BPM Challenges Faced By Business Analysts And How to Overcome them

Success Factors and Best Practice approach based on academic and industry research

In a previous article, I presented 5 business process modelling methodologies that should be part of the toolbox of any Business Analyst. Through that discussion, it was demonstrated that analysts should approach the process of business process modelling with a degree of flexibility to the applied method, and subsequently — the applied techniques. However, in many cases simply fine-tuning the method used to the business case is not sufficient. The following article will present the key challenges business analysts and project managers face when modelling business processes and propose some insight on how to set-up the process for success.

Key Challenges of Business Process Modelling

The challenges in business process modelling arise primarily from the variety of processes that exist in any organisation. As Davies points out, if we consider a typical office as an example, documents must go through several departments as part of processing, presenting modelling challenges at each stage, such as processing volume or mixing mistakes. This is also noted by other scholars, such as Mel?o and Pidd:

Business processes have a mix of front- (core processes) and back-office (support processes) components.

This can lead to an excess of different processes, each related to a specific item, all causing continuous changes in the workload and increasing unpredictability overall, especially when taking into account the potential of human error. In his book, Ould categorises two further process-types:

• management processes, such as responsible planning, organising and overseeing the enterprise; and
• business network processes, which correspond to activities undertaken for linking partners and systems in the supply network.

Other scholars have argued the challenge of process modelling can also be partially illustrated through the necessity of managers to view the activities of the organisation in an end-to-end manner, irrespective of the boundary of operations or the type of process they incorporate.

Business Process Modelling consists of several stages and as it is distributed across various stakeholders in the organisation. This causes two issues, as documented in Pflanzl and Vosse’s study.

Firstly, it results in a model-reality divide, which is the considerable difference between what is planned as a process and what is the actual practice. The model-reality divide leads users to fail to accept the process models as they do not reflect their daily work.

The second issue is the loss of innovation. This occurs as the precious knowledge about best-practice approaches that are generated and held with the employees is hindered, as they either refrain from sharing it or are being restricted to do so by top-down executives, which operate using a management-driven business process modelling approach.

With the increased pace of change and competitiveness in many industries, the traditional modelling process is becoming ineffective in capturing stakeholder requirements. Another point of debate regarding the efficiency of the modelling process is the way processes are captured (i.e. the model design). Some scholars argue the modelling process is challenged by designs, which fail to capture processes accurately, withholding relevant aspects such as the suitability, formality, comprehensibility, enact-ability or minimality.

Through consultation with practitioners, Indulska and her colleagues identify the key challenges faced in practice, with the communication of value through the model, the execution of models in practice and standardisation being most commonly faced issues.

Most of the challenges are faced as there are so many available methods and techniques to do process modelling. With the growth of the industry, it can be expected that some of the challenges shown will only become more intense as time goes on. Let’s recap the challenges illustrated in this section, before introducing the success factors. I have gone ahead and organised those into categories below.

Critical success factors in Business Process Modelling

Discouraged by the issues faced in business process modelling, Bandara and colleagues propose a conceptual success model, in which the relationship between how success can be achieved and how it can be measured is illustrated.

This model can be criticised for withholding other success factors such as leadership, team structure, culture and communication, which are undoubtedly important for the Business Process Modelling practice. The authors of the text do, however, affirm that the proposed model is supported by empirical evidence of academic literature. While approaching the similar studies from a more critical stance, there is a clear indication that areas such as employee training and empowerment, performance and change management, and alignment between strategy and BPM with a focus in support for information systems, are of greater importance than initially speculated.

It is recognised that for business analysts to increase their effectiveness, they need actionable steps, yet few academic studies provide this. Rosemann’s work proposes guidance for business analysts, namely:

• assess the appropriateness of the tool based on the size and complexity of the enterprise’s processes;
• balance time with strategic goals, especially avoiding over-engineering, over-perfecting models without advancing or undefined level of model simplicity needed to satisfy the needs;
• manage complexity through decomposition; and
• incorporate meaningful insights from all interactions, which have occurred as part of the modelling experience.

Besides, the importance of process decomposition and granularity is well-recognised in academic research, as an enabler of long-term success. These two practices enable model reusability and standardization of the business process modelling practice, which directly addresses some of the challenges illustrated previously.

What is the best practice approach?

Although scholars are unanimous that selecting a sole technique or tool to suit the objectives of the business is a necessary (albeit also complex and time-involving) task, it is also true that there is no single approach that is suitable for all organisations or even all aspects of a single enterprise. This has led some scholars to combine existing methodologies and tools into combinations as a means of approaching the various requirements of the process modelling task.

This means contextualization is key.

The first step in the process would be to study the company’s strategic goals and match the business processing methodology to the type of organisation and the respective importance it places on communication, culture and its employees. For example, a Soft Systems Methodology can be used in enterprises, where employees play a fundamental role in the business, such as service and tech organisations. From there onwards, throughout the Business Process Modelling stages, the analyst’s attention should be drawn to various aspects of the organisation, as illustrated in the next image.

Hommes and Van Reijswoud also argue that from a quality perspective, with each technique, the analyst should seek suitability, completeness, coherence, expressiveness, comprehensibility, determinism and effectiveness in respect of the processes they are modelling. Each of those is represented to a varying degree in the different elements of the chosen technique. Also, the analyst might choose what is most suitable, based on the goals of the modelling activity, for example:

• to generate support models for IT;
• to generate more descriptive and analytical models to support decision-making for process design;
• to increase organisational learning; or
• to generate models, which are both analytical and standardised across the organisation to assist with management and control of activities.

The techniques most suitable for increasing learning are the flow chart, IDEF and Gantt Chart, as they:

• enable communication
• can incorporate feedback from both users and experts
• allow for a clear view of dependencies, responsibilities and gaps in knowledge.

Many of these techniques can also advance the task of process development, depending on the size of the enterprise and the complexity of the modelling task.

Notably, the most prominent technique for process execution and information technology enactment is the Unified Modelling Language, as it can effectively capture all aspects of a large organisation’s functions and systems and efficiently communicate this, regardless of the level of process granularity it represents.

Final thoughts…

Hopefully, this article has shed light on the complexities of Business Process Modelling but has also provided insight regarding the factors needed for success. Similarly to my other work in the area, the key argument (and takeaway, if you wish) of this story remains that:

Business Process Modelling is not a one-size-fits-all type of discipline. It is a continuous, iterative and often highly complex process.

Therefore, the approach should be tailored to the needs of the organisation and the relevant departments engaged. While the best practice approach proposed has some grounding in academic literature, different practitioners could have varying views regarding the main challenges and success factors in the area.

What is your best practice approach?