understand and respond to a client’s/respondent’s requests during periods of

absence.12. Allows fee earners to effectively manage pending and available

tasks.13. Produces management reports of ongoing Executries/Probate

matters and records a full audit trail.

Outcome

Blackadders is delighted with this new solution and seen clear business benefits since itsimplementation, including efficiency gains of, on average, around 50% in the processing ofExecutries. The solution’s built-in business rules and ‘best practice’ processes have also enabled improvement to the ratio of fee earners to support staff, and reallocation of resources from other departmental areas.In association with FloSuite, the Private Client partners, Director of Executry Services, ourExecutry specialists and our IT team, we have recently developed a complete and flexible case management system for Executry

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administration. This system has already proved its worth in the efficient running of individual cases, and the management of the Executry section as a whole – and this is in addition to a quicker throughput of fees for the work that we do.

Business Benefits

The key benefits of the Executry/Probate System are as follows:1. Provides Private Client department with a clear view of all on-going

executries, their milestones and current estate values.2. Provides the fee earner with an up-to-date balance of the

grossestate and its breakdown for each Executry.3. Provides Executors with a detailed update at specified periods with

minimal effort to the fee earner.4. Improves departmental efficiency.5. Eliminates duplication of data for letter generation.6. Reduces risk by maintaining a complete audit trail.7. Built-in business rules and ‘best practice’ processes enable

improvement to ratio of fee earners to support staff and reallocation of resources from other departmental areas.

8. Reduces cycle times and increases volumes of work being processed.

Summary

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FloSuite and Blackadders worked closely to deliver a complete Executry/Probate solution built on the FloSuite Framework, which integrates fully with the firm’s existing practice management system. The solution has transformed the way in which the Executries function of the Private Client department operates and generated significant measurable business benefits for the firm, whilst improving the service they are able to deliver to their clients.

Bibliography

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Forte Software, Inc., Using Forte Conductor 1.0 Training Manual, 1997[FC 1997]

www.google.com

Hammer, M. and Champy, J., Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Harper Collins, New York, 1993.[HC 1993]

www.wikipedia.org

SELECT Software Tools, Inc., Process Mentor 5.1.4 (a computer based tutorial), 1997[SELECT 1997]

Lawrence, Peter (editor), Workflow Handbook 1997, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 1997[WFH 1997].