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Business Process Documentation for ERP- Supported Organisations

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 Business Process Documentation for ERP- Supported Organisations
PANAYIOTOU NIKOLAOS, PONIS STAVROS, GAYIALIS SOTIRIS, PANAYIOTOU THEODOROS
National Technical University of Athens
Mechanical Engineering Department, Section of Industrial Management & Operational Research
15780 Zografos, Athens
GREECE
panayiot@central.ntua.gr

Abstract: - This paper presents a case study demonstrating the documentation of organisational business
processes in a large Petroleum company operating in Greece. The introduction of an advanced Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system covering all the business processes reengineered the way the organisation
operated and called for analytical documentation of the new processes and activities. An integrated business
modeling approach was introduced, covering specific systemic views: organisational, functional, information
and control. The ARIS architecture was used, providing the means for linking the different views and connecting
them with information technology. Specific ARIS methods (Organisational Charts, Extended Event Process
Chains (eEPCs), Process chain Diagrams, Entity Relationship Diagrams (eERMs), Function Trees and Role
Allocation Diagrams) were selected and combined with analytical process descriptions and ERP users’ manuals.
The outcomes of the approach introduced were the provision of analytical documentation and specific
guidelines for each employee taking into account both their organisational and ERP system roles and generating
automatic job descriptions. The expected long-term outcome of the implemented approach is the achievement of
a continuous improvement scheme, which will support the operation of the company and the maintenance of the
ERP system.

Key-Words: - Enterprise Modelling, ERP System, Continuous Improvement, ARIS Architecture, Case Study

1 Introduction not follow a life cycle of having a beginning and an

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are end; on the contrary it is a continual process. As
large commercial software packages that promise a Davenport [6] argues, an enterprise system is not a
seamless integration of information flow through an project, it’s a way of life. According to a recent
organization, by combining various sources of survey (2000) by Deloitte Consulting only 53% of
information into a single software application and a the company executives asked, realise that going live
single database [1]. By integrating the various isn’t the end of their ERP program, but rather the end
aspects of the organization and streamlining the data of the beginning.
flows, they overcome the fragmentation problems of The ERP go-live phase initiates an ongoing
legacy systems [2]. The evolution of ERP came about process including numerous maintenance activities
originally in response to the increasingly pressing and issues that need to be resolved after an ERP
demands of global market competition, customer system becomes operational. Examples of such
demands, and changes in business and IT imperatives activities include enhancements, user support, and
[3]. It was not long before ERP applications system upgrades [1]. One of the most significant
dominated the market. According to Sprott [4], ERP tasks a company has to undertake after going live is
systems were one of the fastest growing and most the management of the organizational change the
profitable areas of the software industry during the ERP system has incurred to the company. According
late 1990s while in 1998, approximately 40% of to Davenport, ERP implementation often results in a
companies with annual revenues over $1 billion had large-scale organizational change [2]. Mashari [7]
undergone ERP implementations [5]. argues that change management can be supported by
The adoption of ERP systems has been the focus some software tools which ease the training of staff
of substantial research in recent years. Although and by helping them to take the appropriate steps
early research has covered many aspects of ERP within a process, automating communication
implementation, it has focused mainly on the earlier activities within a project, ensuring that
stages of the ERP lifecycle [1]. It is common, for responsibilities are assigned to the proper people and
companies, after running a marathon that could take groups, increasing flexibility and responsiveness, and
up to four years from day one to go-live, to believe providing more accountability by generating and
that the ERP project is finished. That is not the case maintaining audit trails [8]. A good example of
though. The implementation of an ERP system does change management, relative to the work done in this
research paper, is changing roles and responsibilities organization is frequently connected with Business
[9], while another one can be seen in Schaaf’s study Process Reengineering (BPR) initiatives. No matter
on after going live innovative training [10]. what the approach of the reengineering will be,
In this new emerging business process and ERP-Driven BPR or pure BPR, a number of
technological environment enterprise modelling important changes will affect the future operation of
provides a semantic unification space at the corporate the organization. Business Process Reengineering
level where shared concepts (e.g. organizational and can result in one or more of the following
IT roles and their related activities) can be properly alternatives:
defined, mapped to one another and widely  Organisational restructuring affecting the
communicated in the forms of enterprise models existing divisions and departments of the
[11]. Enterprise Modelling techniques and associated company.
visual languages are very important and useful to  Business process redesign of existing processes,
support new approaches to enterprise business or even new business process creation for
transformation and improvement [12]. To support operations that did not exist in the past.
these efforts, a plethora of tools have appeared in the  Introduction of new Information Technology
software market e.g. ARIS Toolset, FirstSTEP, (IT) systems and changes in the interfaces
METIS, Enterprise Modeller, KBSI tools, CimTool, between the applications of the existing IT
MOOGO, IMAGIM [13], processing power has infrastructure.
increased dramatically and modelling architectures
have evolved and in some cases even matured [14]. As a result, the organisation faces a new reality,
According to Gartner and its BPA Magic Quadrant which affects both the everyday and strategic
the market leader company in this field based on its operation of the company. This reality has to be
vision and its ability to execute is IDS Scheer S.A. thoroughly documented and the employees have to
the developer of ARIS Collaborative Suite of be well trained and supported in order for the
business process modelling tools. IDS is a strategic company to be able to fast and efficiently adapt to the
partner of SAP AG the leading ERP software changes the ERP system imposed. After the ERP
company [15] and ARIS software and its underlying system “goes live”, in other words, when the new
architecture and semantics is used for all the process, system comes into operation and the old one is
organizational, functional and data modelling discontinued, the Top Management of the
activities throughout SAP R/3 implementations. organisation needs analytical documentation
This paper presents the work done within the consisting of the following elements:
context of a project followed the “go live” phase of  The new Organisational Charts.
the implementation, aiming in elaborating a business  Analytical Process Descriptions of the new
process modelling tool to support the change business processes (core and support).
management process by providing accurate and  The Job Descriptions for each organisational
easily accessible documentation for specific aspects role, under the light of the newly introduced
of the enterprise these being the reengineered organisational chart and the altered business
processes, the new organizational roles and activities, processes.
the system roles assigned to organizational units and  The IT authorization profiles for the users of the
the job descriptions per organizational and system new ERP system and the Systemic Roles they
roles. The application of the elaborated business have.
process modelling tool resulted in elevating the new  Process Oriented ERP Manuals that can support
system acceptance by the employees, increased the users in their everyday activities.
employee involvement and commitment, enhanced
employees satisfaction and eventually contributed It can be understood that the above elements are
–especially combined with a thorough training interrelated and affect each other. The coverage of
programme- to the overall ERP implementation these elements involves the elaboration of the
project success. following terms:
 Processes: A process is a set of activities, which
are carried out towards a well-defined goal,
usually with the participation of many different
2 Problem Formulation departments of the organisation. The total
The introduction of an advanced and complicated number of processes covers all the operations of
Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) in an the company. Each process can be decomposed
 into smaller activity bundles called Organisation

