Business activity patterns and user profiles

Business activities drive demand for services. Customer assets such as People, Process es, and Application s generate patterns of business activity (PBA). PBA define dynamics of a business and include interactions with customers, supplier s, partners and other stakeholders. Service s often directly support PBA. Since PBA generate revenue, income and costs they account for a large proportion of business outcomes.

Patterns of business activity (PBA) are identified, codified, and shared across process for clarity and completeness of detail. One or more attributes such as frequency, volume, location and duration describe business activity. They are associated with requirement s such as security, privacy and latency or tolerance for delays (Table 5.8). This profile of business activity can change over time with changes and improvements in business processes, people, organization, applications and infrastructure. PBA are placed under change control.

PBA No. 45F Activities	Activity Levels
Hi				Lo	NA
Interact with customers remotely (frequency)			x
Interact with customers on-site (frequency)				x
Archive or handle customer information			x
Process sensitive information (privacy)						x
Generate confidential information						x
Provide technical support (frequency)		x
Seek technical assistance				x
Network bandwidth requirements		x
Data storage requirements (volume)		x
Tolerance for delay in service response			x
Seasonal variations in activity				x
Print document s and images			x
Mailing of documents using third-party system s			x
Process transaction s with wireless mobile device				x
Email using wireless device					x
Access work systems during domestic travel				x
Access work systems during overseas travel					x

Table 5.8 Codifying patterns of business activity

Each PBA has to be substantially different from another PBA in order to be coded with a unique reference. Codifying patterns helps multidimensional analysis, using criteria such as likeness and nearness. This provides efficiency and robustness in developing a catalogue of patterns with simplification and standardization to reduce the number of patterns, make analysis easier, and avoid complicated solutions.

User profile s (UP) are based on role s and responsibilities within organizations for people, and function s and operations for processes and application s. As suggested earlier, business process es and applications are treated as users in many business contexts. Many processes are not actively executed or controlled by staff or personnel. Process automation allows for processes to consume services on their own. Processes and applications can have user profiles. Whether they should is a matter of judgment.

Each UP can be associated with one or more PBA (Table 5.9). This allows aggregations and relations between diverse PBS connected by the interactions between their respective UPs. User profiles (UP) are constructed using one ore more predefined PBA. They are also under change control. UPs represent patterns that are persistent and correlated.

User profile	Applicable pattern of business activity (PBA)	PBA code
Senior executive (UP1)	Moderate travel-domestic and overseas; highly sensitive information; zero latency on service request s; high need for technical assistance; need to be highly available to the business	45F 45A 35D
Highly mobile executive (UP2)	Extensive travel-domestic and overseas; sensitive information; low latency on service requests; moderate need for technical assistance; high customer contact; need to be highly available to customers	45A 35D 22A
Office-based staff (UP3)	Office-based administrative staff; low travel-domestic; medium latency on service requests; low need for technical assistance; full-featured desktop needs; moderate customer contact; high volume of paperwork; need to be highly productive during work hours	22A 14B 3A
Payment processing system (UP4)	Business system; high volume; transaction -based; high security needs; low latency on service request s; low seasonal variation; mailing of documents by postal service; automatic customer notification; under regulatory compliance; need for low unit cost s; need to be highly secure and transparent (audit control)	12F
Customer assistance process (UP5)	Business process; moderate volume; transaction-based; moderate security needs; very low latency on service requests; medium seasonal variation; mailing of replacement parts by express; automatic customer notification; need to be highly responsive to customers	24G 10G

Table 5.9 User profiles matched with business activity patterns (example)

Pattern matching using PBA and UP ensure a systematic approach to understanding and managing demand from customers. They also require customers to better understand their own business activities and view them as consumers of services and producers of demand. When they are used to communicate demand, service provider s have the information necessary to sort and serve the demand with appropriately matched services, service level s, and service asset s. This leads to improved value for both customers and service providers by eliminating waste and poor performance.

UP communicate information on the role s, responsibilities, interactions, schedules, work environment s and social context of related user s.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14