IntroductionEvery information system is designed to improve business in some way. However, before making an improvement, it is critical to understand the current business process. In this chapter we will develop a technique to diagram business processes. We will first diagram the current business process—the so-called As-Is process. After studying the process, we will be in a position to propose and diagram a future process—the so-called To-Be process. If we have done our job well, the To-Be process will improve upon the As-Is process, making it more efficient, effective, user friendly, and so forth. In other words, every process improvement should move the business closer to achieving its goals.

• Stakeholders In Information System
• Current Business Drivers That Influence Information Systems Development

Goal Directed Activities.Implicit in each current and future state are one or more business processes. A is a set of goal directed activities. In other words, a process describes the actions To-Be taken to accomplish a task. For example, applying to a university, filing taxes, and evaluating employees are all processes.

The steps in applying to a university might include filling out an online form, submitting a credit card payment, requesting test scores be sent, and requesting that high school transcripts be sent.Note that all of the processes mentioned above took place even before the advent of computers. Try to imagine how. Information systems simply transform the processes with the goal of making the process more efficient, convenient, effective, reliable, and so forth.First, we represent the current (usually deficient) state.

Seeing the As-Is process diagrammed exposes obvious areas for improvement in the process. For example, many years ago students registered for classes in person. The As-Is process in that era might have shown a student waiting in line outside a large auditorium. When his turn comes up, the student enters the auditorium.

There are tables representing each department staffed with faculty from that department. For each course that the student wishes to take, he must find the corresponding department table and add his name to the list for that class. Buying concert tickets followed a similar process before services like Ticket Master went online.

People used to camp out for days in advance outside the Ticket Master office.Sometimes information technology may improve processes, other times no technology is required. Sometimes the solution is as simple as providing information for individuals completing a business process at the appropriate time, or simply rearranging the steps in the business process, in which case, no new information technology is needed.The redesigned and improved business process is called the process. This process takes into consideration the deficiencies identified in the As-Is process and the goals of the business.

The area of work that focuses on improving business processes is called business process redesign. Individuals performing this work focus on understanding the As-Is process and how to improve it in the To-Be process. The Initial Client MeetingObviously, you can not diagram a business process without understanding the business. This will require meetings with the client. It is best to walk into those meetings with a willingness to listen rather than pretending that you know the client’s business. Ask open ended questions and take lots of notes.Those that design systems are called business analysts or consultants.

Analysts begin their work with an initial client meeting. The quality of the questions asked at that meeting may well determine the success or failure of the project. Using the following four open ended questions can help in this consulting situation (Starr, 2010):. Current state: What does the client see as the current state of the situation/project?.

Future state: What is the vision of the client for the end point of the situation/project?. Barriers: What barriers does the client envision will hinder reaching the vision?. Enablers: What is the client already doing to reach the vision? What does the client think will help?Note that these questions capture the aspirations of the client as well as perceived barriers and enablers to reach that vision.

The assumption here is that the client knows her business pretty well, and the goal of the initial meeting is to capture her knowledge and vision without jumping to a solution. Actors and ActionsImproving a business process requires first understanding the process. Diagramming the steps in the process contributes greatly to that understanding. Typically consist of actions linked by arrows. However, it is also important to be clear about who is performing each action. For this reason we create a for each actor in the process.

The actors pass a metaphorical baton among themselves at different stages of the process.An easy way to diagram a business process is to first identify all of the and place each in a swim lane. The process begins at the top of the page and continues down the page following the arrows. Arrows represent communication among the actors, while diamonds represent decision points. While actors are normally people, a computer standing in for the role of a person can also be an actor.At times we can simplify the business process diagram by eliminating all but the essential elements. This makes the diagram less cluttered and easier to read. On the facing page we have a process diagram reduced to just three elements — swim lanes, actions, and arrows.For the level of analysis needed in this course, the simplified diagram is more than sufficient.

However, it is good to know the full lexicon, especially the decision point diamond shown on the next page. It’s More Complicated Than ThatWhat we showed on the prior page is actually a simplified form of a business process diagram. For the purpose of this course, the simplified form works just fine. However for the sake of completeness, we show a more advanced diagram more in the spirit of Universal Modeling Language (UML).