sub-processes.
 Activities: An activity is the smallest operation Organisational
Charts

that takes place in an organisation. A process and

(sub-process) consists of a number of specific
activities. Requirements
Definition
 Events: The events are the triggers or the result
Design
state for an activity or a process. Role Allocation
Specification

 Organisational roles: A company consists of Diagrams (RAD)

E F D O Extended Event Implementation
Entity Relationship Process Chains
organisational units, such as divisions and Diagrams
(ERM)
Process Chain
Value Added
Chain Diagram
(eEPC)
Function Tree
Diagrams(PCD)
departments. Each employee is assigned to an Data Control Function
organisational position, is included in an
Fig. 1 Proposed Business Modelling Tools
organisational unit and has at least one specific
organisational role, which underlies his/ hers
The methods used in the four views supported by
basic tasks (activities) in the organisation.
the ARIS architecture are the following:
 IT Roles: All the employees that have access to
 Data View: Entity Relationship Models (ERM)
the Information Systems of the organisation must
are used for the representation of the exchanged
carry out systemic activities, which are part of
information in the new system.
specific IT roles. The determination of the users’
 Function View: The function tree method is used
IT roles is very important for Internal Audit
for the hierarchical representation of functions in
purposes.
order to minimise their complexity.
 Information: The information (as well as the
 Organisational View: The organisational charts
material) can be the input or the output of an
are used in order to designate the chain of
activity. It can have a formal (e.g. report or
command within the organisation. The analysis
application form) or informal (e.g. verbal
reaches the representation level of the employee.
information) form. Information is the most
 Control View: Extended Event Process Chain
important form of interface between the different
(eEPC) diagrams are used for the representation
departments or divisions.
of the control view, which combine the data,
 Employees: The employees are the intellectual
function and organisational views. PCD
asset of the organisation and are responsible for
diagrams are used for the representation of
its operations. They have one or more
additional information such as the automated
organisational roles but they can also have one or
functions in the new system. The definition of
more IT roles.
each transaction operated by the different system
roles is presented in Role Allocation Diagrams
Business processes are dynamic in nature. Such a
(RAD).
dynamic behavior suggests that documentation
cannot realize its full benefits in case it is managed
A further method in the strategic level (the
just like a snapshot. It has to be easily updateable and
Value-Added Chain Diagram) was used in order to
directly accessible to every employee of the
define the core and support business processes of the
company. It can be concluded that the determination
organization.
of the appropriate software tool affects the success of
The selected methods in the four views of the
the documentation system and the implementation of
ARIS Architecture enable the generation of the
the continuous process improvement in the
following reports, which cover the specific
organisation.
organisational needs for analytical documentation
Based on the concepts described in the previous
after the implementation of an ERP system:
paragraphs and trying to cover the specific needs for
 Analytical organisational charts reaching the
documentation of organisations after the
representation level of employees (covering the
implementation of large ERP systems, a proposed
need for up-to-date organisational charts).
business modelling approach was developed, based
 List of organisational roles per employee
on the ARIS architecture and the ARIS IT software
(covering the need for analytical and easy to use
consisting of the methods (business modelling tools)
organisational charts).
presented in Figure 1.
 Activities carried out by each employee,
organisational role, department and division
 (covering the need for job descriptions for each provided by the ARIS architecture (organisational,
organisational role). function, data, and process view). The final business
 Activities carried out by each IT role (covering model included all the reengineered processes, the
the need for efficient IT authorizations design). new organisational roles that execute the activities in
 List of IT roles per employee (covering the need which the processes are decomposed, the system
for IT authorizations monitoring). roles assigned to organisational units and the job
 List of necessary transactions for each system descriptions per organisational and system role. To
role and each employee (covering the need for IT achieve this goal, a set of modelling ARIS methods
authorizations monitoring). have been selected from the numerous methods
 Process descriptions for each process based on included in the ARIS toolset and subsequently
the verbal description of each activity (covering deployed in a holistic manner, in order to develop a
the need for process documentation). List of business model capable to support the particular
references (transactions) to ERP Users’ Manuals needs of the management reporting system on jobs,
material for the operation of the systemic system and organisational roles. The expected result
activities (covering the need for meaningful of the business modelling tool development and
support of the system’s users). application is the decision support of management
and the job abetting for the employees during the
after live phase of the ERP system, thus improving
3 A Case Study of a Large the system’s acceptance in the first stages of the use
and maintenance phase.
Organisation Operating in the The first step taken in this study was the
Petroleum Industry elaboration of the business oriented organisation
The company in which the proposed business process view, which described the hierarchical structure of
modelling approach was applied is the largest the organisation, meaning the organizational units
industrial and commercial enterprise in its country, with the communication and reporting relationships
operating as a fully integrated oil enterprise whose among them. In this paper the organisational chart
activities range from refining of crude oil and method of ARIS architecture has been used in order
trading/ marketing of petroleum products to to streamline the description of the enterprise,
production, trading and marketing of all other forms consolidating similar task groups into organisational
of energy. It employs about 4,500 people worldwide, units. Organisational units are directly being assigned
while revenues in year 2000 totaled €4,3 million. The with organisational positions. A position is an ARIS
