Mobile Applications - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 479

completely successful in doing this. In a break with the legacy enterprise-
wide solutions, modern ES treats business processes as more fundamental
than data items.
Collaborations or relationships manifest themselves through the various
organizational and interorganizational processes. A process may be gener-
ally defined as the set of resources and activities necessary and sufficient to
convert some form of input into some form of output. Processes are inter-
nal, external, or a combination of both; they cross functional boundaries;
they have starting and ending points; and they exist at all levels within the
organization.
The significance of a process to the success of the enterprise's business is
dependent on the value, with reference to the customer, of the collaboration
that it addresses and represents. In other words, the nature and extent of the
value addition by a process to a product or services delivered to a customer
is the best index of the contribution of that process to the company's over-
all customer satisfaction or customer collaboration. Customer knowledge by
itself is not adequate; it is only when the organization has effective processes
for sharing this information and integrating the activities of frontline work-
ers and has the ability to coordinate the assignment and tracking of work
that organizations can become effective.
Thus, Management by Collaboration (MBC) not only recognizes inherently
the significance of various process-related techniques and methodologies
such as process innovation (PI), business process improvement (BPI), busi-
ness process redesign (BPRD), business process re-engineering (BPR), and
business process management (BPM) but also treats them as fundamental,
continuous, and integral functions of the management of a company itself.
A collaborative enterprise enabled by the implementation of an ES is inher-
ently amenable to business process involvement, which is also the essence of
any total quality management (TQM)-oriented effort undertaken within an
enterprise.
22.2.1 Value-Add Driven Enterprise
Business processes can be seen as the very basis of the value addition
within an organization that was traditionally attributed to various func-
tions or divisions in an organization. As organizational and environmental
conditions become more complex, global, and competitive, processes pro-
vide a framework for dealing effectively with the issues of performance
improvement, capability development, and adaptation to the changing
environment.
Along a value stream (i.e., a business process), analysis of the absence or
creation of added value or (worse) destruction of value critically determines
the necessity and effectiveness of a process step. The understanding of value-
adding and non-value-adding processes (or process steps) is a significant
factor in the analysis, design, benchmarking, and optimization of business