It is not that the UML style diagram is better—just that you should be prepared to see it. The following table lists some of the symbols that you might encounter in a process flow diagram.

L1 ASSIGNMENT: DIAGRAM BUSINESS PROCESSESCreate As-Is and To-Be diagrams of a business process, given a video commercial. Many commercials on TV are really advertisements for improved business processes. IBM has been particularly active in this arena. IBM’s focus on business process improvement makes sense given that IBM is one of the largest consulting organizations in the world. In this exercise, you will view a commercial on YouTube and then create the As-Is and To-Be business process diagrams that the commercial implicitly represents.SetupStart up PowerPoint.Content and Style. Use the drawing tools in PowerPoint to create swim lanes and diagram the As-Is and To-Be business processes on separate slides.

Make sure you title each slide to identify which is which. Align and space the content consistently. A sharp looking diagrams conveys professionalism. Include a copyright symbol and your name in the bottom left corner. When you are finished, submit the PowerPoint file according to your professor’s instructions.

Your professor may want hard copy or an electronic submission to the course management system.DeliverableElectronic submission: Save your file as a PowerPoint presentation. Submit it electronically.Paper submission: Create a printout by printing the slides directly out of PowerPoint.

The new world order is sweeping away many national corporations, national industries, and national economies controlled by domestic politicians. Many localized firms will be replaced by fast-moving networked corporations that transcend national boundaries. The growth of international trade has radically altered domestic economies around the globe.Developing An International Information Systems ArchitectureAn international information systems architecture consists of the basic information systems required by organizations to coordinate worldwide trade and other activities. The basic strategy to follow when building an international system is to understand the global environment in which your firm is operating.

This means understanding the overall market forces, or business drivers, that are pushing your industry toward global competition. A business driver is a force in the environment to which businesses must respond and that influences the direction of the business. The global business drivers can be divided into two groups: general cultural factors and specific business factors.

Stakeholders In Information System

Easily recognized general cultural factors have driven interantionalization since World War II. The development of global communications has created a global village in a second sense: A global culture created by television, the Internet, and other globally shared media such as movies now permits different cultures and peoples to develop common expectations about right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, heroic and cowardly.

As a cultural level, particularism, making judgments and taking action on the basis of narrow or personal characteristics, in all its forms (religious, nationalistics, ethnic, regionalism, geopolitical position) rejects the very concept of a shared global culture and rejects the penetration of domestic markets by foreign goods and services. Transborder data flow is defined as the movement of information across international boundaries in any form.Table 15-2 Challenges and Obstacles to Global Business Systems. Four main global strategies form the basis for global firms' organizational structure are domestic exporter, multinational, franchiser, and transnational. The domestic exporter strategy is characterized by heavy centralization of corporate activities in the home country of origin. The multinational strategy concentrates financial management and control out of a central home base while decentralizing production, sales, and marketing operations to units in other countries.

Franchisers are an interesting mix of old and new. On the one hand, the product is created, designed, financed, and initially produced in the home for further production, marketing, and human resources. In a transnational strategy, nearly all the value-adding activities are managed from a global perspective without reference to national borders, optimizing sources of supply and demand wherever they appear, and taking advantage of any local competitive advantages. Aside from integrating the new with old systems, there are problems of human interface design and functionality of systems.

When international systems involve knowledge workers only, English may be the assumed international standard. But as international systems penetrate deeper into management and clerical groups, a common language may not be assumed and human interfaces must be built to accommodate different languages and even conventions. The entire process of converting software to operate in a second language is called software localization. The growth of inexpensive international communication and transportation has created a world culture with stable expectations or norms. Political stability and a growing global knowledge base that is widely shared also contribute to the world culture.

There are four basic international strategies: domestic exporter, multinational, franchiser, and transnational. There is a connection between firm strategy and information systems design. Global information systems pose challenges because cultural, political, and language diversity magnifies differences in organizational culture and business processes and encourages proliferation of disparate local information systems that are difficult to integrate. Implementation a global system requires an implementation strategy that considers both business design and technology platforms. Global networks are extremely difficult to build and operate.

Current Business Drivers That Influence Information Systems Development

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