Neomind

Author: Tiago Ricaldi

  • Process Management in the Education Sector

    Process Management in the Education Sector

    Process management in the Education Sector is a key factor for the organization of state, municipal, and federal institutions. A setup based on process management encompasses several factors, which constitute pillars within an institution: pedagogical management, administrative management, and human resources management.

    As far as pedagogical management is concerned, it’s nothing short of primordial within the educational sector management, because it’s the raw material that drives business activities. This kind of management refers to how a company will plan and execute its various teaching activities such as: teaching staff organization, implementation of the teaching methodology, teacher-student interaction, work delivery management, evaluation, and performance management, among others.

    Administrative management is what permeates the health of the business in relation to the management of the institution’s resources. These resources relate to the human, physical, and financial resource tasks of the organizations. Human resources encompass all the people who perform a particular work activity.

    These people in their function assignments are responsible for managing all kinds of communication, with regard to the activities performed in a given educational sector. Physical resources refer to the assets of the institutions, and financial resources are the assets responsible for maintaining the financial health of the business.

    Educational Management Techniques

    Managing educational processes, given the various activities that make up this branch of business, is a complex task. There are techniques and tools, however, that can help institutions to computerize their processes and better administrate them. The AS-IS, TO-BE technique, along with BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) modeling, is widely used to perform processes mapping and automation, and it’s worth it for the sector.

    1. AS-IS/TO-BE

    Through AS-IS it’s possible to obtain an understanding of how the process is currently performed within the educational organization. From this understanding, we can use the TO-BE concept to propose process improvements in order to simplify and debureaucratize the actions of the stakeholders involved in the execution of their activities. Check out Five steps for process mapping (AS IS).

    2. BPMN

    After this AS-IS, TO-BE survey to propose process improvements, it is possible to use BPMN modeling to refine the study. BPMN is used to understand how the business works, as well as to divide the activities, roles, and responsibilities of those who will execute a given process. This allows a broad view of the entire organizational management functioning, aiming at mapping and simplifying the steps performed in the management process.

    There are some processes that can be automated and improved with the use of BPMN, for example, educational processes, purchasing processes, legal processes, sales processes, and quality processes, among others.

    Tools for Educational Management

    In the market there are customizable tools that can assist in the management of educational processes, such as, for example, the Fusion Platform. This tool allows the automation of processes through the web platform and mobile application. The Fusion platform has several features that allow the realization of educational management such as: BPM studio modeling of processes; monitoring of tasks and process management in a simple and organized way; creation of electronic forms; integration of forms with other applications; social resources; EDM (electronic document management).

    The importance of the GED

    The relevance of EDM for educational sectors and in general: The electronic document management stands out for the digital organization of documents, i.e., replacing the traditional notepad with digital documentation. This digital documentation also has versioning, and approval features that facilitate management, as well as increased security in information storage, including for audit purposes.

    Fusion allows the computerization of the educational processes management, aiming to simplify the processes that are performed within the institutions, as well as to map all performed processes, improve the quality of the educational services, reduce costs in operations, generate process history, manage documents electronically, improve the planning of the areas involved, debureaucratize the processes, create a macro view of all processes performed, identify points for improvement, and improve the efficiency of the processes by reducing costs in relation to time and money. Read more: How to implement an EDM system in your company?

    Importance of Educational Management

    Process management in the education sector is important for the organization of the institutions, so that quality education services are offered to the population, as well as providing a healthy environment for professionals to perform their activities with quality and agility.

    Not familiar with the Fusion Platform yet? Try it free for 15 days.

  • The 9 Principles of Business Process Modeling

    The 9 Principles of Business Process Modeling

    Business Process Modeling (BPM) is a process representation technique that aims to understand, communicate, and optimize processes within organizations. It’s a high level of detail modeling that includes the activities to be performed, the people responsible for these activities, and the communication relationship between these people within the business, as we can see in the example of figure 1.

    Figure 1: Example of business process modeling.

    Approaching the business area is a challenge for computer scientists because it involves aspects such as: business scope definition and scope analysis. The business scope definition consists of abstracting what will be modeled and determining if this scope meets the client’s needs.

