Business Process Management Plan For Wesfarmers

Topic:-Business Process Management Plan

Part A: Business Process development plan of an existing case (organisation or project)

Part B: Business process improvement report

Part C: Business process analysis

Part A: Business process development plan

A systematic approach which has been considered as very much significant for developing an efficient and effective workflow within the business organization can be considered business process management (Zellner, 2011). This system is very much capable in adapting an ever-changing business environment and trends. A business process can also be termed as the set of operations and activities which are executed for attaining and accomplishing a specific organizational goal. One of the biggest objectives of the BPM system is to bring minimization in errors and miscommunication made by the individuals and should also focus on the stakeholders are the requirements of their roles. The concept has also been referred as the subset of infrastructure management and also an administrative area which is concerned with the maintaining and optimizing the equipment’s of an organization. The BPM based foundation offers the business entity with a complete lifecycle management for the business operation facilitates integration of the technological systems and mechanisms and also implants efficiency among the individuals within the business corporation (Rosemann & vom Brocke, 2015). The system is software which is very much integral for the business corporation and adds value in terms of bringing increase in the productivity level, hike in revenue generation and operational excellence. This systems also aids in bringing a decline in various types of expenditures and also assists in maintaining a better control over the operations and functionalities. The below executed analysis has been presented for the business process management in Wesfarmers which is an Australian multinational corporation. The business entity has majorly focused on the operations such as retail, chemical, coal mining and industrial and safety products. The focus of the report has been concentrated on the system of business process management and role played this system within the organizational structure.  

The system of business process management has been considered a practical necessity for the business corporations with complexities in the operations, multiple divisions and departments across which the responsibilities are spread (Hammer, 2015). The main concern or the desire of this automated system is to make integration of the available resources into a productive and effective organization. In case of Wesfarmers Ltd the adoption of the good and advanced software will aid the IT departments in designing customized applications which will help in tracking the flow of products and services, form the concept to realization and execution of the process of follow up with detailed feedbacks of client. The data which has been extracted as the output from the system is required to be detailed and should also allow and develop awareness to the individuals who are made involved in the process regarding the upcoming difficulties and opportunities. If the business corporation has made implementation of the right business process management system then the entity will be able to recognize the bottleneck in the operations and this system will also the entity make analysis of the sophisticated datasets which will lessen the issues and make accurate identification of roots to the problems which caused difficulties (Jeston & Nelis, 2014). The below mentioned are some of the roles which are played by the business process management in Wesfarmers Ltd:

• Increased productivity:As the system is an automated mechanism it aids in bringing minimization of the unit cost incurred while execution of a transaction by streamlining processes and this will also allow Wesfarmers in better arrangement of resources, increasing productivity (Van Der Aalst, 2013). Notifications naming responsible, brings enhancement in the visibility and also drives performance of the individuals within the business corporation.
• Reduced expenditures:The system of business process management will bring and develop the level of efficiency by making identification and elimination of the wastes and bottlenecks that are unnecessary and do not add value.
• Better control:As the process management mechanism is fully automated it will standardize working methods in Wesfarmers Ltd and will also provide audit trails which will bring improvements and advancements in the managerial control.
• Higher agility: Business process management will also enable the business corporation to make dynamic involvement of the of the available and appropriate resources, driving the speed of execution, enables them to provide appropriate response to the consumers and requirements of the market faster as compared to the competitors (Röglinger, Pöppelbuß & Becker, 2012). 

Role of business process management in Wesfarmers

The below mentioned are some of the significant approaches of the business process management which can be adopted by Wesfarmers Ltd:

• Work-flow oriented BPM: This approach describes the execution of interaction within the organization in between person-to person and person-to-system (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhotra, 2013). On the basis of the research conducted by Sandy Kemsley, in the beginning process person-to-person routing was done of the scanned documents through a pre-determined processed map. In the contemporary BPM the workflow BPM can be seen as human integration and also seeks to the optimization of the human-oriented activities within the business operations. These operations involve the monitoring of activities, process governance and just as at the genesis of the BPM.
• Document oriented BPM: This approach has been considered to be working and go hand in hand with the work flow approach. This approach is concerned about tracking of the documents where the documents have been and what are the alterations made to them as they are travelling through a workflow process (Weske, 2012). The approach also involves monitoring of and maintaining records of documents authenticity, security and availability which has been considered as a necessary element for the business. Some of the contemporary document management mechanisms make use of computer technology for providing security, storing and indexing and retrieval options (Page, 2015).
• Business rule oriented BPM: Business rules oriented approach has been considered as the abstractions of the functionalities and the policies of the Wesfarmers Ltd. The approach is concerned with formalizing the critical business rules of the business corporation in the language which can be understood by the managers and the technologists.

