Teaching Business Processes Effectively using Business Process Management System

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1 Teaching Business Processes Effectively using Business Process Management System 1 Putu Wuri Handayani, 2 Stéphane Bressan, 3 Omar Boucelma 1 Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia 2 School of Computing, National University of Singapore 3 Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille Ringkasan To achieve top position as an executive of top management, students of Information Systems must adequately understand business processes such as how to manage business process effectively and efficiently, and how to integrate business processes among company s business partners. Business processes are complex activities that difficult to be understood by students without viewing detail and related sub processes, and parties involved in those processes. By viewing the flow of sub processes in a business processes, students could have better understanding on the interaction and relationship between processes and departments within an organization. Based on ACM Undergraduate Information System curriculum year of 2002, Faculty of Computer Science University of Indonesia teaches business process management using business process management systems (BPMS) for third year Information System undergraduate students in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) class. The business process management system is developed to save, update and search processes. This system can reveal the interconnection among business partner s processes by exploiting XML so that the students could understand how the companies easily define, share and execute their processes. Based on the author s experiences in teaching ERP, student s enthusiasm including the performance in learning business processes and the number of ERP class participants are increasing in each semester. Keywords: business process, teaching business process, business process management system, ERP. 1 Introduction Competition among companies is becoming a global battle field and consequently creating more complex business process. According to Gartner Group research year of 2009, building business process capability has been listed as the number one priority for chief information executives for the fifth straight year [4]. Students in Information Systems must start to learn business processes and initiate to collect scenarios of business process so that they can meet with the needs as a business or system analyst in the related industries. The more business scenarios that they can learn will most likely improve their skill and common business processes knowledge in related industries. As a result, in order to conduct this battlefield, companies need highly educated people in business processes. A key issue in teaching business process management (BPM) relies in its dual nature: Business Process Management (BPM) originates both from business administration (BA) and computer science (CS) communities. Hence, teaching BPM is a challenging task that could be summarised or exemplified as follows: (1) teaching workflows, flowcharts, data diagram to non technical students [7] and/or (2) teaching design/organizational management to Computer Science students for instance. he Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) defines a business process as a set of one or more linked procedures or activities which collectively realize a business objective or policy goal, normally within the context of an organizational structure defining functional roles and relationships [13]. Business processes are assets of an organization as much as its tangible assets and its intellectual property. In order to increase company s competitive advantages, a company is required to manage, analyze, design, and implement business processes effectively. As part of the third year Information System syllabus, undergraduate students Computer Science Faculty at University of Indonesia are offered to take a course in integrated business processes as part of an ERP class. Students learn several business processes concepts pertaining to ERP such as sales and distribution, material management and production planning process including the simulation of real business cases in the lab. Based on author s ERP teaching experiences, the enthusiasm of students in learning business pro-

2 cess and the number of ERP participants are increasing each semester. Beside that, students could better define and manage the big picture of company s business processes. Initially, ERP class was only offered in fall semester, but starting current 2010 semester, ERP class will be offered each semester and is opened for two parallel classes. This situation happened because the faculty needs to catch up and adapt with the industries demands whereby when companies decide to buy a software, they do not buy the products but they buy their business processes in that software. In addition, students are also starting to realize that the most important issues in developing applications is a good understanding of related business processes such as parts of specific business processes, flow of sub processes, stakeholders (company s staff/division/department, suppliers, customers, etc.) who are involved in a process, etc. To be able to tap the current business processes best practices in certain industries, the business process management system (BPMS) that is applied by Faculty of Computer Science University of Indonesia, collects business processes from the MIT Process Handbook (MITPH) [2] and ERP teaching books [6]. One of the reasons for choosing this handbook because it offers a tool for organizations, communities and individuals to store, share, retrieve and query business processes [2]. MIT Process Handbook was developed in order to create a repository of