What is a Business Process Model?

A business process model is a collection of activities used to produce an output for a specific purpose. Business process modeling is quite common in the information technology and engineering fields, where individuals attempt to outline or graph various individual functions that make up an activity. This process translates to regular business operations because many individual activities and functions are typically found in large process. Business processes include accounting, human resources, and production, to name a few. Creating a model for each process can help business owners and managers have a deeper understanding to heir company’s operations and make important decisions.

Creating a business process model requires owners and managers to follow a few steps. Each step will provide information relating to the business process and its importance to business operations. Business processes must have a goal. Completing activities with no goal or objective essentially means a company is spending money on a worthless task. Goals can be wide ranging and depend on the need for a specific process. For example, business owners and managers typically want to know how much capital was spent on business operations and whether or not the company made a profit during a specific time period. The accounting process meets this requirement because it focuses on the recording, reporting, and analyzing of financial information.

Each business process model must have inputs and outputs. Inputs typically represent the economic resources a company needs to produce goods and services. These items include raw materials, labor, facilities, and equipment. The number or type of resources will often vary, depending on the type of business process model. The inputs for the accounting process are usually different from the input needs of the production department. An output is the final result of a business process. Financial statements are a common output of the accounting process, consumer goods from production and radio advertisements the result of a marketing process.

Business process must use some type or amount of economic resources in order for business owners to create a business process model. Processes that do not use resources may not be important enough to model since they do not play an important role in an organization. These types of processes can be difficult to find in the business environment. Additionally, business processes must have clearly defined activities that define how employees complete tasks. These activities can follow a sequential order, affect more than one department, and create value for the company. The purpose of the business process model for these activities is to improve performance, decrease waste, or increase production output of the department or individual employees.