The company, which deals with retail sales, has its headquarters near Prague and a network of retail stores, is based on the fact that it is a process-driven company.
At its headquarters, it has a four-member team whose task is to manage the process book – to draw individual processes, monitor their effectiveness and propose changes.
It processes the process book as a model in Enterprise Architect and publishes the processes using EA Infoport.
A simplified version of the BPMN 2 language was chosen as the syntax, the process analysts use the Corporate Edition of Enterprise Architect, and EA Infoport MBE (Medium Business Edition) is used to publish the process book.
Two employees are trained at each retail store who are able to read BPMN diagrams (usually the manager and his/her deputy, but sometimes it is another employee if he/she is technically oriented and shows interest in BPMN training – usually it is a step to subsequent promotion). The job of these employees is to advise other employees, based on approved processes, to check whether the activities performed are in accordance with the processes and also to suggest their improvement.
Because there are not only processes in the repository, but also other diagrams and the structure of the repository itself is relatively complex, it was decided to use the publishing module. Another reason for using the publishing module is that the owners of the relevant business processes are also from the business sector and without the knowledge of Enterprise Architect – but still want to retain control over the published processes.
Therefore, a structure of sections/directories was created in the publishing module, which more closely corresponds to the business's view of the process model (for example, they are at the first level of the directory as Sales, Complaints, Warehouse Management, etc.).
An owner is assigned to each folder at the first level who is able to approve the business process (especially its accuracy) and determine from when, to when and whether the process will be valid at all. Because the owner is usually not able to do it himself/herself, he/she defines so-called approvers who are able to verify processes and approve them on his/her behalf.
The individual process diagrams are then published in the structures prepared in this way by the analysts who were entrusted with their modification (of processes).
These users (analysts, owners and approvers) must have user accounts in the portal, either directly or through active directory.
Because the information portal runs on the company's internal network and there is no risk of unauthorised access to it, there is no need for other users to have their own accounts and they can access using the visitor's account. The permissions for this account have been set to see only the publishing module and not the entire repository.
The individual processes are drawn (and updated at the request of the owners) by the process analysis department and then published in the individual folders of the publishing module. Prior to publication, they are always approved by a folder owner or by an authorised approver. If a new version of an existing process is published, care is taken to ensure that the versions of the process follow each other. For example, so that the old version of the process expires on the last day of the month and the new version takes effect from the following day. It should not happen, for example, that two versions of the process apply in one day, or none on the contrary.