The Golden Rules of Business Process Modeling

Episode 3: Divide the Business Process into Roles and Tasks.

3-1. Divide by specialty.

An estimate sheet is a document that is submitted during meetings with the client. In general, an Estimate Preparation process is managed by the sales team, and the sales team should be the main participant in deliberating the ideal state of the process.
Let's define the input format of this Estimate Preparation process as:

  1. Name of client
  2. Expected date of estimate submission
  3. Range of expected estimate
In this case the data entered at this point may be:

  1. Company A
  2. April 1, 2010
  3. 1-1.5 million yen
The actual estimate sheet may include:

  1. Website specifications for company A
  2. Expiration date of estimate: April 15, 2010
  3. Expected delivery: May 31, 2010
  4. Items for delivery: Data CD (website, setup manual)
Including internal information may also be helpful, such as:

  1. Estimated production requirements, time and person in charge of the estimation
  2. Expected production members
  3. Person in charge of settlement, date of settlement
  4. Specification evaluation by person in charge of settlement
In this case, creating the estimate sheet inevitably falls to the production team, and all other tasks are managed by the sales team.

<Estimate Preparation Process: Leader/member-initiated>

As in this case, business processes that straddle multiple teams are naturally divided into "specialized tasks."

3-2. Divide the process as much as possible.

Dividing tasks offers the additional benefit of permitting downstream workers to check the tasks. So how can we divide business tasks that are executed within the sales team, such as the Client Meeting Report process?
Here are a couple suggestions:

  1. Divide by sales team members, and improve quality of output.
  2. Divide within sales team by abilities, such as composition and design.
In the former case, the tasks may be divided into Prepare rough draft, Peer review, and Evaluation, and the sales members can support each other with tips and advice on writing records of proceedings and recording methods.
Alternatively, if we conclude that this job doesn't need to be divided, it can be made into one task within the Proposal Preparation process.

<Example with record of proceedings of client meeting included into Proposal Preparation process>

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