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Business process framework represents the individual guidelines, policies, and procedures a company implements to enhance and improve its overall business operations. Most companies break down their departments or divisions into several processes to improve workflow. This provides business owners, directors, managers, and employees with specific responsibilities in their job tasks that directly affect the output of each process. Business process framework also makes extensive use of charts and graphs, which provide companies with a pictorial reference to outline process tasks and activities.
Business processes typically fall under one of three categories: management, operational, and support. Management processes relate specifically to owners, directors, and managers, with the business process framework commonly outlined in the company’s corporate governance. This governance creates standards for the company’s ethics, defines the mission and vision of the organization, separates duties among managers and dictates the acceptable behavior and contracts for business relationships. Larger companies will typically have more corporate governance rules due to the number of directors and managers in the company.
Operational business process framework provides information on the main tasks and activities in an organization. These processes can include procurement, receiving, warehousing, manufacturing, sales and marketing. Each process must directly relate to a company’s core activities, which typically include the production of consumer goods and services. Most companies have similar operational processes, albeit called by different names. This framework can outline how each individual process relates to the others, as well as the number of tasks inside each process. It is often different within each process since different activities are needed to complete the process’ functions.
Support processes can include maintenance, accounting, human resources, and information technology support. These processes do not necessarily add value to a company’s production process, they are ancillary services to support and improve production. Business process framework can help companies develop procedures and guidelines to enhance the relationship between the primary and secondary business processes. These ancillary processes will also affect more than one primary or secondary business process. Business owners and managers often spend copious amounts of time developing the framework for these processes due to their wide-ranging activities.
Creating framework is not necessarily an all-encompassing, finite solution to organizational management. Owners, directors, and mangers must be willing to review and enforce the policies and guidelines to ensure that the company remains relevant in the business environment and does not allow fraudulent activities to occur in business processes. Outlining various internal controls and punishments for failure to follow the process framework can help organizations prohibit detrimental behavior by employees.
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