Business System Design & Process Improvement
Too often human needs get overlooked in system design. The focus is on technology–architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data–all of which are important and costly to get wrong. But also important is what the humans need to do and their ultimate objectives. Humans make the strategic, innovative and creative decisions that technology must support.
That’s why I believe the single best context for accomplishing objectives in business systems is within the business process. It allows the enterprise to structure what needs to be done in a paradigm that allows for management, control and visibility in a context easily and naturally understood by humans. Who does what when? What happens next? Where do concurrent sequences of events split and converge? Where are critical decision points and what rules are followed?
Business process-centric design can be used throughout the entire system lifecycle to result in optimum business process centric systems.
Things to consider
As part of this work I consider and pay attention to :
- Current business process “as-is” and business needs
- High-level conceptual design and scope
- Roles of business process participants
- Opportunities for business process improvement and future process design “to-be”
- Functional design, with emphasis on usability and user-centered design.
- Technical design, focusing on actual design of the user-interface, information architecture, and interaction design.
Additional Services
Although it’s not my primary job focus, I’ve also been known to perform the following functions very well:
- Software quality-assurance and testing
- Documentation and computer-based training (CBT)
- Conducting training sessions for end-users
Contact
Looking to build or improve your current business processes and supporting systems in order to cut costs and increase bottom line? Great! I can help with that.