efficiency of the group is further enhanced by the object which is defined by the function amount that
integrated administrative scheme, which an individual employee (person) can handle.
encompasses most of the subsidiaries and affiliates. Positions and persons assigned to each position were
Following the corporate restructuring and the high allocated to the aforementioned organisational units
cash flows of the 1998-2000 period, the group now according to the parameters of business or reporting
has the liquidity and borrowing capacity to finance its structures. Specific employees, however, are rarely
business expansion. allocated to a particular function because the business
In the context of this expansion, the company concept would have to be updated if these persons
decided to integrate its business process by the were transferred or left the company. Therefore the
acquisition and implementation of an ERP system, term “role” was introduced describing a certain type
provided by the market leading company on the of employee with clearly defined qualifications and
enterprise resource planning software market. The skills. The roles represented in the organisational
size of the company under study and the wide scope charts are organisational roles. The system roles (the
of the ERP system implementation were expected to SAP R/3 roles) assigned to each employee having
impose a large amount of organizational distortion authorization access to the system were separately
thus calling for the reception of certain measures to defined in different organizational charts.
support the change management process. The work Having elaborated the organisational diagrams of
presented in this paper concerns the after-live phase the business structure, the study efforts turned into
of the ERP project, this being the use and the assessment and mapping of the process and
maintenance phase. sub-process hierarchy of the enterprise. In the top
The main goal of the project was the elaboration level of this structure (strategic view), a Value Added
of analytical business process models, for the Chain Diagram was deployed, consisting of both the
mapping of the whole enterprise under the prism of core and the support business processes and the
the newly implemented ERP system in the four views relationships between them. Business Process
strategy creates functions that the enterprise must transactions is accomplished in the Role Assignment
carry out efficiently. The identified business Diagram (RAD). One role is shown per column. The
processes were decomposed in sub-processes with transactions are placed in the columns, creating
the use of function trees. These function trees are implicit relationships. In addition to the
hierarchy diagrams decomposing function bundles representation of event control, in the context of the
(in our case, processes), into functions process view, the data flows between functions were
(sub-processes that can be broken down further, represented using information objects directly
directly blending in with a function bundle), and connected with the activities that make use or
elementary functions (in our case, activities) that generate them.
cannot be broken down any further. The interconnections between the ARIS views, is
The data view includes the description of shown in Figure 2.
information objects, manipulated by activities. In this
paper, the detailed data structure of a business
application area was modeled using the ARIS ERM
method, which is a standard for modeling business
processes in real world projects. These diagrams
consist of entity and relation types, linked with each
other by edges. Extended ERMs are enhanced by
specifying cardinalities, adding specification/
generalization operators and reinterpreting relation
types into entity types. For the specific reporting
needs of the company a number of ERM diagrams
were elaborated.
All the methods used in the context of the Fig. 2 Interconnections Between the Business
strategic, data and function view of the ARIS Process Model Objects
architecture are integrated into one view (control
view), which manages to combine all this Recapitulating, within the context of the project a
information into one consistent and meaningful set of ARIS diagrams (organizational charts, function
model. The ARIS method used in this view is the trees, ERMs, eEPC’s, Function Allocation Diagrams
extended Event Driven Process Chain Diagram and Role Allocation Diagrams) were elaborated
(eEPC) which displays the activities in different creating an analytical business model, covering the
detail and is the key component of SAP R/3 modeling needs of the SD (Sales & Distribution), FI (Finance),
concepts for business engineering and customizing. CO (Controlling), PP (Production Planning), MM
The eEPCs utilize a sequence of events and functions (Material Management), PM (Plant Maintenance)
(in our models, activities) to transform a number of and QM (Quality Management) software modules.
inputs to a desired output. Actions are illustrated by The business model included database information
indicating the successive function with arrows for 4500 employees, 84 business processes, 908
delivering messages regarding the occurrence of an activities, 206 system roles and 592 system
event to the next function, and thus activating it. transactions. In the following paragraphs of the paper
Before the next function the messages are placed in a limited case study regarding the purchasing process
the queue for processing. Messages can contain (the SKU Material purchasing sub-process).
additional attributes transmitting special processing More specifically, the steps followed for the
information to the next function. Logical implementation of the business process modelling
relationships between the objects in the diagram are approach, were the following:
represented using the OR, AND and XOR symbols of  Interviews with the key users of each module in
the ARIS methodology. The eEPC diagrams can be order to obtain a perfect understanding of the
easily transformed into PCD diagrams, which new business process.
emphasise on the organizational participation in the  Thorough study of the business blueprints
sub-process. developed during the implementation phase, as
Each activity can be assigned both roles and well as the ERP’s user manuals.
transactions. However, because there is no direct  Construction of the new organizational chart
relationship between roles and transactions in an EPC after the ERP-driven BPR took place (ARIS
diagram, with roles that occur multiple times, it organizational view). An example of an
cannot be decided for which transactions these roles
are responsible. The assignment of roles to
 organizational chart for the Purchasing displays the transactions of three purchasing
Department is presented in Figure 3. system roles.

