Task

Your task is to model, analyze and redesign one of the key processes at ABIL. A description of the "as is" process is provided for you below. You are required to use this description, which is an outcome of some process discovery activities, as the basis for analyzing the process, identifying improvement opportunities and designing an improved "to-be" process..

1. As-is model: The task is to understand the "as-is" process and complete the Process Discovery state of the BPM lifecycle. This means you will need to design a detailed BPMN process model (using Signavio) that reflects the current state of the process. You are not required to visually model process performance information (e.g., duration of activities). All process elements have been correctly modelled, including sub-processes, using appropriate modelling conventions.

2. Waste analysis: Continuing through the BPM lifecycle, next, you should identify wastes in the process. The wastes should be documented in a "Waste Analysis" table in your report, by applying the 7+1 waste types. The Waste Analysis table should include the following columns: type of waste, and description of identified waste. All wastes and 5 main issues have been identified using appropriate analysis methods and adequately described and quantified (where possible).

3. Issues register: Once you have identified wastes, you should identify FIVE major issues (as opposed to all issues) - those issues that ABIL should prioritise addressing. The issues should be assessed and documented in an Issue Register. The Issue Register should include the following columns: Issue Number, Issue Name, Short Description, Data/Assumptions, Qualitative Impact and Quantitative Impact. The issue register should also NOT be an inventory of every possible issue that you can think of. Instead, of the five issues you identify, you should prioritise the top THREE issues your analysis indicates impact the members or ABIL the most. You should provide relevant quantitative evidence where available (otherwise providing qualitative evidence) in support. All recommendations to address identified problems have been outlined and explained, and are appropriate.

4. To-be model: Based on the identified and analyzed issues, you should then model a "to-be" process in BPMN using Signavio. In doing so, you should explain the changes you propose and how these changes address the identified issues. All process elements have been correctly modelled & the to-be process is consistent with the outlined solutions.

Please note that you are not required to simulate your as-is or to-be models.

Process context

The chamber of commerce provides its members with a limited, free legal advisory service as part of its membership value proposition. Being an entity that promotes its members' interests, the chamber of commerce has recently rebranded and repositioned itself as All Business Is Local (ABIL). This coincided with the arrival of a new CEO. ABIL's redefined mission is to enable its members participate in as many market supply opportunities as possible, and it is now seeing membership growth of 20% per annum.

Part of ABIL's service offering to members includes a free legal advisory service, provided by a mix of final year law students and Qualified Lawyers supplied to ABIL by a small local legal firm. ABIL considers these people as part of its in-house team, and controls how it operates. This service has become a core process for them, with the service proving to be very popular - identified as one of the big contributors to membership retention and growth. As ABIL grows, however, it realises that this team (and the service supplier behind it) is not able to provide enough Qualified Lawyers to keep up with demand. This weakness - and perhaps others not yet identified - in their service provision are causing a lower level of member satisfaction with ABIL's services. Concerned about losing members, ABIL is considering expanding its free legal service's capacity by off-shoring the whole service to a nearby island nation, confident that the near-shoring option might be seen as a positive move by members, and that a change of provider might create the opportunity to improve it.

Before it off-shores the service, ABIL needs to be sure it fully understands how the process is being delivered today. It expects that, by reviewing the step-by-step detail of how the work is currently done, and then fine-tuning it to remove waste, non-value adding activities and bottlenecks, it can deliver a satisfactory level of service while meeting the ever-increasing membership demand, while lowering costs - which means it can allocate more membership revenue to other important initiatives.

Your team has been brought onboard to analyze the process in use today, to identify issues, and to propose improvements. Since this service is linked to membership satisfaction - and growth - the CEO is personally interested, and has requested the team presents its analysis of the current situation, issues, and the proposed solution direct to her, with a very brief, written synopsis of the approach taken and recommendations to be provided in advance of that presentation. The section below sets out the process walkthrough that the in-house BPM team identified in the first stage of the Process Discovery.

ABIL's Member Legal Advice Service Process

The process starts when an ABIL member calls the Legal Advice Call Centre or sends a request via the ABIL app on their phone to request legal advice. If the request is via a phone call, the Call Centre consultant registers it as a new request into the Legal Advice Support System, an activity which takes 5 minutes on average. If the request came via the ABIL App, the Legal Advice Support System automatically adds it as a record in its database. Irrespective of how the request is registered, the system generates a case reference number and instantaneously marks it as "Open", and sends an email to the member advising of the reference number and next steps.

