Business Process and Its Operations

This report explores the concept of business process and its significance in managing a business. It discusses the different types of data generated in a business and the role of application software, specifically enterprise resource planning, in business processing. The report also highlights the importance of business decisions and their impact on the operations of Brentford College.

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BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
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1BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
Executive Summary
Business Process is one of the most important things to consider while managing a business.
Business process defines the methodologies and mechanisms needed to make important business
decisions. Business decisions are crucial decisions that can change the way a business operates.
In this report, we will see how the important business decisions can change the way Brentford
College operates. The report has also explained about the different types of data generated in a
business and also explained about the business process method called enterprise resource
planning.

2BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Business process and supporting processes................................................................................3
Difference between structured, semi-structured or unstructured data........................................4
Application software as a mechanism for business processing...................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Business process is a group of related processes that are used to deliver a product or
service to a customer. A business process can be defined as a group of tasks and processes which
on completion will lead to an organizational goal or objective. The inputs for the tasks must be
clearly stated and should have a solo output. The mentioned inputs are the factors that add up to
the increased worth of a product or service. These components can be divided into operational
processes, supporting process and management processes.
Discussion
Business process and its supporting processes
The management process oversees the total operation aspect of an organization’s system
or operation. The main part of the business is constituted of the operation process. Processes like
human resources and accounting help in supporting the core business of the company. These
processes are known as supportive processes. This then led to the research in the area of
Operations management, Operations development and various other management systems. The
systems in their own have developed an entire industry dedicated to business process
management software, which aims to automate the whole system by joining different process
actors through technology. A process always needs a chain of action to reach a goal. Business
process management processes can be continuous in nature and still permit ad-hoc actions.

4BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
Figure 1 Business Process (Source: google images)
The complexity of the process depends on the number of systems along with the steps
involved. The tasks can be both short and long running. In short, a business process can be
defined as a group of activities done by a group of concerned stakeholders to reach a specific
goal. The business process is one of the most important aspects of product delivery. The entire
process involves numerous steps that ensures the product in delivered to the client on time. In
this case scenario, Brentford College aims to use the huge amount of data they collected to know
about the current trends and also implement strategies to improve the college administration. The
concept of business process is explained in this report and the business decision making
mechanisms have also been highlighted. These mechanisms include Enterprise Resource
Planning, Decision Knowledge Center and Business vision statement. The benefits of these
methods and how they affect our scenario has also been highlighted. To conclude, the business

5BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
process and the decision making methods are a crucial part of managing and producing a product
in any industry.
Figure 2 Types of business processes (Source: google images)
Difference between structured, semi-structured or unstructured data
Properties Structured data Semi-structured data Unstructured data
Technology
Relational database table
is the model for this data
type.
The data type is
XML/RDF based.
The data type is based on
Binary data and character
data.
Transaction
management
The transactions have
various techniques of
concurrency and is
matured.
The transaction is
adapted from DBMS and
is not matured.
It lacks transaction
management and has zero
concurrency
Version Versioning over tuples, Versioning over tuples It is a whole version

6BUSINESS PROCESS AND ITS OPERATIONS
Properties Structured data Semi-structured data Unstructured data
management row and tables or graph is possible
Flexibility
It depends on the
schema and lacks
flexibility.
It is less flexible than
unstructured data but
more flexible than
structured data
The schema is absent and it
is very flexible data type.
Examples
The data stored in the
administration
department containing
details of every staff and
students of the college.
The data collected from
the internal systems of
the colleges which can
be understood by college
researchers and used by
them.
This data is the type of data
generated from social media
that cannot be arranged and
have no meaning on their
own. This can be used
independently
Table 1 Differentiate between Semi-structured, Structured and Unstructured data
Figure 3 Different types of data (Source: google images)
Application software as a mechanism for business processing
Enterprise Resource Planning system or ERP is a software that can be used to run an
entire company using a centralized base. The software application is designed in such a way that

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it can be configured and customized for different organizations based on need. For example, the
software can be configured to accommodate the functions and needs of Brentford College in it.
The huge data of Brentford College that the scenario talks about can be stored in a centralized
database that can be easily accessed by all departments of the college. ERP is a software having
different modules for individual operations. For example, in Brentford College the data that can
be used for human resources will be gathered and analyzed by the human resource module of the
software.
Figure 4 Stages of ERP (Source: google images)

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Conclusion
The college can purchase different business process modules according to their operation
needs. The ERP system not only organizes the huge unstructured, structured or semi structured
data centrally but also implements the best available business process techniques along with it.
This automatically improves the organization’s or in this case Brentford college’s data collection
techniques. The only disadvantage is the extremely high cost of implementing this software as
Brentford College might not be able to afford the investment and maintenance cost of this
software. So to conclude, software also cannot be used by untrained professionals as good
training is required to operate the software at all levels.

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References
Alpar, P. and Schulz, M., 2016. Self-service business intelligence. Business & Information
Systems Engineering, 58(2), pp.151-155.
Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation.
Auerbach Publications.
Hammer, M., 2015. What is business process management?. In Handbook on business process
management 1 (pp. 3-16). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Harmon, P., 2019. Business process change: a business process management guide for
managers and process professionals. Morgan Kaufmann.