The aim of this thesis is a lay of the business processes in Vodárenska akciová společnost, a.s. In theoretical part of the thesis are describe characteristics, mapping and modeling of processes in this company. In practical part are mapping processes, which this company make in order for their customers and daily processes, whereby sustains own infrastructure.

With development and impact of ICT, the method of work in many organizations has been becoming more collaborative and communicative, under which a number of organizations start to take corresponding strategies to achieve business goals and create more values. Managing Business Process is an effective and efficient way to improve productivity and performance of business activities from an organizational level. Business Process model, as a representation of Business Process, provides a big picture of Business Process, allowing organizations to acquire understanding on logical relationships among different business activities and to improve Business Process by various approaches. This study discusses the application of Business Process models on weakness identification which is related to the problem of excess inventory in supply chain with a qualitative method. It adopts three Business Process Modelling techniques to build Business Process models for a planning team involved with demand and supply planning, where four experts from the team participate in interview. The models are analyzed according to selected weakness patterns in order to identify the process weaknesses and link them with the causes of excess inventory. The result of this study gives a positive answer, which means the Business Process Models are capable to identify causes for the concrete problem of excess inventory by identifying process weaknesses.

L'évolution rapide dans les environnements métier d'aujourd'hui impose de nouveaux défis pour la gestion efficace et rentable des processus métiers. Dans un tel environnement très dynamique, la conception des processus métiers devient une tâche fastidieuse, source d'erreurs et coûteuse. Par conséquent, l'adoption d'une approche permettant la réutilisation et l'adaptabilité devient un besoin urgent pour une conception de processus prospère. Les modèles de processus configurables récemment introduits représentent l'une des solutions recherchées permettant une conception de processus par la réutilisation, tout en offrant la flexibilité. Un modèle de processus configurable est un modèle générique qui intègre de multiples variantes de procédés d'un même processus métier à travers des points de variation. Ces points de variation sont appelés éléments configurables et permettent de multiples options de conception dans le modèle de processus. Un modèle de processus configurable doit être configuré selon une exigence spécifique en sélectionnant une option de conception pour chaque élément configurable.Les activités de recherche récentes sur les modèles de processus configurables ont conduit à la spécification des langages de modélisation de processus configurables comme par exemple configurable Event-Driven Process Chain (C-EPC) qui étend la notation de l'EPC avec des éléments configurables. Depuis lors, la question de la conception et de la configuration des modèles de processus configurables a été étudiée. D'une part, puisque les modèles de processus configurables ont tendance à être très complexe avec un grand nombre d'éléments configurables, de nombreuses approches automatisées ont été proposées afin d'assister leur conception. Cependant, les approches existantes proposent de recommander des modèles de processus configurables entiers qui sont difficiles à réutiliser, nécessitent un temps complexe de calcul et peuvent confondre le concepteur du processus. D'autre part, les résultats de la recherche sur la conception des modèles de processus configurables ont mis en évidence la nécessité des moyens de soutien pour configurer le processus. Par conséquent, de nombreuses approches ont proposé de construire un système de support de configuration pour aider les utilisateurs finaux à sélectionner les choix de configuration souhaitables en fonction de leurs exigences. Cependant, ces systèmes sont actuellement créés manuellement par des experts du domaine qui est sans aucun doute une tâche fastidieuse et source d'erreurs .Dans cette thèse, nous visons à automatiser le soutien de la variabilité dans les modèles de processus configurables. Notre objectif est double: (i) assister la conception des processus configurables d'une manière à ne pas confondre les concepteurs par des recommandations complexes et (i) assister la création des systèmes de soutien de configuration afin de libérer les analystes de processus de la charge de les construire manuellement. Pour atteindre le premier objectif, nous proposons d'apprendre de l'expérience acquise grâce à la modélisation des processus passés afin d'aider les concepteurs de processus avec des fragments de processus configurables. Les fragments proposés inspirent le concepteur du processus pour compléter la conception du processus en cours. Pour atteindre le deuxième objectif, nous nous rendons compte que les modèles de processus préalablement conçus et configurés contiennent des connaissances implicites et utiles pour la configuration de processus. Par conséquent, nous proposons de bénéficier de l'expérience acquise grâce à la modélisation et à la configuration passées des processus afin d'aider les analystes de processus dans la construction de leurs systèmes de support de configuration. / Today's fast changing environment imposes new challenges for effective management of business processes. In such a highly dynamic environment, the business process design becomes time-consuming, error-prone, and costly. Therefore, seeking reuse and adaptability is a pressing need for a successful business process design. Configurable reference models recently introduced were a step toward enabling a process design by reuse while providing flexibility. A configurable process model is a generic model that integrates multiple process variants of a same business process in a given domain through variation points. These variation points are referred to as configurable elements and allow for multiple design options in the process model. A configurable process model needs to be configured according to a specific requirement by selecting one design option for each configurable element.Recent research activities on configurable process models have led to the specification of configurable process modeling notations as for example configurable Event-Driven Process Chain (C-EPC) that extends the EPC notation with configurable elements. Since then, the issue of building and configuring configurable process models has been investigated. On the one hand, as configurable process models tend to be very complex with a large number of configurable elements, many automated approaches have been proposed to assist their design. However, existing approaches propose to recommend entire configurable process models which are difficult to reuse, cost much computation time and may confuse the process designer. On the other hand, the research results on configurable process model design highlight the need for means of support to configure the process. Therefore, many approaches proposed to build a configuration support system for assisting end users selecting desirable configuration choices according to their requirements. However, these systems are currently manually created by domain experts which is undoubtedly a time-consuming and error-prone task.In this thesis, we aim at automating the support of the variability in configurable process models. Our objective is twofold: (i) assisting the configurable process design in a fin-grained way using configurable process fragments that are close to the designers interest and (ii) automating the creation of configuration support systems in order to release the process analysts from the burden of manually building them. In order to achieve the first objective, we propose to learn from the experience gained through past process modeling in order to assist the process designers with configurable process fragments. The proposed fragments inspire the process designer to complete the design of the ongoing process. To achieve the second objective, we realize that previously designed and configured process models contain implicit and useful knowledge for process configuration. Therefore, we propose to benefit from the experience gained through past process modeling and configuration in order to assist process analysts building their configuration support systems. Such systems assist end users interactively configuring the process by recommending suitable configuration decisions.