The Call Centre is staffed with 10 final-year law students who are able to respond to frequently asked questions (FAQs are questions for which a solution had previously been researched and recorded in the Legal Advice Support System). The Call Centre consultants can also deal directly with standard contractual law queries.

All standard contractual law queries are immediately responded to, which typically takes 10 minutes via telephone, and 55% of all queries are addressed in this way. For all other requests, on average there is a 30-minute waiting time before a Call Centre consultant can check them. Reviewing all other requests are an FAQ takes on average 5 minutes (to ensure the same precedent applies). In 20% of the total number of requests, these other requests relate to an FAQ, and in such cases, it takes a further 15 minutes on average for the Call Centre consultant to provide the advice to the member. In all cases, once the response is provided to the member, it takes the Call Centre consultant 1 minute to mark the request as Closed, and then sends a confirmation email to the member, advising of the request being closed, and ending the process for that request. For the remaining requests that are neither a standard contractual law query nor an FAQ, the Call Centre consultant marks it as "complex" and Legal Advice Support System adds it to the Qualified Lawyers' work backlog within Legal Advice Support System.

There are five Qualified Lawyers, and their hourly wage is AU$80. When a Qualified Lawyer receives a request, s/he evaluates it and assigns it one of three priority levels: Critical, Urgent or Normal. New requests spend on average 1 hour waiting for a Qualified Lawyer to evaluate them. Qualified lawyers take on average 20 minutes to evaluate a new request and 3 minutes to prioritise a request. The Legal Advice Support System will then assign the request to the same or another Qualified Lawyer, depending on the assigned priority level and the backlog of requests. The time between the moment a request has been assigned, and the moment the request is picked-up by a Qualified Lawyer is 4 hours.

Once the request is assigned to a Qualified Lawyer, it is researched by that Qualified Lawyer, an activity which takes on average 30 minutes. The Qualified Lawyer then drafts a legal advice. The time taken to write the advice is, on average, 45 minutes and, once saved in Legal Advice Support System, it is added to the Call Centre consultant's backlog. Once the advice is written, it takes on average 8 hours before a Call Centre consultant checks this solution from Legal Advice Support System, which then takes 10 minutes on average. Once checked, the Call Centre consultant spend an average of 20 minutes drafting a cover letter, and then immediately sends the advice to the member, who will respond with one of two possibilities: resolved, or not resolved.

It takes on average 10 hours from the moment the complex legal advice is sent by the Call Centre consultant, to when Legal Advice Support System receives a confirmation from the Member that the request is now Resolved. Legal Advice Support System then instantaneously marks the request as Closed, and the process ends. Requests are resolved in 85% of the cases. In 15% of the cases, Legal Advice Support System receives an update from the member, noting the request is marked as Not resolved. These responses are received in 3 hours from the provision of complex advice on average, reflecting members' desire to finalise the correct advice they need quickly. In those cases, Legal Advice Support System instantaneously updates the request status to urgent and the request returns to the Qualified Lawyer who dealt with it for further action, at which point the request repeats those steps of the process.

For 40% of all requests, at any point after receiving their reference and next steps email, and before they get a response, the member calls the Call Centre consultant to remind them that they are still awaiting an answer to their request. On average, each of these impatient phone calls takes 5 minutes to resolve, and when the Member asks for the status of their request, the Call Centre consultant often gives an incorrect answer before realising their error (or that of the system). This comes down to the Call Centre consultant being unable to accurately determine the status of every request.

Assumptions and further information:

The helpdesk receives approximately 160 new requests per working day.

All Legal Advice Support System activities, including the automatic ones, are processed in 30 seconds unless specified otherwise (e.g., as instantaneous = 0 seconds).

There are 10 Call Centre consultants, and their hourly wage is AU$30.

There are 5 Qualified Lawyers, and their hourly wage is AU$80.

All requests, and updates to requests, irrespective of whether they come via the App or via phone call, are registered in Legal Advice Support System. Legal Advice Support System allows the Call Centre consultants to record the details of the request, the name of the member who generated the request and the nature of the request. The system also allows Qualified Lawyers to set the priority level as well as record solutions, and undertakes process steps in its own right, for example, when a request is registered, it marks it as Open or when a request is resolved, it marks it as Closed. Somehow, however, when the Call Centre consultants check, they often find many requests marked as Open - even though many of these requests are in fact already resolved, and should be showing status of Closed. Something seems amiss.

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