Thesis presents author's view to principles of business process management (BPM) and the process approach to the description of business processes. The main contribution made by this thesis is subsequent practical application of all principles to particular company in tourism - asistence service. Objectives of this thesis were achieved through studying theoretical resources and use of practical experience.

In the first part of the diploma thesis is described the relevant theory of the Business Process Management which is fundamental background for the practical second part of the thesis. The theoretic part contains of a general description of the Business Process Management and a description of the BPM design phases, such as planning, analyzing, designing, and implementing. The second part of the diploma thesis focuses on the design of the Business Process Management in GfK Praha, s.r.o. First the company is introduced globally as well as locally. Afterwards the local branch is analyzed by real data and especially by many structural interviews with GfK employees. Most importantly, based on the workshops with the cooperative employees, there are designed new processes into the connected process maps.

This thesis attends to process management approach. It describes reasons and circumstances that led organizations to focus on this area. Especially the unsuitable quality of managing and opportunities for better match of values and processes are important. Fashion wave also plays an important role, which gives thanks to words such a process and models are inflected quite often. Approaches to the implementation of process management are various. The fundamental difference between them is the form of attitude to chase. Some of them require radical changes in processes and wants to build them from nothing. The others prefer to gradually improve them step by step. The most common variant, which usually best fit, is to mix these approaches. The tools and methodologies are needed for implementation also. One such tool is the Metastorm BPM. The outcome of the project, which is described in practical section of this thesis, was created with its utilization. Project goal was to implement process management for project management. Use of Metastorm BPM tool allowed simple implementation of required processes, including management and user functionality.

The subject of the presented thesis is process modeling. The process modeling and process management is at present for many companies interesting issue, which is referred to as business process management (BPM). Large numbers of standards and tools have been developed to support business process management. The goal of this study is to compare different standards and tools for process modeling according to the process maturity of the organization, and to recommend a specific tool. The standards and tools are compared by demands selected according to the study of the literature and author's knowledge. At the same time, companies are divided to groups according to their requirements according to process maturity of the company and therefore the requirements for process modeling. Demands for comparison of the standards and tools are used depending on the process maturity of company using the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). For each level of process maturity recommendations of appropriate tools are presented, that could support the efforts of companies to achieve a given maturity level. Subsequently, the evaluation model with demands is used to recommend appropriate tool for a retail company.

The diploma thesis is focused on support of business processes by information technologies. The main objective of this thesis is to implement the automation of selected business process in a private healthcare facility using available open source tools. The introductory part deals with the description of the theoretical basis of Business Process Management (BPM) and characterizes the current situation in this area. The following part is devoted to software instruments supporting the BPM, known as Business Process Management Systems (BPMS). The thesis's main part provides at first the analysis of the current situation of IS/ICT in the healthcare facility, on the basis of which the requirements for new automated processes are defined. Further follows the description of a proposal of selected processes, their models and subsequent implementation in the environment of the healthcare facility.

I min uppsats utforskar jag möjligheterna att transkribera verk till mitt eget instrument tvärflöjt. Jag har arbetat med satser ur två konserter, en för violin och en för klarinett, och transkriberat om dessa till flöjt. Jag har fokuserat på en sats ur vardera konsert.   Mitt arbete börjar med att välja vilka instrument jag skulle transkribera från. Sedan har jag valt notutgåva för dessa och skrivit in dem i det notskrivningsprogram jag har valt, och därefter påbörjat transkriberingsarbetet. När transkriberingen var klar tog jag kontakt med pianist och påbörjade min instudering av verken, för att därefter spela in de instuderade satserna. Vid inspelningen tog jag hjälp av en medstudent som också hjälpte mig med att editera inspelningarna. Slutligen har jag jämfört de satser jag spelat in på tvärflöjt med inspelningar för originalinstrumenten, violin respektive klarinett. Det resulterade i noter som finns som bilaga och inspelningar jag länkat till.   I arbetet med transkription och förberedande litteraturstudier har jag lärt mig att transkription är ett stort ämne i sig och att det kräver efterforskning och förberedelser genom att studera noter, spela och lyssna till musiken som jag har transkriberat. Arbetet gav mig en känsla för vad kompositörernas musik bottnar i och har gett mig en riktning i mitt fortsatta arbete med transkribering.

