What is a Business Process - A Brief Case-Study
| What is a Business Process - A Brief Case-Study |
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I am the delivery driver for an internet merchandising company. My boss is a bit of a stickler for targets, which I suppose is okay, but it means I have to work pretty hard. My target is to deliver 200 parcels a day, rain or shine. The parcels I have to deliver are all kept in a big cage in the warehouse, and I pick my 200 every day, load them on the truck, and deliver them. I can't go home until I've finished, and sometimes that can mean a late night, if the traffic's bad or something.But I'm not daft - I don't just choose any parcels. I choose ones where the delivery addresses are close together, and I avoid ones where I have to climb to the top of a tower block to deliver them - you get to know the bad ones when you've been on the job for a while. More often than not, I'm at home in time for Neighbours, and the boss is happy.
Not so the customer waiting on the 32nd floor of a tower block or in an outlying suburb, because they won't get their parcels delivered.
Daft example? If only. This is based on how an actual company used to operate before they implemented some process improvements. Not least by defining what the 'business process' should be. 'Delivery' is an activity, not a process. The process of which Delivery formed a part starts with the customer logging a request via the internet, and finishes when that order is delivered. They have an expectation as to how long such a process should take, formed partly by the company with which they are dealing. The business process must link all the activities from receipt of the order to its completion, and it must do so in such a way as to meet the customer's expectation for delivery. That, not the driver's 200 parcels per day, is the real target.
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