Assessment Answers: Current Workflow BPMN ICT226

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Running head: – INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note
1 INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
Table of Contents
1. Question-1: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
2. Question-2: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
2.1. Part-(a): …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 3
2.2. Part-(b): …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4
3. Question-3: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
4. Question-4: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
4.1. Part-(a): …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
4.2. Part-(b): …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
5. References: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
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1. Question-1:
The BPMN diagram to describe the workflow in the accounts department at the
manufacturing company has been displayed as follows. The following BPMN diagram has
clearly stated the currently existing workflow at the organization, which necessarily includes
three primary actors, the Customer, Accounts Clerk and the Manager. Each of the activities
and processes that are carried out by them has been shown with the help of the following
diagram.
Figure-1: Current Workflow BPMN
(Source- Created by Author) Manufacturing Company Accounts Department
Manager
Accounts clerk
Customer
Start
Check In-house
ERP System
Bill
Check In-house
ERP System
Make Payment
through PayNow
Received?
NO
Notification
(Not received)
Check email inbox for
supplier invoicesYESSort by due
date
Supplier
invoices
Use Rubber stamp and
Approve
Reconcile invoices and
received payments
Produce monthly
reconciliation report
End
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2. Question-2:
2.1. Part-(a):
In this section of the document, 2 ineffectiveness as well as 3 inefficiencies within the
current business workflow at the accounts department of the company has been appropriately
identified (Ezekiel et al., 2018). Both the identification after evaluating the current workflow
will help us devise a proper solution for the same in specific terms. The evaluation has
mainly been carried out to ensure a better understanding of all the bad business activities that
are still carried out at the accounts department and to help provide suggestions or
improvements to the process. Hence, 2 of the existing ineffectiveness in the current workflow
are,
a. The company already has an in-house ERP system. However, even if the system
exists, the Accounts Clerk still needs to check the system for invoices as well as his
mailbox for any invoice that has been sent by the supplier. As a reason, the in-house
ERP system is ineffective, since it still requires human involvement and has been
considered as an ineffectiveness within the current workflow. This also has been
considered an ineffectiveness due to the time-consuming process that it is. Hence, is
an ineffective method that is carried out.
b. The monthly reconciliation report is manually prepared by the accounts clerk
(Olender 2020). This has also been identified as an ineffective process since the same
should be prepared by the in-house ERP system. However, it is not and eventually
becomes a manual process as well. The manual process can also lead to human errors
at the accounts department of the company and lead to financial miscalculations at
times.
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In addition to the identified ineffectiveness in the above processes, the following
points have clearly out 3 of the inefficiencies that are present in the system and needs to be
changed or altered to integrated efficiency into the business process (Allard et al., 2019).
i. Manually printed hardcopies of bills are provided to the customers if they are not
digitalized. This is an inefficient process, since all the likely work is supposed to
happen online that makes the business process a faster one to carry out. In
addition to this, hardcopies of bills might also get damaged due to some reason,
which would again need the Accounts Clerk to print the bill and make the process
lengthy.
ii. The company does not accept payments in cheques and every individual customer
needs to use the PayNow application to make the necessary payment (Zhang &
Metawa, 2022). This has been considered as an inefficiency, since, the mode of
payment should always be a decision for the customer based on their suitability.
This mode of payment that does not offer any options might lead to losing out on
customers.
iii. Reconciliation of all the invoices based on incoming as well as outgoing payments
are carried out by the Accounts Clerk. This manual process is a lengthy one and at
the same time is time consuming. This is also an inefficient process and needs an
instant change to integrate efficiency into the business in specific terms.
2.2. Part-(b):
This sub-section of the document has clearly been discussed to put forward necessary
improvements into the current workflow of the business and needs to be addressed in a
proper manner with the help of technologies or information system integration (Ezekiel,
2021).
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Currently, there is an ERP system implemented and working at the accounts
department of the business. However, multiple issues have been identified within the process
that needs to be changed to integrated efficiency and effectiveness into the current workflow
for the business (Bruijl, 2018). As a reason, the following points have clearly outlined all the
necessary changes that needs to be performed to ensure a better understanding of the