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on developing a managerial framework for replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province. Every business should adapt to the current economic environment, especially new technology, and need to consider the risk and reward within the industry. Businesses should analyse any new processes and investigate its impact and whether a competitive advantage is created. An extensive literature study has been conducted on the factors that could assist to develop a managerial framework. Firstly, CRM - a good CRM system will improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction, which will yield more loyalty. Secondly, improved technology will shorten the value chain by adding more value to each product or service. Thirdly, new technology, such as e-contracting, will reduce the time it takes to contract with customers and reduce the overall processing costs. Fourthly, training is crucial for any business to be successful. Fifthly, Business Process Management (BPM) system will assist a business to implement a new process. Lastly, it is important to investigate what resistance to change a business can expect. An empirical research has been conducted to investigate the effect what e-contracting has on the agriculture environment in the North-West Province in order to enable the author to develop a managerial framework to assist an agriculture business to improve customer service. It could be concluded that there is a good linkage between the results of this study and the literature. A managerial framework that can be used for the purpose of replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province, has been proposed. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The aim of this study is to conduct a thorough theoretical study on developing a managerial framework for replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province. Every business should adapt to the current economic environment, especially new technology, and need to consider the risk and reward within the industry. Businesses should analyse any new processes and investigate its impact and whether a competitive advantage is created. An extensive literature study has been conducted on the factors that could assist to develop a managerial framework. Firstly, CRM - a good CRM system will improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction, which will yield more loyalty. Secondly, improved technology will shorten the value chain by adding more value to each product or service. Thirdly, new technology, such as e-contracting, will reduce the time it takes to contract with customers and reduce the overall processing costs. Fourthly, training is crucial for any business to be successful. Fifthly, Business Process Management (BPM) system will assist a business to implement a new process. Lastly, it is important to investigate what resistance to change a business can expect. An empirical research has been conducted to investigate the effect what e-contracting has on the agriculture environment in the North-West Province in order to enable the author to develop a managerial framework to assist an agriculture business to improve customer service. It could be concluded that there is a good linkage between the results of this study and the literature. A managerial framework that can be used for the purpose of replacing paper based contracts with e-contracts in the agriculture environment in the North-West Province, has been proposed. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Most organizations have traditionally been organized by function, and most coordination is intrafunctional rather than interfunctional. However, many organizations are finding that they must also manage processes - such as order fulfillment, new product development, and interorganizational supply chain management - that span their separate functional units and that integrate their activities with those of other organizations. These processes are essential to the well-being of organizations in a dynamic competitive environment.In response to this, organizations are deploying large-scale enterprise information systems in order to support operational, tactical, and strategic decision making, along with information management. However, deployment of such information systems has not realized the requisite benefits due to issues such as lack of interoperability among applications due to technological evolution, constant changes to the business processes, evolving organizational structures, inherent complexity in management of distributed knowledge and resources.To ameliorate such issues, a recent technological trend is the adoption of support tools such as Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) and groupware to support coordination between individual and group knowledge worker activities respectively. While WFMSs mostly deal with tasks involving very structured information, groupware tools deal with tasks involving unstructured information. Due to these differences, such tools are used in a fragmented manner, causing information loss. The overall guiding design principles that can be used by such process support systems are minimal, resulting in costly overheads for organizations.This dissertation deals with the problems highlighted above from a organizational process design standpoint. The goal of the dissertation is to provide process designers with guidelines and tools that can assist them in modeling flexible and adaptable processes. The following two research questions are central to the work described in this dissertation: (1) How can organizational processes be designed to be flexible andadaptable in dynamic environments? (2) How can collaborative activities be designed to facilitate integration with individual activities in organizational processes?In this regard, this dissertation reports on the development of a conceptual framework to support design of organizational processes considering both individual and collaboration tasks in a unified manner. A business process is modeled as a problem solving mechanism consisting of a series of steps (also termed as process model, process definition or plan), each of which may be an individual or group activity. The task of designing business processes is considered as the development of an effective plan to solve a business process problem by searching the design space. We employ declarative formalisms from recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) planning to support the task of process design. Similarly, we build on research in the field of Collaboration Engineering (CE), to propose an approach for collaborative task design. The feasibility and benefits of the approach are evaluated by prototyping intelligent build time tools for process design, and utilizing the same in the design of processes such as loan processing, and new drug discovery.

