Business Processes are a set of tasks or activities that help an organization to define and communicate their goals, optimize their resources and improve productivity.
Business Processes allow stakeholders to see:
- How the processes map to business goals and requirements
- How work gets accomplished
- How the processes throughout the organization interact with each other
- How value is created for the organization
- How to reduce gaps in the process
- How to streamline best practices and reduce duplication of efforts
- How systems and data are used within the processes
Here's a quick 2 minute video that helps to explain Business Processes and why they are important to an organization:
Creating Business Process Models with ER/Studio Business Architect
Most people know about ER/Studio Data Architect but few people know about Data Architect's little sister – "ER/Studio Business Architect". Business Architect is currently available as a standalone product as well as part of the ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition collection of tools.
Business Architect includes modeling tools for Conceptual Models and Business Process Models.
Conceptual Models are a great tool to explain complex data at a very high level to business users. Currently you can convert Conceptual models to Logical models (and vice versa) between Business Architect and Data Architect.
Business Process Models can be used to help explain what is happening within a business via its processes and how those processes interact with each other as well as how they interact with the business data.