generic descriptions as well as specific cases of representative and original business activities (e.g. buying, making and selling). The handbook provides a framework for exploring and classifying this knowledge. It helps organizations, communities and individuals redesign existing organizational process, invent new organizational processes (especially ones that take advantage of information technology) and share ideas about organizational practices. Unfortunately, the shortcomings of ad-hoc description languages and interfaces offered by the handbook prevent it to fully support collaboration, synchronization, sharing and analysis, and certainly not execution. The advent of XML, the availability of query languages for XML, the adoption by industry of standard XML based languages for business process description but also execution, and the availability of database systems supporting XML and its languages now allow us to exploit the business process management system as a business process modelling tool to teach students about business processes. One of the advantages that we can get by exploiting the business process management system which are XML based system is that we can also introduce the basic concept of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), thus additionally makes greater the students enthusiasm to participate in EAI class. In this paper, we propose a method for teaching business processes to students in using well accepted concepts, systems and best practices in the BPM community. The method is accompanied by a software system that allows students to store, manage, share, retrieve and query business processes. The system leverages existing XML technologies and languages. he remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we present the background information about the business processes best practices, business process execution languages and BPMS. In Section 3, we review related work. In Section 4, we present a case application which illustrates the teaching of business process management to Information System students. Finally we conclude with a summary of our contribution and a brief discussion for the future work we are considering. 2 Background 2.1 Business Processes Best Practices Currently, the business processes best practices that we are using for teaching purpose are taken from ERP books using SAP R/3 and the MIT Process Handbook. SAP R/3 is known as one of the popular ERP system and has widely adopted the best practices of business processes such as sales order processing, materials management, production planning, financial accounting, human resource management, etc [6]. Starting this year, University of Indonesia has joined with SAP University Alliances thus makes easier the students to practice the implementation of business processes. This means that the students are not only studying the business process management theory, but they also learn practical aspects of business process management implementation. As another advantage, the MIT Process Handbook is also widely used by academicians, industries, etc as best practice business processes references. According to the MIT Process Handbook, a business process in a company consists of parts, properties, related processes and partner links in conducting that business process. Fig. 1 exemplifies parts of Sell process. 2.2 Business Process Execution Languages As previously explained, XML can be exploited to define and execute business processes thus makes easier for the company in integrating company s

3 Gambar 1: Parts of Process Sell business processes with its business partners. There are several popular business process execution languages such as XML Process Definition Language (XPDL), Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL), Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), etc. Among those languages, the advantages of XPDL and YAWL is its XML process description can be transformed into a graphical diagram so that the users can clearly understand the flow of the processes by viewing that diagram. Fig. 2 shows an example of production process. Gambar 2: XPDL Diagram of Production Process XPDL [1] is a standard language based on Petri- Nets which is used to interchange business process definitions among different workflow products by using XML. XPDL is able to store and transport process definitions such as activities, transitions, participants, resources, applications, workflow relevant data, system and environmental data, data types and expressions. The first version of BPEL has been developed in August 2002 by BEA, IBM and Microsoft and it has been designed specifically as a language for definition of business process. BPEL adopts SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) so that it can provide an environment whereby business applications with different platforms and technologies can communicate with each other using a standard way (through web services). BPEL represents a convergence of two early workflow languages namely WSFL (Web Services Flow Language) and XLANG. WSFL was designed by IBM and is based on concept of directed graphs. XLANG was designed by Microsoft and it is a block-structured language [11]. The features of BPEL are sending and receiving messages, waiting activities for a period of time, sequential or parallel execution of activities, activity scoping, synchronize activities executed in parallel, instance management through correlation sets, event and fault handling as well as compensation capabilities. YAWL is a fully open-source workflow system or business process management system. It is based on a very rich workflow definition language, capable of capturing all sorts of flow dependencies between tasks. It has open interfaces based on web standards[9]. YAWL based on Petri Nets which can perform better when it comes to state-based workflow patterns. The advantages of YAWL are providing stronger support for the workflow patterns, having a formal semantics, and offering comprehensive support for dynamic workflow, where workflows need to change after their deployment and for handling unexpected exceptions. 