Purchasing
Department
MM - Buyer MM – Buyer MM – Buyer Head
Head of Supervisor of Department
Noidis G.
Department

ME21N: Create ME21N: Create ME21N: Create

Buyers
Kotidis Purchase Order Purchase Order Purchase Order
Supervisor

Buyers Plant Buyers

ME28: P.O ME28: P.O
Release Release

Bouklas Georgiou Tomatsidis Thanos Agiptatdis Kyriakou

Fig. 3 Purchasing Department Organisational Chart MM02: Change MM02: Change

Material Material

 Determination of the organisation business

processes and classification in core and support ME9F: Message ME9F: Message
Output Output
processes. The determined business processes
are determined in the Value Added Chain
Diagram of Figure 4.
Fig.7 Transactions for Purchasing System Roles
Production
Purchasing
Purchasing
Production
&&Production
Production
Control
Control
Sales
Sales
Processing
Processing
Distribution
Distribution  Identification of important information
exchanged between the activities and
representation of their relationships with the use
Plant
Maintenance
Production
Planning
Quality
Management
Inventory
Management
Financials Controlling of entity relationship diagrams (ERM). The
ERM (partial view) of the purchasing process is
Fig. 4 Enterprise Value Added Chain Diagram
shown in Figure 8.
 Elaboration of a function tree for each process
included in the Value Added Chain Diagram. Purchase Purchase
The function tree of the purchasing process Employee 1 Creates N
Requisition
Header 1
Contains
N
Requisition
Line Item
consisted of ten different sub-processes is shown 1

