Samenvatting Procesautomatisatie 17/20 | UA | HIB 3de jaar (2025/26)

Introduction
- 6 benefits of business process management
o Improved business agility
o Increased efficiency
o Complete visibility
o Ensured compliance and security
o Easier transfer of business knowledge
o Increased opportunities for continuous improvement
- Great customer experience stories
o We are investing a lot but experiences are still bad
 The right processes bring clarity and can even feel
magical
 His 2 stories of lost luggage
 A good process does not add complexity, it removes
friction: most frustration comes from not enough clarity
and not because of too much process (which
bureaucracy claims)
o 3 key factors
 People: stewards, customer service, pilot …
 Technology: cheap tickets integration, reservation
system, lost luggage tracking, text system, …
 Processes: operate flight, recover lost luggage, …
 Process design, process execution, process
excellence
- Ask yourself
o Would you really eat McDonalds, get surgery, … if there
weren’t any processes?
o Does the absence of a process truly foster creativity or does it
mostly create uncertainty for both the customer and the
employees?

, Process Discovery
- Problem: everyone had a different view on how processes should be
labelled and how they should be visualised
- Processes are important
o Definition
most of the time a business process is defined as some
variation of the idea that a process is a set of activities that
deliver value to the customer of the process
 Some say that an organisation has between 10 and 20
business processes while others state that typical
organisations have 1000 and 1000 of business processes
o What we need = process discovery
a set of guidelines to help us define what a process really is

,A definition

A business process is a collection of activities that must be labelled
action verb-noun and generates a valuable result and is started by an
independent trigger and happens repeatedly

- Collection of activities
o The work that must be performed by some resources in
organisation
o Where is value created
from process point of view each of these tasks creates no real
value it’s the chain of activity that creates value
 Sales – production – finance – logistics: value is delivered
by the combined effort of the functions = the processes
o Rise and limitations of functions
easier to manage people and activities if they are grouped in
specialized fields such as finance, economies of scales,
development of high skill levels
 Successful but creates problems: optimizing individual
parts does not optimize whole => overall process
becomes fragmented, customer becomes irrelevant, lack
of communication and collaboration
 Process and function should come together
- Action verb-noun
o Different naming conventions
 Verb – noun: enrol student, verb – noun – noun: enrol
student in course verb – qualifier – noun: take new order,
from-state to to-state: purchase to pay
o Action verb – noun
to avoid misconceptions
 Keep the noun singular, only use plural if the thing being
processed makes sense in plural
 Action verbs = no unclear verbs, dynamic verbs, express
a physical or mental action
 Bad verbs: maintain, manage, support, …
- Valuable result
o The output is trackable, countable and valuable
 Trackable: does it make sense to talk about one of them
 Countable: does it make sense to count them
 Valuable: is the result something meaningful
o Value of process = activity (work to achieve result) + name
(refers to result)

, - Independent trigger
= the event that instantiates the process
o Process instances live in isolation, only compete for resources
activities are linked 1 – 1 to the trigger




o Trigger
time/interval, action, condition or message
 Incoming communication but it’s unpredictable:
customer files complaint but you don’t know when and
how many
 Ad-hoc action: evaluate vendor but you don’t know when
and how many
 Something happens with predictable timing but it’s not
part of anything else: every quarter we must file VAT
listing, so you know when and how often but it’s not part
of anything else
 Condition is fulfilled but it’s unpredictable: app is down,
you don’t know when this happens and how often
o Not an independent trigger
= task activated because another task was completed
 Request quote => receive quote
o Batch processing
= you only work Friday and evaluate complaints that were filed
during the week => no trackable, countable, meaningful result
 business process
 Business process: solve complaint, you don’t know when
and how many
 No batch: every month we calculate amount due and
collect invoice => trackable, countable and meaningful
result