The diploma thesis focuses on current problems of UI testing within modern methods of design and implementation of information systems. It includes review of available technologies and pratices to solving these problems. There is analysis of selected company, Quality Assurance processes is designed to fit in the company culture. These processes are implemented into concrete project and also set indicators, which will be monitored and evaluated in future progress of the company.

Globally, higher healthcare demand strains existing systems, already overburdened by a lack of resources and funding while longer life expectancy and increased disease burden force higher patient loads. A majority of the South African population is medically uninsured and therefore depend on emergency care; consequently, the healthcare service demand easily exceeds available acute care to prevent life threat. When this happens, emergency centres suffer from overcrowding and long patient waiting times, which increases morbidity and mortality, associated patient risk. Moreover, critical resources such as staff and hospital beds are required for an even flow of patients through hospitals, but are distributed inefficiently. The South African healthcare system configuration therefore delays access to and compromises the delivery of equitable, unbiased life-saving healthcare in an environment moreover challenged by economic pressures. This calls for sustainable, cost-effective reform. Therefore, more efficient healthcare can save more lives by improving access to life-saving care. Research on current Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) shows an incoherent knowledge body with conceptual gaps in theories on healthcare, which disengages transformation potential. Comprehensive reform tactics thus require a priori concept discovery and diagnostics to make research practically useful. The systematic use of BPM theories allowed for the qualitative assessment of as-is process activity at patient touch-points at three hospitals – two public and one private – in the Western Cape of South Africa. Because a strategic Information Systems (IS) methodology, Business Process Management (BPM) poses business process activity improvement, this research draws from successful BPM activity as a means to improve patient flow processes in Emergency Centres (ECs). Success is evaluated by drawing from empirically supported enabler categories and prescriptive guidelines because BPM practice is not yet fully understood. The results show a clear correlation between the improvement areas at the three hospitals; improvements on aspects of actions and decisions taken during patient-flow process activity, therefore support a pragmatic approach to reform. The data confirms disparity between public and private healthcare. Healthcare appears to be a “doctor driven” service, which, based on qualitative decision-making, navigates patients along defined flows, enabled by supporting human capital and hospital assets. Optimal patient flow is a product of symbiotic working relationships and depends on efficient integration with wider hospital functions. Shorter waiting times and hospital stays reduce process burden. This leads to more efficient resource usage and regulated access to healthcare. However, integrated healthcare reform must consider the time demands and rigidity of clinical processes. The challenge lies in finding the space to invite parallel business agility to drive the reform of the stricken healthcare industry in South Africa.

Business process automation improves organizations’ efficiency to perform work. In existing business process management systems, process instances run independently from each other. However, synchronizing instances carrying similar characteristics, i.e., sharing the same data, can reduce process execution costs. For example, if an online retailer receives two orders from one customer, there is a chance that they can be packed and shipped together to save shipment costs. In this paper, we use concepts from the database domain and introduce data views to business processes to identify instances which can be synchronized. Based on data views, we introduce the concept of batch regions for a context-aware instance synchronization over a set of connected activities. We also evaluate the concepts introduced in this paper with a case study comparing costs for normal and batch processing. / Die Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen unterstützt Unternehmen, die Ausführung ihrer Prozesse effizienter zu gestalten. In existierenden Business Process Management Systemen, werden die Instanzen eines Prozesses völlig unabhängig voneinander ausgeführt. Jedoch kann das Synchronisieren von Instanzen mit ähnlichen Charakteristiken wie z.B. den gleichen Daten zu reduzierten Ausführungskosten führen. Zum Beispiel, wenn ein Onlinehändler zwei Bestellungen vom selben Kunden mit der gleichen Lieferanschrift erhält, können diese zusammen verpackt und versendet werden, um Versandkosten zu sparen. In diesem Papier verwenden wir Konzepte aus dem Datenbankbereich und führen Datensichten für Geschäftsprozesse ein, um Instanzen zu identifizieren, welche synchronisiert werden können. Auf Grundlage der Datensichten führen wir das Konzept der Batch-Regionen ein. Eine Batch-Region ermöglicht eine kontext-bewusste Instanzen-Synchronisierung über mehrere verbundene Aktivitäten. Das eingeführte Konzept wird mit einer Fallstudie evaluiert, bei der ein Kostenvergleich zwischen der normalen Prozessausführung und der Batchverarbeitung durchgeführt wird.

