Business simulation of Business Process Modeling BPM

Моделирование business processes - the difficult task also demands from the creator of a set of capabilities: from household logic to ability to solve uncommon problems.

Problems of business simulation

• Receiving a complete picture of life activity of the organization, approval of the different points of view on constantly developing and changing business.
• Ensuring mutual understanding at all levels of the organization, overcoming a gap between the managing director and performing the parties.
• Ensuring reducing costs for production and increase in the quality level and service.

In the course of business simulation there is a transition from a concept of "what" should be done to a concept "as" it is necessary to do. The document giving to development team a clear understanding of limits of the project and also program and the hardware of the customer should be result of modeling. Data retrieveds are reflected in the specification of the project which can include the following sections:

• description of the main entities of data of the application;
• formal description of the specification of the application;
• business logic and business rules;
• functional requirements;
• nonfunctional requirements;
• templates of forms/pages of the application;
• golossariya or list of reductions;
• auxiliary charts.

Instruments of business simulation and their evolution

Business simulation process

For creation of business models design tools of information systems and description languages corresponding to them are used (the most known among them the UML language — Unified Modeling Language). With the help of such languages the graphic models and charts showing structure of business processes of the organization, the organization of interaction between people and necessary changes for improvement of indicators of the organization in general are under construction. Instruments of business simulation are in process of permanent development. Initially using such tools it was possible to describe only business functions (work) of the company and the movement of data in the course of their accomplishment. At the same time if the same business function was used at accomplishment of different types of works, then it was difficult to understand whether there is in a type the same business function or already another. The lack of an opportunity in an explicit form to define hierarchy of business processes (for example, "a value creation chain", "business process", "subprocess", "work", "function") created problems when using such descriptions. Descriptions represented just a set of pictures. Later the funds allowing to describe the organization not only from business functions but also from other parties began to appear. So, there was a possibility of creation of the separate charts reflecting an organization structure of the company, data streams in the organizations, the sequence of accomplishment of the business functions making uniform business process with a possibility of use of characters of logic, etc. More and more charts for the description of different aspects of organization activity because of what creation of model more and more became complicated began to appear from behind continuously increasing requirements to instruments of business simulation. With respect thereto the next important stage of development of means of business simulation is connected with the idea of use of a uniform repository (storage) of objects and the idea of possible reuse of objects on different charts. What tool would not be selected, ensuring interaction of local information systems among themselves is required. Today the most modern and at the same time commonly accepted standard for the organization of business process management is BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Based on this product it is possible to create a single integration platform for all used applications. After modeling of processes in one of modeling tools special translators are used to lead model to the BPEL standard.

Examples of business simulation and its results

• Cost reduction. The business model will give an idea of that where it is possible to avoid excess costs and how to optimize use of resources. On the basis of a business model the analysis for cost accounting of a product or service is carried out functional and cost and the system of budget management which allows to control expenses a predpritiya is based.
• Increase in efficiency. An opportunity to reduce costs for adaptation and personnel training. The regulating documentation on the basis of the prepared business model corresponds to the current situation of the organization, distribute duties, build a hierarchical career development system.
• Expansion of the sphere influence, increase in network, organization of branches. Existence of a business model will allow to reduce costs and to give the chance to describe structure of arrangement of new branches of the enterprise.
• Adequacy of investments. It is possible with a sufficient precision rate to define the amount of capital investments by business simulation, to reduce risks and financial losses at a stage of a startup of the new project.
• Implementation of EDMS. The business model of the enterprise standardizes structure of documents of the enterprise and sets routes of the movement of documents.
• Automation and implementation of the systems of a class ERP SCM, CRM or other software. On the basis of a business model it is possible to formulate better requirements to a system and to pick up an optimal solution in terms of costs and functionality.
• Certification of a quality management system. Development of business model of the enterprise allows to reduce significantly terms and costs for development, implementation and certification of a quality management system and to receive a set of necessary documents for successful passing of certification, to reduce costs for support of a quality management system.

Features of business simulation

Creation, implementation and support of a business model — the expensive investment project. And as the analysis of expediency and a possibility of its implementation should precede any project, creation of a business model. In large projects powerful tools of business simulation with well developed functionality are required: with information storage opportunities in a uniform repository, collective work on the project of modeling and check of the created model on integrity, semi-automatic generation of charts, integration with other software, the analysis and documentation of model — whereas in small projects for reasons of cost it would be more reasonable to use less functional tools. For the analysis of a deyatelnost, development of the existing structure it is necessary to construct an adequate business model originally. So originally the theory, and after — its implementation.

Solutions

Today there is a large number of software products which are intended for the description of architecture of the organization. According to reports of Gartner analytical company, it is possible to carry the following companies to leaders of this segment: Casewise, IDS Scheer, Telelogic, Troux Technologes, Proforma, Mega and Sybase. It should be noted that even such giants as IBM and Oracle did not stand aside and drew close attention to market attractiveness of the systems of business simulation and proposed own functional solutions. It is possible to give Oracle Workflow as an example. This technology is used for automation of layer of works of the organization and contains specific means of the description and formalization of processes.

See Also

• BPM
• CPM
• BPEL
• BPI
• MRP
• ERP
• BI