Business process analysis
Your business practices encompass how you manage your enterprise. You can start the analyses of your processes by collecting information about your enterprise. This information helps you to determine the types of processes that you could automate.
Enterprise analysis
Gather the following enterprise information to use when designing your workflow processes:
- If you have an organizational chart, review your organizational chart to see how your enterprise is organized.
- If your enterprise is multinational, list the languages that are required for your workflow processes.
- Collect the business process flows that document the business units of your organization. If there are different process flows for the same organizations at various locations, gather those process flows. Compare the business practices at locations to find out if the differences are significant.
- Review the standard operating procedures, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9000 quality management or the ISO 14000 procedures.
- Review the regulatory requirements for your industry and how they affect your business processes.
- Review the policies that define who is responsible for creating budgets.
- Review the policies that define financial approval limits and list the individuals who have the authority to approve spending.
- Research the types of records at your enterprise that require approval.
- Review the policies that define the levels of approval that are required for each type of record.
Implementation analysis
Gather the following implementation information for use when designing your workflow processes:
- Determine the number of organizations and sites that exist for your enterprise. You create workflow processes at the system level. Find out if there are separate processes or subprocesses for different organizations or sites.
- Find out if you use the Integration Framework to integrate with any external systems.
- Determine if any Maximo® product options have been purchased.
- Research the applications that your enterprise has implemented.
- Determine the types of records for which you use the software.
- Find out if the system has been configured to generate records, such as inventory reorder records, preventive maintenance work orders, and scheduled payment invoices.
- Determine if your implementation uses Start Centers that do not include the Workflow Inbox. If users cannot access the Inbox, you can design your workflow processes to send e-mail messages to notify users.