First time mapping business process using BMPN

Today I tried drawing the business process of the consulting firm of my friend (called CIC) using MS Visio based on several sample diagrams found online without prior knowledge of BMPN. Of course this means many problems turned up. For example I didn’t understand how a gateway is different from an intermediate event, when to use which, what the exact meaning of each symbol are… Another problem was that the more I look, the more I realized some diagrams I used as a model in the beginning were substandard i.e. not as detailed, not represent the best way of thinking, simplify too much to the point it failed to reflect the real process in real life…

Luckily, I found this site https://camunda.org/bpmn/reference/ which explained quite detailed the symbols’ meaning and usage.

Of course how could I miss this site http://www.bpmn.org/#tabs-examples where the examples were very useful and held the same standard.

After a couple of hours tinkering, this is the first draft of the lead handling process of the company:

The summary of the process could be as follow:

1. Leads, once being aware of the investment program, will express interest by either calling directly, or clicking on ads, or going to conferences and leaving contact information to request more information.
2. Requests are received and handled by consultants
3. Leads information will be recorded into database manually by consultants
4. Consultants, based on requests, retrieve investment program details from knowledge base
5. Consultants then follow up with leads either by phone or email
6. After the phone call or email, consultants will try to setup meeting for more in-depth consulting by checking with leads and with the company calendar
7. Here 3 scenarios may happen: leads could agree, lead could delay the meeting, or lead could drop out completely.
8. If leads is available, consultants will book the meeting in calendar and update leads info in database
9. If leads is not sure, consultants will follow up again some time later while logging each contact time.
10. If leads drop out, event end.

The above diagram could be seen as a bit over complicated when the “Leads” lane having several tasks and event. As explained by the first site, this lane could be collapsed — meaning it contains nothing but a blank lane- if we are not sure or don’t care about what’s happening on the other side, could be because it has little or nothing to do with our business process. However I still think it is beneficial for me to map the process of every party involved because it helps training my mind to identify the steps.

Several questions came up in the process of creating this chart, though, and I will ask my IT friends more about it. For example, I redrew many times the “Check availability” stage as there seemed to be more than 1 way to illustrate this. Could the “Check availability” task be repeated until a date is agree upon with the leads? Or follow it should be a gateway? Are the intermediate events needed there after the gateway, or only a simple text is enough? If I want to add a task “Provide availability” in the Leads lane, should the message flow from it to “Check availability” task or the gateway, or none at all as the above draft?

Anyway, this is just a simple on-the-fly note of my learning process. More to come next time.