    During the construction of the scope, it’s necessary that some questions are covered, such as:

    • Who is the process customer?
    • Does its scope meet the customer’s needs and aspirations?
    • Which communication areas are involved in the process?
    • What are the activity inputs and outputs?
    • What are the key indicators, and how will they be measured in relation to deadlines and costs?

    Process modeling is a link that helps in the understanding of the business that’ll be built along with information technology professionals. To facilitate the understanding of business process modeling it’s necessary to understand how the modeling life cycle works.

    Business Process Modeling Life Cycle

    As shown in figure 2, the cycle encompasses: design and analysis, configuration, execution, and evaluation.

    Figure 2: BPM Life Cycle.

    Design and analysis consist of a survey about the processes, as well as the organizational and technical environment. The configuration is the inputs that allow modeling this process. Execution is related to monitoring and recording the steps of the flow to visualize the state of the process. Evaluation is an analysis of how this process is performing at its current stage, as well as what can be done to improve its productivity and meet the aspirations of involved stakeholders.

    Basic principles of business process modeling

    In addition to the life cycle concept, it’s important for us to understand the 9 basic principles of business process modeling. They are:

    1. Interaction between customer and organization
    2. Added value for the customer
    3. Decreased flow delays during activity exchanges
    4. Avoiding over-automation
    5. Standardize business processes
    6. Predict business rules
    7. Enforce compliance standards
    8. Validating BPM modeling
    9. Simplicity in process design

    1. Customer-organization interaction

    The interaction between the customer and a given organization is the key moment in a work that aims at modeling a process to improve the company’s productivity. During this interaction, the customer must feel that his company’s needs will be met in terms of cost, time, and money reduction.

    This interaction is also known as the moment of truth because it establishes the initial trust relationship about who offers and who acquires the service.

    2. Value added to the client

    From the moment a relationship of trust is established with the customer, it’s necessary to perform a process modeling that adds value to his business, that is, if the activities of the process flow do not improve the productivity of the organizational sphere, it must be remodeled or a new flow must be performed.

    3. Decreased flow delays during activity exchanges

    During this process of redesigning and building a new flow it’s important to anticipate as much as possible the errors that can occur during the exchange of responsibilities in workflow activities so that delays do not occur.

    4. Avoid over-automation

    Another important factor is to avoid over-automation of processes. Therefore, it’s important to take five aspects into consideration when building the flow:

    1. Have a clear objective;
    2. Be careful not to detail the process too much;
    3. Take care not to under-detail the process;
    4. Review the model;
    5. Validate the model with stakeholders

    5. Standardize business processes

    Standardization in process modeling is important because a company often has several processes in its organizational hierarchy that are interconnected. Thus, when standardization occurs, it facilitates the operation of activities, increases productivity, improves quality, and reduces operating costs.

    6. Predict business rules

    Organizations also have specific business rules that determine the course of their operations and processes during execution and decision-making during business process activities.

    7. Enforce compliance standards

    Companies may have compliance standards that need to be taken into account when modeling the process, such as internal auditing standards. So it is always important to check if there are any rules that are intended for a particular type of organization.

    8. Validation of the BPM modeling

    The validation of the business model with the people involved in the process execution is fundamental because people may not be familiar with the process notations.

    For this reason it’s recommended to perform an initial prototyping of the process, taking into consideration some good practices such as: includeing the essential fields; performing the simple configuration of the responsibilities streaks; creating manual tasks to represent the process activities, and also performing meetings with someone involved to conduct the interactions with the customer and another person to perform the validation and adjustments on the prototyping.

    9. Simplicity in process design

    This prototyping should be as simple as possible with the necessary information to make the process executable and satisfy the customer’s process improvement needs.

    In conclusion

    Business process modeling, allied to its construction principles, contributes to improving the organization’s communication during the activities that are performed, as well as automating and improving the companies’ process management, reducing the cost and time during the execution of the activities.

    Want to learn more? Read our article What are the 5 most commonly used types of process mapping?

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