in Figure 5. Corresponds

Purchasing 1 N N
Purchasing Purchase Order 1 Purchase Order
Buyer Creates Contains
Header Line Item

1 1
Non
NonSKU
SKU
SKU Material Service
Service Request for Urgent Material Is
SKU Material Material Request for Urgent Material
Purchasing Material Purchasing Quotation Purchasing Contains
Purchasing Purchasing
Purchasing
Purchasing Quotation Purchasing Assigned

1 1
Contractual
Contractual Purchasing
Purchasingbyby Crude
CrudeOil
Oil
Vendor Master Crude Oil
Agreement Contractual Vendor Master Purchasing Crude Oil
Agreement Contractual Maintenance Purchasing Purchasing (CIF)
Creation Agreement Maintenance (FOB) Purchasing (CIF) Vendor
Creation Agreement (FOB) Material

Fig. 5 Purchasing Process Function Tree 1

1

1 Purchasing 1
Participates Participates

 Identification of the systemic roles for each user

Info Record

of the ERP system and their representation with Fig. 8. Purchasing ERM Diagram (Partial View)
the use of role diagrams. A role diagram for a
buyer supervisor is shown in Figure 6.  Development of analytical process chain
diagrams (decomposition of the processes
Kotidis included in the process diagrams, representing
MM - MM - Fuel MM -
all the activities taking place, automated or not).
MM - Power MM - Purchase MM - Power MM -
MM - Buyer
Supervisor
User -
Vendors
Order
Approver
Purchasing
Process
User -
Materials
Inventory
Monitoring
Contracts
Agreement
Agreement
Management These diagrams integrate all the discrete ARIS
Overview Display Clerk

Fig.6 Buyers’ Supervisor Role Diagram views using elements from the organizational
charts, the data models and the role diagrams. An
 Definition of transactions per system role using example of an eEPC diagram for the SKU
the Role Allocation ARIS method. Figure 7, Material Purchasing Process is presented in
Figure 9.
 Material
 Connection of the users’ manuals with the
Vendor
Buyer
activities that each employee has to undertake,
Purchase
Requisition
Purchase
Requisition
Approved
Print of
Purchase
making the study of the support material easier
Buyer
Line Item
Purchase
Order Header
Order
MM - Buyer and more focused (as each employee could
Purchase
Order Header
Purchase
Order Creation
MM - Buyer
Purchase
identify the parts of the manuals that were of
Purchase

Purchase
Order Line
Item
Order
Printed interest to him/ her).
Order Line Purchasing
Item Purchase Department
Order Buyers
Created Supervisor
Send Purchase
Order to
The ARIS software capability and the database
Vendor

Purchase
Purchase
Head of
Department
MM - Buyer
support it offers, enabled the easy update and
Order
Order Header
Approval
MM – Buyer Vendor
alteration of the business models, making the
Purchase
Supervisor

Purchase
available documentation up-to-date for every
Order
Approved
MM – Buyer
Head of
Department
Order Sent
company employee. The real-time, standardized and
exact representation of the organisational business
Fig. 9 SKU Material Purchasing eEPC (Partial View) models encouraged the initiatives for continuous
process improvement and the participation of all the
 Generation of all the reports presented in employees who could easier make suggestions for
Chapter 2, based on the underlying ARIS model improved process operations.
repository. One of the identified areas that could further
 Validation of the results and presentation to the improve was the easier reporting generation and the
Top Management. need for employees’ computer literacy (outside the
IT department) in order to be able to easily use the
4 Conclusions and Further Research available documentation on-line. Moreover, the
The proposed business modelling approach was effort needed for the generation of the models raised
applied in one of the largest companies in Greece. All questions concerning the successful applicability of
business processes and activities of the company the approach in smaller organisations. The proposed
were modeled in the ARIS software using the approach is now implemented in an enterprise of one
suggested methods described in the paper. All three thousand employees and further research conclusions
thousands and five hundred employees were included are expected by the end of the year.
in the analytical organisational charts and their
organisational and IT roles were identified in the
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