Risks ascertained

Apart from the number of benefits served by the system there are number of risks ascertained with the process management (Dumas et. al. 2013). Sometimes the business process management can be proven harmful to Wesfarmers. And this is because the system has a tendency to provide limits over the innovations. The innovations that occur or are generated from the business process management are usually found only incremental. This means that the fundamental innovation is unlikely to occur in the business corporation retaining the process management. On the basis of the research executed by Brenner Tushman it has been suggested that the business entity who are adapting the system of BPM will be found less successful during the periods of rapid change as compared to the firms that are not making implementation of the system.  

The below presented are the steps of the implementation process of BPM:

• Examining and planning: This step involves the monitoring and examination of all the issues and after that development of issue management and conflict solving plans is done (Börner, Moormann & Wang, 2012).
• Design and description of process:The main objective of this step is to structure the defined process as TO-BE processes. The extra requirements and the metrics which are schedules should be significantly included for bringing the improvements and advancements. And after that the specifications of the final implementation are prepared.
• Development:At this stage the Wesfarmers will have to provide a detailed description of the system into the application.

For every firm it is essential to review its process which includes auditing risk done by a committee (Harmon, 2015). It also includes doing independent progress assessment of the present control effectiveness and the levels of procedural compliance of prime operational processes as well as systems which has been implemented inside the firm. These all are documented so as to have correct picture of the organization. Wes Farmers were able to do business in an excellent manner. There is a committee inside this firm which has several roles and responsibility inside the firm. Some of them are as follows:

• Overseeing financial reporting
• Compliances with legal and regulatory requirements
• Setting risk parameters for Wesfarmers (Laguna & Marklund, 2013)
• Reviewing and assessing group’s processes so that integrity of financial statement and reporting can be ensured.
• Reviewing and assessing the qualification, appointments performance, independence and remuneration and relationship of group members with external auditors (Hammer, 2015).
• Checking the effectiveness of the systems of internal controls and risk management framework
• Making recommendations on all above stated functions to the Board members

This company has made an excellent name in the corporate governance with the help of its effective leadership (Akintoye, Goulding & Zawdie, 2012). The board of the Wesfarmers is a strong advocate of having excellent corporate governance. The board members are committed to provide a satisfactory return to its stakeholders as well as maintaining its corporate governance obligation and responsibilities which is the best interest of the firm and its associated stakeholders. It has its own corporate governance principles that are amended several times. Its corporate governance statement states that it is committed to provide satisfactory returns to its stakeholders and fulfilling its corporate governance responsibility as well as obligation which is in the best interest of the firm and its stakeholders.

 It regularly reviews all its process as well as corporate governance which insures that there is continuous improvement in it from time to time (Chang, 2016). The members of the process review committee provide recommendations to its board members according to which improvements are made. There had been certain ethics that company follows which is taken care of while making changes.

Approaches to business process management and associated risk and implementation process

Business process management has been divided into five phases. It is in the form of a cycle. It is also known as process life cycle (Rebuge & Ferreira, 2012). The five phases are as follows:

• Design:It explains about both existing processes as well as to be processes. Areas of focus includes representation of the process flow, the players within it, escalations, notifications and warnings, standard operating procedures as well as work hand over mechanism and service level agreement. It is fact that good design always reduces the issues over the life cycle of the process. The aim of this process is to ensure that most efficient process has been installed.

Modeling: It takes theoretical design as well as introduces variable combinations like the material costing (Islam & Daud Ahmed, 2012). It also takes into consideration about hoe process might operate under different circumstances.

Execution: In this step generally it is focused that what kind of system will be purchased so that whole process gets executed automatically while taking it into consideration that no system can independently complete the whole process hence some of the human intervention is needed. This is a complex approach. Software is developed for making this process easier (Mitreva, Taskov & Crnkovic, 2015). Wesfarmers also takes use off customized software applications that ensures the whole process to work smoothly.

Monitoring:  It is the phase where process performance is measured. It focuses on tracking of individual processes so that information on their state can be checked. It is also used for making further improvements in any of the process to achieve optimum consumer satisfaction.  Process mining is one of the tools that are used in this regard which helps to monitor the whole process in real time (Nair, Malhotra & Ahire, 2011). It also helps in finding discrepancies.

