Using Information Technology to Redesign Business Process: Case Study in Re-Engineering the “Increase Credit Limit” Process at AUB Nadine Ghandour1, Ali J. Ghandour2, Hussein AlAssadi2, Akram Tannir2 1 2
Lebanes University (
[email protected]) American University of Beirut (
[email protected]) ABSTRACT
At the beginning of every semester, lots of students at the American University of Beirut (AUB) apply for a petition to increase their credit load. In this project, we will study the process for “Increasing Credit Limit” and we attempt to reengineer it. We will particularly 1) define the current process, model and analyze it, 2) propose a to-be design to optimize the existing process, 3) finally present a conclusion to the topic and state our recommendation. Keywords: Process Modeling, Process Re-engineering, Information Technology, Web-based management systems. 1. INTRODUCTION Throughout the history, and as centuries pass, humans have made great technological progress in all aspects of life. IT (Information Technology) is a field that has been exposed to a lot of radical improvements. Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term is more recognizable than ever before. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems.
schedules, viewing midterm/final grades, transfer credit, changing student PIN number and viewing address information [1]. Our process is a reengineering topic, namely enhancing and optimizing the existing process of applying for a petition to increase student credit limit. After defining the current process’s different activities and modeling it, we aim to simulate and analyze it to identify bottlenecks and resource wasting operations. We will then propose a to-be process which will make use of IT solutions to automate the application procedure and allow students to apply for credit increase online. Modeling and simulation of both processes will be performed using the Savvion package [2]. Finally, based on our simulations and analysis, we will quantify the enhancements proposed and issue a recommendation. 3. AS-IS MODEL
The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we provide a brief literature. In section 3, we introduce the existing as-is mode, identify its participants, define the process steps and simulate it in order to find possible bottlenecks. In section 4, we discuss the suggested to-be model that can be adopted in order to relieve the existing bottlenecks. We present simulations that show that average waiting time has been reduced by 20 times factor. Finally, we conclude in section 5. 2. BACKGROUND AUB has assigned great importance for the development of web-based systems that provide high-quality services to students, faculty, and administrators. The AUB SIS (AUB Student Information System) is a web-based application designed to provide services to students and faculty over the intranet or internet. Some services provided by AUB SIS will include registration (adding/dropping classes), viewing/modifying class
Defining and understanding the existing as-is model is an essential step in process re-engineering. The questions that the design team asks about are: • What is the existing process doing? • How well does it perform? • What are the critical issues that impact the process performance? [3] 3.1 Process participants First, we will begin by identifying the process participants. These participants are involved in the existing as-is model: • Student • Records office secretary • Advisor • Department Secretary • Chairman • Registrar (Process owner)
Note that some of the participants may not be included in the to-be design in order to optimize the process. 3.2 Process Steps As mentioned before, this case study is limited and oriented for the American University of Beirut, more specifically for the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (FEA). The choice of this smaller scope is to make our case study concentrated on a specific process (the FEA increase credit limit process) since processes do change from one faculty to another. However, a small tweaking may be needed in order to adopt our analysis to a new process model. In the future, the work can be generalized to all university faculties and departments. For the engineering and architecture students to apply for an increase of credit limit they have to: 1. Get petition Form from department 2. Fill in Form 3. Visit advisor and get his approval 4. Return to department to submit the Form 5. Print transcript from AUBsis if requested by department 6. Wait for chairman approval 7. Wait for Dean approval in case of 20, 21 and 22 credits petitions 8. Wait for the Form to be transferred to registrar 9. Wait for registrar to increase credit limit 3.3 Model with Savvion In order to analyze the as-is process, we have to model it using a capable processing modeling software package. We made use of Savvion package in order to model the existing process. 3.3.1 Savvion Savvion Process Modeler is a high-quality business process modeling software designed specifically for the businessperson. It did not take too long to mock up a business process. There is no complex configuration and there is no code. We built a model using Savvion for the case of applying for 18 and 19 credits and simulated and analyzed it (Fig. 1 at the end of the paper).
4. TO-BE MODEL The existing process exhibits many bottlenecks. To get rid of these bottlenecks and increase throughput, it is essential to get rid of all this paperwork completely. The solution key is to make use of IT solution to re-engineer the as-is model and optimize it and remove all the existing delays. 4.1 Process Steps The suggested To-be model is composed of the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Student logs in to AUBSiS Fill in “Overload Form” Advisor is notified by email to input decision into SiS If advisor approves, SiS asks chairman for approval online If chairman approves, the Dean is asked to approve in case of 20, 21 and 22 credits When approved, the credit limit is increased automatically
Note that in all cases the student is notified about the result immediately. 4.2 Process Explanation As we already mentioned, AUB has adopted an advanced AUB Student Information System (AUBsis) application which is a web-based application designed to provide services to students and faculty over the internet. The idea in this re-engineering process is to make use of the AUBsis to allow students to apply for credit increase online. After logging into his AUBsis account, the student has to click on “Student Services”. From student services, he chooses “Student Records” (see Fig. 2).