2.3 Business Process Management System (BPMS) According to Weske, a business process management system is a generic software system that is driven by explicit process representation to coordinate the enactment of business processes [14]. Starting from this definition, we developed a BPMS based on the following technologies: XPDL for process representation, XQuery for (sub)process querying and retrieval, and IBM DB2-Express C for storage. As previously mentioned, the list of best practice processes that are used in this system are taken from the MIT Process Handbook and ERP Books. In our system, users, particularly students, can search a process by entering the information category, related question and keyword (Fig. 3). After that, the application will display the search results (Fig. 4) either in plain XML or XPDL/YAWL diagram accordingly with the student s preferences. Both formats may be viewed in a specific editors such as Altova s XMLSpy for XML, Together Workflow Editor Community Edition, YAWL Editor, etc. In addition, students can also add a new process by uploading the XPDL file description into the system (Fig. 5). Gambar 3: Search User Interface

4 Gambar 4: Search Result User Interface Gambar 5: Add New Process User Interface 3 Related Work Presently, there are a few of tools which can assist a lecturer in teaching business processes to the students, such as Unified Modelling Language (UML) Activity Diagram, Event-driven Process Chain (EPC), flowchart, Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN), etc. Such tools will help students to exercise in defining and drawing the company s business processes, either from scratch or in using pieces of existing business processes. The related work can be divided in mainly three categories: (1) background and methodology, (2) CASE tools and languages, and (3) teaching experiments. 1. In 1999, the MIT proposed a set of fundamental concepts, a specific classification framework, a set of generic business templates, a specific case examples and a set of software tools to organize and manipulate large amounts of knowledge [2]. In addition, Wil van der Aalst has defined workflow management models, systems and methods which can help people to manage business process[8]. 2. There are several XML-based business process execution languages such as BPEL, YAWL, XPDL, etc. BPEL, which were developed in August 2002 by BEA, IBM and Microsoft, is a standard language for defining abstract and executable processes. YAWL, which is based on Petri Nets, was initially developed by researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology to define and execute business process. XPDL, which has proposed by the WfMC (Workflow Management Coalition) in 2002, is a standard that is used to interchange business process definitions among different workflow products. Among those languages, XPDL is the most suitable language to be used for defining and executing business processes because it contains non-web service application interaction [1]. Finally, OMG s standard Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) [10] is gaining a lot of attention both from software implementers and business process practitioners. BPMN is a graphical notation for drawing business processes. A BPMN diagram consists mainly of events, activities, gateways and sequence flows. 3. Regarding to the third category, in which our work lies, there is a lack for visual-based teaching frameworks that leverage of graphical animations to help students in discovering, designing, managing business processes. In Neubauer reports experiences from teaching workflow modelling in using AquaLogic BPM Designer [7]. IBM, with its INNOV8 BPM simulation game [11] allows users to interact within a virtual reality world à la Myspace and discover some business processes. 4 Case Study: Teaching Business Processes In order to teach business processes effectively, lecturers need a good teaching scenarios and some graphic tools so that students could have better understanding on the flow of sub processes in a business process and the interaction between parties involved in that business process. This condition could increase the student s enthusiasm and improve student s conceptual thinking and problem solving. Based on the author s teaching experiences in learning business processes at the Faculty of Computer Science University of Indonesia, the ERP s class students are provided with some case studies resulting from a combination of MIT Process Handbook and ERP Books so that they can act if they were IT consultants or business analysts. The purpose of these case studies is to give better guidance and instruction to the students so that they can create the correct business processes model. For example, students need to draw the general flow and interaction for the buying process which involves a buyer/company and suppliers. The buying process case study is described as fol-

