Question

Compare the same business processes (inputs) of two similar companies. Recall a business process from a past or current employer and compare that business process to another past employer or another business. For example, compare the process of purchasing supplies at sample company ABC to the same process at sample company XYZ. While processes stay consistent, results from processes will differ between companies. Did the process differ slightly, significantly or not at all between businesses? What were the disparities in business processes from one company to another? Did results (output) from the process differ? How?

Answer 1

Similarities between business processes

Before we can determine the differences between business processes, we must identify some similarities. This is necessary, because we need some starting point to be able to say more than that the processes are ‘totally different’. Therefore, we require that the designer indicates which collections of activities are equivalent and which roles are equivalent for the purpose of the integration. The requirement that these activities or roles are equivalent for the purpose of the integration is important, because depending on the purpose of the integration very different decisions can be made on equivalence. For example, if the purpose of the integration is to develop a common information system, then the activity of entering personal information of a client in information system ‘A’ can be considered equivalent to entering this information in information system ‘B’, because once the common information system is in place, this activity will be exactly the same. However, if the purpose of the system is to merge departments, but not information systems, then the activities are different, because they will be different in the merged process; an employee trained on one system cannot use the other without the proper training and data stored in one system will not be available in the other. To determine equivalence between activities in two processes, we check if the unit of work that they represent is equivalent for the purpose of the integration. We use two criteria to check whether or not two units of work are equivalent:

1.The effect that the units of work will have in the integrated process must be the same (e.g. the same information must be recorded and the same people must be informed of a decision).

2. The way in which the effect is achieved must be the same (e.g. the same information system must be used to record the information and the same means of communication must be used to inform the people).

Depending on the purpose of the integration, either (1) or both (1) and (2) can be used to determine equivalence of units of work. In case two units of work are equivalent with respect to (1), we say that they are black-box equivalent. In case they are equivalent with respect to both (1) and (2), we say that they are whitebox equivalent. It is possible that equivalence applies to collections of activities, rather than individual activities. This is the case if two collections of activities represent the same unit of work, while there are no parts of these collections that represent the same unit of work. For example, the activity ‘enter client’s information’ is equivalent to the collection that consists of the activities ‘enter name and address information’ and ‘enter client’s partner information’, if the unit of work represented by the single activity is the same as the unit of work represented by the collection of activities. To determine equivalence between roles in two processes, we check if they represent the same authorization in the integrated process (informally: they represent sets of people with the same duties). To perform this check we assume that the organizational structure to which the integrated process applies has already been aligned. Such an alignment requires complex organizational decisions that are outside the scope of this paper. For example, to align the organizational structure, it can be decided that after the integration there will be a single role ‘team leader’ and that people that were previously authorized to perform the duties of a ‘team coach’ or a ‘unit manager’ will be authorized to perform the duties of a ‘team leader’. Hence, ‘team coaches’ and ‘unit managers’ have the same authorization in the integrated process and, therefore, are equivalent for the purpose of the integration.

Activity differences

A difference between activities exists if a unit of work that is represented by a certain collection of activities in one process is represented by a different collection of activities, or not at all, in the other process.

Skipped activity.

A skipped activity exists if an activity (that represents a certain unit of work) exists in one process, but no activity representing an equivalent unit of work exists in the other process. Figure 3.i shows an example of this type of difference.

Interchanged activities

Interchanged activities exist if an activity exists in one process and an activity that has the same effect (equivalence criteria (1) explained above) but achieves that effect in a different way (equivalence criteria (2) explained above) exists in the other process. This difference is only relevant if whitebox equivalence is used to determine equivalence of the processes, because if black-box equivalence is used, interchanged activities are equivalent (because they meet criterion (1) above). Figure 3.ii shows an example of this type of difference, if recording a request and scanning a request form have the same effect (for example that the request is recorded).

Refined activity.

A refined activity exists if an activity (that represents a certain unit of work) exists in one process, but an equivalent unit of work is only represented by a collection of activities in the other process. We say that the collection of activities refines the single activity, because it represents the same unit of work at a different level of granularity. Figure 3.iii shows an example of this type of difference, if both the activity and the collection of activities represent the same unit of work.