3.4 Simulation Results The Savvion simulation for the load increase process shows three bottle necks in the design. Theses bottlenecks are: 1. Going to advisor 2. Presenting petition to chairman 3. Printing transcript Figure 2: AUBsis View
Name: ID:
Primary Advisor: Secondary Advisor: Administrative Advisor:
Open Date: Close Date: Last semester GPA: Cumulative GPA: Override to 18 Override to 19 Override to 20/21/22 Reason for overload:
SUBMIT Term:
Figure 3: Overload Application In the “Student Records” list, we will add an “Online Forms” link. This link is to be used for future enhancement of the project. For this project, we will only have an “Overload Form” in the Online Forms. After clicking the “Overload Form”, the student will have an application to fill which is quite similar to the existing application (see Fig. 3). The “Name”, “ID”, “Primary Advisor”, “Secondary Advisor” and “Administrative Advisor” fields are to be filled directly from the student database which is already stored in the AUBsis. The “Primary Advisor” is assigned by the departments and he is responsible for advising the students. The “Primary Advisor” decides whether to allow for an increase in the students’ credit limit or not based on a case by case study. The “Primary Advisor” has a list of advisees and he has access to AUBsis. The “Secondary Advisor” is usually set to be the chairman of each department. He has also access to AUBsis, and finally, the “Administrative Advisor” will participate in
the process when the Dean approval is needed (as we will explain later). The “Open Date” is to be set by the Registrar. It will be the starting of the term that is directly before the term we are applying for. The “Close Date” is chosen to be four days before “Drop and Add” period. This choice is due to the fact that processing the application may be delayed for an unexpected reason like the travel of the advisor or other reasons. Therefore, a student who is applying for an increase credit limit in the spring semester has a period between the start of the fall term and till 4 days before “Drop and Add” to access AUBsis and fill his application. It is important to mention that a “job” will be running inside AUBsis to notify advisee of the time limits by mail. The “Term” field is used to select which term the student wants to apply for. Previous term will be available as “View Only” and this will give a “History” property for our project since the student can return back to check applications he applied for in previous terms.
After selecting his reasons for applying to such petition, the student has to press the “Submit” button. On submission, student receives a mail where he is notified that his petition was sent successfully. In this mail, the student is also informed that he can check his application status online. At the same time, the “primary advisor” also receives a mail to tell him that one of his advisee has applied to an overload petition. The advisor has a time limit to assess the petition. This time limit is set to be two days after the “Close Date”. Thus, the advisor has not to assess each petition upon received but can delay it and process all petitions together. If the advisor did not asses the petition before the deadline, he will be notified via mail again. When assessed by the advisor, the application is either approved or declined. If the application is declined, the process will end and a mail will be sent to the student in order to inform him that his petition was not accepted. In case the advisor approves, the petition will be forwarded to the chairman. The chairman receives a mail to assess the petition and he has also a deadline of two days. As in the advisor case, if the chairman did not approve, the process will end. Also in the case of 18 and 19 credits, if the chairman approves the process comes to its end. The student will be notified via mail and the credit limit value will be replaced by the approved value. In the case of 20, 21 and 22 credits, the Dean must approve. But since he didn’t have access to AUBsis, the administrative advisor is notified by mail after the chairman approval. The case will be presented to the Dean and he has to approve or decline. It is important to note that all “Updates” and “Mail Sent” is done at banner update which took place at midnight at AUB. 4.3 Online Status The student can check the status of his petition online step by step. The following matrix (see Fig. 4) will contain all the necessary information about the petition.
Figure 4: Petition Matrix 4.4 Model with Savvion In order to analyze the to-be process, we have to model it using a computer tool. We make use of Savvion package in order to model the existing process.
We built a model using Savvion for the case of applying for 18 and 19 credits and we simulate this model and analyze it (see Fig. 5). Simulation results show that improvements in the process waiting time and total time where immense. These improvements where quantified to average about a factor of 20 times better than the as-is model! This is a significant improvement mostly attributed to the removal of the unnecessary visits to and from faculty offices and departments. 5. CONCLUSION In this work, we presented a case study of the incorporation of IT in business process re-engineering. We recommend using the reengineered To-Be process because of its obvious performance enhancements in throughput, latency, and most importantly, the increase in the satisfaction of all humans involved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Mr. Mohamad Nassif, Assistant of the Registrar for Registration Affairs at AUB, for his valuable feedback on this work. REFERENCES [1] http://www.aub.edu.lb/registrar/Pages/index.aspx accessed in February 28, 2010. [2] www.savvion.com accessed in February 27, 2010. [3] M. Laguna and J. Marklund, “Business Process
Modeling, Simulation and Design”, Prentice Hall, March 2004.
Figure 1: As-is Model using Savvion for 18 and 19 credits cases
Figure 5: To-Be Model using Savvion for 18 and 19 credits cases