necessary improvements within the business.
a. With respect to any invoice that is received on which bill needs to be made, the same
should be done automatically by the ERP system and the customer should be provided
with a bill that needs to be paid on their smart devices in the form of a notification.
The accounts clerk should not have any involvement in this.
b. The ERP system should keep a track of all the invoices, incoming and outgoing
payments (Hwang, 2018). The accounts clerk should only click an option on the ERP
system application to download the automatically generated reconciliation report.
c. All the customers should be registered to the mobile application and should receive a
softcopy of the bill in the form of a notification. The provisioning of hardcopy bills
should be instantly removed. All the customers will be provided with the bills in the
form of notification on their devices.
d. All the customers should be provided with options of choosing their preferred
payment gateway or application apart from the PayNow application. This will help all
the customers through the process of making online payments.
e. All the supplier invoices should be automatically arranged by the ERP system without
the Accounts clerk having to be involved into this process.
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3. Question-3:
The following diagram has clearly displayed the future workflow at the Accounts
Department by integrating the recommended improvements as made in the previous section.
The following BPMN diagram has been drawn by integrating all the necessary suggestions
and improvements that have been made to the current workflow in the accounts department
has mentioned in the previous section.
Figure-2: Future Workflow BPMN
(Source- Created by Author) Accounts Department
Customer
ERP System
Accounts
Clerk
Manager
Suppliers
Start
Generate bill
for customers
BillChoose payment
modeMakes payment
Received?
Database
YES
Updates
Database
Payment
Failed
Places supplier
order
OrderIn stock?
Out of
stock
Prepares and
Delivers product
NO
Prepares bill
Supplier
Bill
Makes paymentReconciles bills
& invoices
Reconciled
bills/
invoice
Sends to manager
for approval
Reconciled
bills/
invoice
Approves
Approved
bills/
invoice
Updates
database
End
7 INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
4. Question-4:
4.1. Part-(a):
With respect to the ERPSIM game, Cost Leadership Strategy is the one that has been
chosen from the Porters Four Strategies Model to be applied to the game. The game mainly
allows the participants to use a real-time ERP system to manage their virtual business, which
promises to enhance their understanding of utilizing ERP systems into their businesses.
However, this particular strategy has been chosen to be applied to the ERPSIM game,
since this strategy aims to target a large market and provide products or services at the lowest
price possible. This is one of the most effective strategy that can be adopted to increase the
customer base and effectively create the foundation of the business.
4.2. Part-(b):
The primary strategy that can be effectively used to increase Sales during the
ERPSIM game is to adopt the Cost Leadership Strategy (Paulet & Dick, 2019). This is a
strategy that helps the business to target a large market, which will attract more number of
customers and then provide them products or services at the lowest price possible.
A large target market might be in need of a specific product, and offering them the
product at the lowest price possible is the most effective strategy that can provide with the
helping hand in increasing the sales very quickly. Hence, this strategy has been chosen.
8 INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
5. References:
Allard, T., Alvino, P., Shing, L., Wollaber, A., & Yuen, J. (2019). A dataset to facilitate
automated workflow analysis. PloS one, 14(2), e0211486.
(https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211486)
Bruijl, G. H. T. (2018). The relevance of Porter’s five forces in today’s innovative and
changing business environment. Available at SSRN 3192207.
(http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3192207 )
Ezekiel, K. (2021). Adaptation of business rules in business workflow systems (Doctoral
dissertation, London Metropolitan University).
(http://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/id/eprint/6753)
Ezekiel, K., Vassilev, V., Ouazzane, K., & Patel, Y. (2018). Adaptive business rules
framework for workflow management. Business Process Management Journal, 25(5),
948-971. (https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-08-2017-0219)
Hwang, M. I. (2018). Relationship between teamwork and team performance: Experiences
from an ERPsim competition. Journal of Information Systems Education, 29(3), 157-
168. (https://aisel.aisnet.org/jise/vol29/iss3/4)
Olender, M. (2020, September). Business process modeling for flexible tasks workflow. In
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 916, No. 1, p.
012079). IOP Publishing. (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-
899X/916/1/012079/meta)
Paulet, G., & Dick, G. (2019, March). ERPsim Games in Management Higher Education. In
Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the

9 INTEGRATED BUSINESS PROCESS
Annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 46). (https://absel-ojs-
ttu.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/3241)
Zhang, Y., & Metawa, S. (2022, March). Design and Implementation of Business
Information System Based on Workflow. In The International Conference on Cyber
Security Intelligence and Analytics (pp. 911-915). Springer, Cham.
(https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97874-7_131)

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