Evaluation of Business Processes — Basis for Successfully Changing the Organization of ERA^© Ltd., a Slovenian Retail Company

Summary

The paper presents the methodology of evaluating business processes used in the Slovenian retail company ERA Ltd. Since evaluation plays an important role in the comprehensive approach to business process reengineering within the company, the presentation starts with the introduction of the project Business Process Reengineering at ERA and the ARIS methodology as a tool for process modeling reengineering. This is followed by a short presentation of business process modeling in relation to purchasing in retail outlets. The established existing situation represents the starting point for the evaluation and analysis of the purchasing process. The paper then outlines some applications of the methodology of business process evaluation along with their practical application value and advantages of the evaluation methodology to the company. The evaluation process enables the identification of more time-consuming functions (activities) that represent significant cost centers, comparisons of work processes between different organizational units — internal benchmarking (in this case between retail outlets), evaluation of proposals for changing the processes of the organization and so on. Such insights and conclusions facilitate the decision-making in relation to the introduction of more radical changes into the organization (change management) aimed at improving the overall company performance.