Business Process Cycle: Analyze Phase

Tasks of the Analyze Phase

In this phase, the business process expert reviews the business issue to be resolved, and in that context evaluates the end-to-end processes of the company, along with its strategy, governance documents and other process information. By defining key performance indicators and creating business cases, the business process expert identifies the needs of the business and defines the requirements to create and implement the new or enhanced processes and applications.

This phase includes the following tasks:

• Analyze the current environment and any processes already in place
  The business process expert creates end-to-end scenarios for the required processes, and specifies and documents the process architecture of the company 
• Identify needs and define requirements
  Referring to SAP or other standardized scenarios and best practices, the business process expert determines the optimal new processes and investigates how existing processes can be enhanced to resolve open issues.

Tools for the Analyze Phase

  Business process experts can use the following tools during the analyze phase: 

• SAP business maps. Download the Solution Composer to view, customize, or create your own business maps. 
• SAP business configuration models 
• BI analysis process designer

Documentation for the Analyze Phase

For each task in the analyze phase, the following documentation is helpful.

Task: Analyze current environment and processes

• Business Planning and Analytical Services -> Business Planning
  Activate and lead the decision-making process, predict future trends based on historic analyses, uncover hidden or complex relationships between data, and provide decision makers with a central point of access to data and information. 
• Enterprise Knowledge Management -> Content Integration and Management
  Access company information to create a connection between structured business data and unstructured documents.

  Task: Identify needs and define requirements 

• Requirements definition
  Use SAP Best Practices Baseline Package to review existing scenarios and processes.

For Another View

In the first part of his two-part blog, Swen Conrad looks at the role of the business process expert in conjunction with ARIS for SAP NetWeaver.

According to Swen in the second part of his blog, there isn't just one career path or entry point to the role of the business process expert. He differentiates the business process expert from other IT or business roles and defines the required skill set for the role.