An Analysis of Business Processes and Information Systems

This report explores the critical relationship between business processes and information systems. It defines business processes, categorizing them into operational, management, and supporting types, and traces their evolution from Adam Smith's contributions to modern Business Process Management Software. The report emphasizes the importance of well-defined business processes for organizational efficiency, task identification, and streamlined communication. It then delves into the deep connection between business processes and information systems, highlighting how information systems automate manual processes, facilitate quicker decision-making, and drive new business models. The report details the reasons why information systems are essential for managing businesses, including enabling new services and products, streamlining decision-making, enhancing operational excellence, improving employee behavior, facilitating information storage, and providing a competitive advantage. The analysis is supported by a personal work experience, demonstrating the positive impact of information systems on a finance organization's sales, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. References to relevant academic literature are included to support the analysis and findings.

Running head: ADVANCED ESSENTIAL BUSINESS CONCEPTS
Advanced Essential Business Concepts
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Author Note

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Business Processes:
The business processes is considered as collection of some linked tasks which ends at
the point of delivering some random product or service to the clients (Hammer, 2015). This
business process can be also defined as some important set of tasks and activities through
which organizational goal can be achieved if the tasks are completed. All of the business
processes must be must be consisting a clearly defined input while it also needs to have a
single output also. These inputs are created considering all the factors which contributes
indirectly or directly to the added value of a product or a service. Categorization of these
factors can be done into operational processes, management processes and the supporting
type of business processes (Chang, 2016). The operational related processes constitute the
core business point of the organisation while the management processes are responsible for
governing the operations of the system of operations for a particular type of organization.
Supporting type of business processes are utilized so that core processes of business can be
supported which includes accounting and human resources.
The definition of the business process has been provided by Adam Smith in the year
of 1776 which has led to some important area of study including operations management,
operations development and various of business management system development
(Rosemann & vom Brocke, 2015). This system has created the industry of Business Process
Management Software which is seeking for automating the business processes by creating
connection between various of process actors using the technology.
A normal type of process include some important series of action so that certain of
important objective can be achieved. The processes of business process management are
continuous in nature but these processes also allows for actions regarding ad-hoc (Zur
Muehlen & Shapiro, 2015). Here, the processes can be both complex and simple in nature

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which is depending on the total number of steps and the number of systems are involved. In
the number of involved system and steps increase the processes becomes more complex in
nature. These processes can be long or short running. The processes which are longer in
nature generally consists various of dependencies and they also requires a greater
documentation part.
There are several of importance of the business processes within the organizations. In
the large organisations the business processes can provide some important advantages. In this
aspect the business processes creates lifeline for any type of business and help the businesses
in the streamline individual activities which makes sure that every resources are ready for
their optimal usage (Tregear, 2015). Well defined business processes are important for the
organizations due to various of reasons. This actually improves the efficiency of the
organizations, helps to identify the important business tasks for the large business goals and
streamlining the communication between departments and functions.
Business Processes in the aspect of Information System:
There is a quite deep relationship between the business processes and the information
systems. The information systems automate the manual processes of the businesses so that
the organization becomes more efficient in nature. Information and data are available to a
wide range of decision making process in much more quicker way in such of the situation
whenever information system are utilized for changing current flow of the information
(Laudon & Laudon, 2016). In this aspect all the tasks can be executed in a simultaneous way
rather that the sequential way so that all the business processes completion can be speed up.
The information system is also capable of driving the new business models which maybe no
possible without implementing this technology.

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To be in the operative step the businesses needs to deal with various of different
information pieces. In this aspect, the work activities needs to be organized in a perfect
manner so that it can use the information to operate effectively which will be enhancing
overall performance of the organization. Here the information system plays a crucial role.
Information system assists the firms so that they can manage all of their information
(Pearlson, Saunders & Galletta, 2016). With that the information system helps the
organization to take better and appropriate decisions and it also helps to improve the business
process execution.
Reasons behind Information System is essential for managing Businesses:
The importance of information system in the aspects of businesses has been increased
hugely. Most of the businesses has adopted the information systems in their organizations so
that they remain competitive in the current market context. Currently, it is nearly impossible
to engage with a business without having any type of efficient information system. These are
some basic reasons for which information system is so much crucial for the management of
the businesses. In the following section important reasons for which the information system is
essential for the businesses are discussed.
 New Services and Products: The information system is capable of easy analysis of
the independent processes including the information that are important for producing
valuable products or services and organized type of working activities (Bourgeois,
2018). Thus in this aspect, the information system provides the organization some
competitive advantage by the analysis of how the organizations produce, creates and
sells their service or product. Easy Process of Decision Making: In the traditional way decision making processes
takes a huge amount of time and energy of an organization where with the