The importance of collaboration has been recognized for more than 2000 years. While recent improvement in technology creates vast opportunities for collaboration, effective collaboration remains challenging as ad hoc teams work across time, geographical, language, and technical boundaries, and suffer from process inefficiency. My dissertation addresses part of these challenges by proposing theoretical frameworks for business collaboration and process management. Case study is used as a research strategy for this thesis and it consists of three studies. The first study proposes a process modeling framework to support efficient process model design via model transformation and validation. First, we divide process modeling into three layers and formally define three layers of workflow models. Then, we develop a procedure for transforming a conceptual process model into its corresponding logical process model. Third, we create a validation procedure that can validate whether the derived logical model is consistent with its original conceptual model. The second study proposes a framework for analyzing the relationship between interaction processes and collaboration efficiency in software issue resolution in open source community. We first develop an algorithm to identify frequent interaction process structures referred to as interaction process patterns. Then, we assess patterns' impact through a time-dependent Cox regression model. By applying the interaction process analysis framework to software issue resolution processes, we identify several patterns that are significantly correlated with collaboration efficiency. We further conduct a case study to validate the findings of pattern efficiency in software issue resolution. The third study addresses the issue of suitability of virtual collaboration. Virtual collaboration seems to work well for some cases, but not for others. We define collaboration virtualization as the suitability for a task to be conducted virtually and propose a Collaboration Virtualization Theory (CVT) to explain collaboration virtualization. Three categories (i.e., task, technology, and team) of constructs that determine the suitability of collaboration virtualization are derived from a systematic literature review of related areas. In summary, this dissertation addresses challenges in collaboration and process management, and we believe that our research will have important theoretical and practical impacts on the development of collaboration management systems.

Business process models are an important means to design, analyze, implement, and control business processes. As with every type of conceptual model, a business process model has to meet certain syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic quality requirements to be of value. For many years, such quality aspects were investigated by centering on the properties of the model artifact itself. Only recently, the process of model creation is considered as a factor that influences the resulting model's quality. Our work contributes to this stream of research and presents an explorative analysis of the process of process modeling (PPM). We report on two large-scale modeling sessions involving 115 students. In these sessions, the act of model creation, i.e., the PPM, was automatically recorded. We conducted a cluster analysis on this data and identified three distinct styles of modeling. Further, we investigated how both task- and modeler-specific factors influence particular aspects of those modeling styles. Based thereupon, we propose a model that captures our insights. It lays the foundations for future research that may unveil how high-quality process models can be established through better modeling support and modeling instruction. (authors' abstract)

The goal of this paper is to benchmark Answer Set Programming (ASP) systems to test their performance when dealing with a complex optimization problem. In particular, the problem tackled is resource allocation in the area of Business Process Management (BPM). Like many other scheduling problems, the allocation of resources and starting times to business process activities is a challenging optimization problem for ASP solvers. Our problem encoding is ASP Core-2 standard compliant and it is realized in a declarative and compact fashion. We develop an instance generator that produces problem instances of different size and hardness with respect to adjustable parameters. By using the baseline encoding and the instance generator, we provide a comparison between the two award-winning ASP solvers clasp and wasp and report the grounding performance of gringo and i-dlv. The benchmark suggests that there is room for improvement concerning both the grounders and the solvers. Fostered by the relevance of the problem addressed, of which several variants have been described in different domains, we believe this is a solid application-oriented benchmark for the ASP community. / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

Research report (M.Com. (Information Systems))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2013. / Using the resource based view of the firm theory, a research model is proposed that explains how IT governance capability results in improved firm performance by improving a firm’s IT Infrastructure capabilities and business processes. The research model is explored by means of case study where a survey is undertaken with the key stakeholders of a global Corporate and Investment Bank. Data was collected and analysed from 140 respondents using an online survey. The model hypotheses were not tested. The respondents’ characteristics (role, region, business area and length of experience) were explored providing greater insight and confirmation of the general relationship between the variables. The case study confirmed the general relationships of the model except the training capability - firm performance relationship. The IT governance process formality moderator provided results that were in contradiction to expectations. The IT intensity moderator confirmed the general relationship. The strength or weaknesses of the relationships when analysing the respondent characteristics are insightful and would not normally have been available if a multi-site survey had been performed.