As demandas de um mercado cada vez mais dinâmico e global exigiram das organizações um formato mais flexível que as rígidas estruturas funcionais, sendo que a Gestão por Processos (BPM) surgiu como uma alternativa a tal necessidade. Para auxiliar o sucessos de iniciativas de promoção de BPM, a literatura apresenta os Fatores Críticos de Sucesso de BPM e, dentre eles, está a Arquitetura de Processos (AP). A AP é definida como o que a organização faz sob o ponto de vista de processos, porém, outras definições e considerações quanto à sua importância são apresentadas dispersas na literatura, bem como métodos para sua elaboração, sem que haja um consenso dos conceitos e etapas para construção. Esta dificuldade de consenso foi identificada por um grupo de pesquisa engajado em promover BPM em uma unidade de ensino de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior (IES) pública brasileira que identificou a necessidade de elaborar sua AP, mas não encontrou um método que fosse consensual entre praticantes e teóricos de BPM. A partir deste contexto, surgiu o problema da presente pesquisa e seu objetivo principal: desenvolver um método de elaboração de Arquitetura de Processos e aplicar em uma unidade de uma IES pública brasileira. Para alcançar este objetivo a pesquisa utilizou-se de dois procedimentos metodológicos: 1. Revisão da literatura científica para consolidação do conhecimento acerca do tema AP, tanto dos seus conceitos quanto de seus métodos de elaboração e 2. Pesquisa-ação desenvolvida pelo grupo de pesquisa em conjunto com colaboradores da organização para aplicação e análise do método proposto. Os resultados foram: a identificação de cinco aspectos relevantes da AP, a avaliação dos métodos existentes na literatura, a proposição de um novo método e, por fim, a aplicação do novo método na unidade em questão da IES pública. A originalidade do trabalho foi a consolidação do conhecimento do tema AP, a elaboração de um método que pode servir como guia para outras organizações e a própria AP elaborada com base no contexto da IES. / The increasingly dynamic and global market demanded of organizations a format more flexible than the rigid functional structures, and the Business Process Management (BPM) has emerged as an alternative to such a need. To help the success of initiatives for promoting BPM, the literature presents the Critical Success Factors for BPM and among them is the Process Architecture (PA). So basic, AP is defined as what the organization does from the point of view of processes, however, other definitions and considerations regarding their importance are presented scattered in the literature, as well as methods for their development, without a consensus of the concepts and steps for construction. This lack of consensus has been identified by a research group engaged in promoting BPM in a brazilian public unit of education of a Higher Education Institution (HEI) who attested to the need to develop their PA, but did not find a method that was consensus among practitioners and theoretical of BPM. From that context, the problem that arose as motivation of this research and its main objective was: to develop a method for developing Process Architecture and apply it in a unit of a brazilian public HEI. To achieve this goal the research used two main methodological procedures: 1. Literature Reviews to consolidate the knowledge about the subject PA, both of their concepts as their methods of elaboration and 2. Research-action developed by the research group in conjunction with the organization\'s employees for application and analysis of the proposed method. The results were: the identification of five relevant aspects of AP, the evaluation of existing methods in the literature, the proposal of a new method, and finally, the application of the new method in the relevant unit of HEI. The main contributions of the research were the consolidation of knowledge of the subject AP, devising a method that may serve as a guide for other organizations and the very elaborate AP based on the context of the HEI.