5 lows: Before a company buys some materials, it needs to identify potential suppliers which will give the most qualified materials with cheap prices. When a buyer wants to produce some products and a buyer does not have enough material stocks then a buyer can start to define the Bill of Materials (BOM) so that they can identify the materials needed. Suppliers will give Request for Quote (RFQ) for that company in order to give references for company to select the best supplier. After a company has already chosen the supplier, then a company can place order. Finally, once a company receives the materials, they can pay to the suppliers according to the given invoice. Based on this case study, there can be two types of interesting question that can be given to the students such as the students can be told to draw the flow of that business process or they can draw the business process based on the different conditions, for example in the payment process, there are some companies which might ask to pay half before buyer receive the materials or they might pay after they receive all the materials. 2. performers or participants involved in certain processes 3. variables or data that are used in certain process That kind of information consists of a set of 16 general questions which are frequently asked by academicians and business people regarding business processes. Based on this question and keyword entered by the users, the application will search in the XML documents which have already stored in a database and then display the result in XML or in a textual format or in graphical diagram depending on the submitted question. Gambar 6: XPDL Diagram of Buying Process Once the students have drawn flows of the buying business process as can be seen in Fig.6, they can see also the XML process description of buying process that the system has already generated. By showing the XML process description, the students could also learn the process integration between other company s business partners because XML is a standard language that could be understood by all platforms and technologies. Finally, the students can save and additionally improve the system s processes case library. The students can choose either to save that process description in XML file extension or image file format (i.e. JPEG, PNG, etc). In addition, the students could exercise through SAP R/3 the implementation of several business processes that they have already drawn or defined in the lab. Fig. 7 explains another example of employee s recruitment processing which involved several parties such as requesting department, human resource, applicant and human resource counsulting. The more business processes that the students can collect, the better the skill, knowledge and experience that the students can have. Besides adding new process, the students can also retrieve/search the existing process. The first step that students may perform is to ask a question related to business process such as finding: 1. processes or sub processes Gambar 7: XPDL Diagram of Recruitment Processing 5 Conclusion To improve students ability to learn business processes, we designed and implemented a software prototype in using XML technologies and a business process management system. Our software leverages traditional/generic XML technologies and languages (XML, XQuery, etc.) together with specific ones such as XPDL, the XML-based standard for business process description and execution. The prototype that we built assist users in storing, managing, sharing, retrieving, querying and possibly executing business processes. We demonstrated the validity and potential of our approach by populating our database with a set of business processes descriptions and made them available to students in Information System, as part of their business processes class. The results of this approach are the students can understand better company s business processes and the number of students who are eager to learn business processes in ERP classes is increasing in each semester. Beside that, the students could better define the big picture of company s business processes because the students are taught the flow of business processes using business process management system and they also learn the implementation of business processes through SAP

6 R/3. The more business processes students can collect, the better the skill, knowledge and experience students can acquire. The work described in this paper is a first step towards a general learning methodology and framework targeted to the business processes domain. Although, the results are encouraging, there are still several issues that need to be addressed in the next works: 1. Ensure the interoperability of our software with other business process the business process management systems so that the system can leverage other business process execution languages such as YAWL, BPEL, etc. 2. Provide an API (Application Programming Interface) so that our software can be integrated with specific systems run by companies, hence allowing students to learn more about EAI needs and business processes that are specific to those companies. [9] Wil van der Aalst. Patterns and xpdl: A critical evaluation of the xml process definition language. qut technical report. Technical report, Queensland University of Technology, [10] BPMN Website. [11] IBM Website. www- 01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8 /index.html. [12] W3C Website. [13] WfMC Website. [14] Mathias Weske. Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures. Springer. Germany, Identify and collect more common business processes and best practices, therefore providing students with the ability to acquire knowledge about common business processes that are used in certain industries. References [1] James F Chang. Business Process Management System: Strategy and Implementation. Auerbach Publications, [2] Crowston and Herman Malone. Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook. The MIT Press, [3] Layna Fischer. Bpm and workflow handbook. Technical report, Future Strategies Inc, [4] Gartner Group. Meeting the challange: the 2009 cio agenda. Technical report, EXP Premier Report, standford, [5] Anders Moller and Michael Schwartzbach. An Introduction to XML and Web Technologies. Addison Wesley, [6] Ellen Monk. Concepts in ERP. Course Technology, [7] Bruce J Neubauer. Introducing SOA and Workflow Modeling to Non-Technical Students [8] Wil van Aalst der and Kees van Hee. Workflow Management Models, Methods and Systems. MIT Press, 2006.