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implementation of the information technology it becomes very much easy to deliver
all the important information and models so that effective decisions can be taken in
minimal amount of time (Sun, Strang & Firmin, 2017). In this way information
system is actually helping the organizations to take organizational decisions easily
without wasting so much of time behind it. Operational Excellence: To achieve higher profitability, the organizations always
needs to improve their efficiency of the business operations in constant basis. This can
be done easily constantly having proper amount of stock and manpower so there is no
shortage in the supply chain (Dwivedi, 2015). In this way the customer will always
get what they want and it will be improving the operational excellence of the
organization. In this aspect to properly maintain the stock and manpower, information
systems can be used. Thus information system is helping in this case for achieving
operational excellence. Behavioural Improvements: The employees of the organization will be able to
communicate in much more effective way while having an information system. The
information system can create an environment through which an effective
communication system can be established through which the employees will be able
to access the documents in the shared access folders (Romero & Vernadat, 2016).
This will provide a much faster communication than the traditional email services.
Thus, in this case the flow of the information will be really quick and the direction of
the information flow will be vice-versa. This will bring behavioural changes to the
employees of the organization which will be making them much more efficient in
nature. Information Storage: All of the organization needs to maintain the record of their
operational activities so that these data can be used in the future cases for finding

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cause of the problems. The information system is very much useful for storing
operational data, documents, communication data and important histories (DeLone &
McLean, 2016). The manual type of data storage can take a huge amount time while
the information system can store these type of data effectively. Thus, in this way the
information system is becoming vital for the modern day businesses. Competitive Advantage: In the above discussion already various of advantages of the
information system for the businesses has been identified. Now, if the organizations
achieve all of these improvements due to information system then they will be
automatically gaining competitive advantage (Friedman, 2005). Thus the information
system is also very much essential for the businesses for gaining competitive
advantage.
Work Experience Analysis:
From the personal working experience also it has been assessed that information
system is very much crucial for management of the businesses today. It was a finance
organization on which I was working. In the earlier cases they have faced various of issues in
their businesses regarding sales and marketing, operations and in the section of human
resource. Due to this their business was performing very badly. It has been assessed that they
were requiring some automated systems for their organization so that their businesses
processes can be improved. Regarding this organization implemented information systems so
that automation can be achieved within the organization. Due to this sales and marketing
department of the organization improved greatly with improvements in marketing
management and sales management. Also, the operations sector of the organization also
improved in which enterprise resource planning and the process control improved largely.
The information system also helped in the human resource sector by improving the staffing
techniques of the organization.

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References:
Bourgeois, D. T. (2018). Information systems for business and beyond.
Chang, J. F. (2016). Business process management systems: strategy and implementation.
Auerbach Publications.
DeLone, W. H., & McLean, E. R. (2016). Information systems success
measurement. Foundations and Trends® in Information Systems, 2(1), 1-116.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Wastell, D., Laumer, S., Henriksen, H. Z., Myers, M. D., Bunker, D., ... &
Srivastava, S. C. (2015). Research on information systems failures and successes:
Status update and future directions. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(1), 143-157.
Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century.
Macmillan.
Hammer, M. (2015). What is business process management?. In Handbook on business
process management 1 (pp. 3-16). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Pearlson, K. E., Saunders, C. S., & Galletta, D. F. (2016). Managing and using information
systems, binder ready version: a strategic approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Romero, D., & Vernadat, F. (2016). Enterprise information systems state of the art: Past,
present and future trends. Computers in Industry, 79, 3-13.
Rosemann, M., & vom Brocke, J. (2015). The six core elements of business process
management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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Sun, Z., Strang, K., & Firmin, S. (2017). Business analytics-based enterprise information
systems. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 57(2), 169-178.
Tregear, R. (2015). Business process standardization. In Handbook on Business Process
Management 2 (pp. 421-441). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Zur Muehlen, M., & Shapiro, R. (2015). Business process analytics. In Handbook on
Business Process Management 2(pp. 243-263). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.