To design a business process, you must understand the business
need that the process solves, and the elements (such as people and data) that
the process requires.
In this tutorial we describe how to build a business process for
managing expenses. Expense management is a common activity, and can be made
simple enough to use in a tutorial.
Managing Expenses
Expense procedures are simple in principle but involve tradeoffs. A
rigid expense reporting system pleases accountants but can slow operations. On
the other hand, a company with relaxed expense rules may spend too much, or
even lose track of expenditures.
While the process we build in this tutorial is simple, it illustrates
how a process is designed and implemented. A simple process can also be
developed as feedback from users is received. One of the main advantages of
having a process model which is also executable is that the process can be
refined quickly through successive design iterations.
Typical Expense Report Sequence
The following sequence of steps roughly describes how an expense
report is handled. Pay attention not only to
what is done but
who does it, and also note the sequence of events:
- An employee purchases a product or service he requires. For
instance, a sales person on a trip rents a car.
- The employee submits an expense report with a list of items, along
with the receipts for each item.
- A supervisor reviews the expense report and approves or rejects the
report. Since the company has expense rules, there are circumstances where the
supervisor can accept or reject the report upon first inspection. These rules
could be automated, to reduce the workload on the supervisor.
- If the supervisor rejects the report, the employee who submitted it
is given a chance to edit it, for example to correct errors or better describe
an expense. If the supervisor approves the report, it goes to the treasurer.
- The treasurer checks that all the receipts have been submitted and
match the items on the list. If so, he accepts the expenses for processing
(payment or refund, and accounting). If receipts are missing or do not match
the report, he sends it back to the employee.
- If a report returns to the employee for corrections, it must again
go to a supervisor, even if the supervisor previously approved the report.
In the following sections, we describe an AquaLogic BPM process that
implements the above steps and adds some additional features.