Optimization: process optimization includes retrieving process performance information from modeling phase, determining the potential or actual bottleneck. It also provides the idea about the changes that could save cost of process execution. On the larger note it creates bigger business value.

Business process management is generally done by the board of the firm with other functional committees. The governance processes always takes into account of its CSR fundamentals. This is applied in every aspect and so is the case in the technology change decisions. If any technology is changed it is always being considered that what potential impact will be produced after its implementation. The biggest drawbacks of technology change are that it always reduces the total workforce inside the firm. More staff retrenchment is followed since made advancements is independently able to perform all its activities hence number of employees has been reduced (de Mast et. al. 2011). Apart from this the made changes is never welcomed by the staff members because they understand that there will be training needs for operating the activities and if the staffs are not able to compete with it then it will reduce their chances of growth (Harmon, (2015).). Governance of WesFarmers has to ensure that all the interest of its stakeholders gets safeguarded while making change in the stakeholders.

Part B: Business process improvement report

It has been seen that business maturity of Wesfarmers is higher which has helped company in growing in its future. This company has made many kinds of improvements in its operating process which will help company in increasing the development curve of the company. This company has sacrificed its short term profits for its long term goals. Its debts have been raised by the investors and joint ventures. They have their own security arrangements as well as convents of finance like project financing (Reijers & Mendling, 2011). Apart from this company have some of the band and other debts. Wesfarmers debts funding facilitates subject to minimum leverage and interest cover ratio thresholds. Secured debts cannot exceed asset percentage of total assets although allowable percentage can exceed thresholds.

Some of the tools that can be used are:

• BPMN: It is a standardized notation for generating visual models for business or organizational processes. It is highly overwhelming. There are many flow objects, connecting objects, artifacts as well as swim lanes. This all categorization is done within notation. On the larger note this company has 40 distinct elements prescribed with a rule about when it may or may not be utilized. It can be used in the times when stuck with workflow diagram. It also means completing formal modeling while it is implementable in business process. There is risk that is associated with BPM as it is harder for the stakeholders to understand it.
• YAWL: It is used for robust business analysis. It is another workflow language based on workflow patterns. It is supported by system of software which is involved in execution engine, work list, and graphical editor (Apian 2017). The system is available as open source software.
• Swim lane diagrams: It is a diagram that is a visual factor that is used for process flow diagram, or flowcharts which is visually distinguishable in term of responsibilities for sub processes of business process as well as job sharing. It can be arranged either in vertical or horizontal orientation. It generally helps in simplifying the steps orientation and underlining the delays and mistakes can be found.

There are many kinds of challenges that occur while applying process improvement tool. Some of these challenges are as follows:

• Lack of leadership commitment towards implementation.
• Incomplete understanding of process improvement tools and techniques.
• Poor execution of process improvement tool can reduce its chances of its success.
• Insufficient partnership or involvement of staff members during its implementation.
• Incapable system and resources which might felicitate the whole process.

Ineffective work stream can always lead to waste of time and money and they have negative impact on the value of customers and product quality. The opportunities can be understood in terms of consumer satisfaction which can further be elaborated in terms of following benefits:

• Improved efficiency always lead to add value to the product that firm produces.
• Faster speed of project completions that too with agility.
• It supports globalization and expansion policy for the firm.
• Improving profitability of the firm as more number of consumers gets attracted towards company product.

It is not easier for the firm to make changes in the work process even when it is beneficial for the firm. It always depends on the capability of the resources available with them and the participation of stakeholders that makes it successful. Since the process designing is a complex mechanism and hence they have to check which process is more feasible. In process management there are various issues that arises it is the leaders and management choice of selecting a perfect tools and techniques of applying that makes it more feasible (Johannsen & Fill, (2014)). When process improvement tool is applied then it is possible that it is not according to the expectations of the firm and can produce unwanted results which can be dangerous for the long term growth of the firm.

Conclusion

After summing up the above executed analysis it has been inferred that Wesfarmers Ltd has been planning to make adoption of Business process management for bringing advancements and minimizing the errors in the operations and the functionalities. The management system is an automated mechanism which aids the entity in improving the workflow and operations within the organizational structure. The above report has been segmented majorly in three parts from which the first part consists of the business process development plan. The second segment consists of the improvement plan of the system and the last part is the analysis of the business process management.

Audit review process, governance and process improvement of Wesfarmers

References

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