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A business engineer is an engineer promoting business reform and restructuring by an engineering approach based on the management strategy.

A business engineer can also be a person who, assisting executives, leads transformation of business and information system, or can also propose improvement of on-site processes and information systems to management.

Particularly in recent years, with the rapid progress of technologies such as smart phones, tablets, clouds, AI, robotics, and IoT, utilization of technology is becoming a key factor determining the competitiveness and survival of companies. Under such circumstances, many of the executives expect the system department to innovate business using IT, but many of system departments are too busy with the maintenance of existing systems to tackle such issues. Business engineers' skills and insight will fill such gaps.
Business engineers who understand management issues, and know the technology at the same time, and can lead the innovation of corporate activities is expected to further increase its importance in the future.
Now, what is the business engineering tool that supports the activities of such business engineers?
Let's organize the requirements that business engineers and business engineering tools should have.

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● Bird's eye view and drill down

In the case of reforming the business, it is necessary to take a bird's-eye viewpoint, that is, the viewpoint of executive and management for making more substantial reforms, as well as the approach to revise the detailed business process at the site.
Without this bird's-eye viewpoint, business reforms may be limited to merely minor tasks.
Therefore, it is important that the business engineering tool that supports the business engineer's activities should have the capability of representing the whole company or the entire group of companies, as well as representing the concrete on-site process in detail. Also, seamlessness that represents "whole" and "detail" in the same notation, and function of drilling down and drilling up freely back and forth between these is required as indispensable key factor for business engineering tools.

 

●Easiness to understand for business persons

What system engineers deal with is primarily the information system itself. In this case, logical precision and completeness are required, and tools and notations used here are also specific to system engineering such as UML and ER diagrams. Such notation is accompanied by unique symbols and concept and so, in many cases, general business persons cannot understand these diagrams.
Meanwhile, business engineers directly work with the people who engage in management and on-site business. It will be impractical to use such technical diagrams for the discussion with those people. User-friendliness is essential so that they can understand what the diagram means in its first look.
Also, such a diagram that everyone can understand at a glance also means that the diagrams output by project can be utilized continuously on the job site and management, avoiding to be stored and forgotten in the cabinet just after the BPR project.

 

● Simulation

When designing a new business process, the most effective method will be selected out of various options such as systematization/automation, integration/consolidation and outsourcing/insourcing. And also, when reforming the business process, it is necessary to calculate in advance how much the reform effect will be. This evaluation is usually evaluated from two viewpoints, cost and time.
If it is a small and local change, the simulation will be done with spreadsheet software, but in the case involving complicated branching, chaining or large-scale changes, a dedicated simulation tool will be indispensable.
Calculation using such a tool is not limited to simply calculating the cost and time of the entire process, but also evaluating the degree of improvement of the response time to the customer, the detection of a bottleneck, real time recalculation 0n real-time basis when the process design is changed. Such dedicated simulation tool will be indispensable for making process design work more efficient and advanced.

● Monitoring

Even if you apply a new process design to real work, this is not the end. It is necessary to continuously check whether the prescribed effect has come out. Also, if there is less effect than planned in advance, it is necessary to extract hidden problems and apply further improvement measures.The importance of such monitoring is not limited to the new process. If you constantly monitor the process cost, spent time and response time to customer, etc., such effort will be extremely essential to maintain and improve the competitiveness of the company. The benchmark may be values calculated in process design or management target values. And also the value of rival companies will also be effective benchmark.

This monitoring also can be done for each organizational unit, as well as the processes. For monitoring on a process basis, cost and time will be the main evaluation target, but in the case of organization-based monitoring, sales amount, number of employees, cost, etc. will be the main evaluation items.It is also important that such monitoring results are readily available to executives directly in real time basis. In this way, the platform on which the management can be grasps the situation in real time enables accurate and speedy business judgment, and it can be said that it is the role of business engineer to construct and provide such a platform.

 

●Multifaceted business expression

The purpose of reforming the business is not just to improve the efficiency of operations and cost reduction. Business reform objectives range from developing new products, improving customer satisfaction, improving sales and profits, building new customer channels, restructuring corporate groups, and reducing business risks.
Therefore, business engineers who support the achievement of these objectives must consider various factors surrounding the business, such as sales, product line, customer segment, business risk, etc., and formulate an execution plan.
As a tool to consider such business transformation and represent it, for example, a flowchart is not adequate. The flow chart can describe the procedure of the process and the department that executes the procedure, but this is only one aspect of the business.
The business engineering tool that supports business engineer's activities should represent "5W2H+α" of the business, like "Who", "When", "What", "How", "How much sales / revenue", "How much cost" and "What kind of risk is involved" as much as possible.
In this case, 5W2H+α in business is as shown in the table below.

 

point of view	Examples of keywords on business representation
WHAT	Products, service, parts, raw materials, various types of objects, goods, data, concepts
WHY	The purpose of process, business strategy, operation strategy, management philosophy
WHEN	Plans, schedules, start timing, deadlines
WHO	Organization, job title, customers, suppliers, external stakeholders, information systems, robots, automation equipment
WHERE	Regions, sales channels, stores, offices, factories, organizations
HOW	Processing procedures, processes, execution means, sales channels
HOW MUCH	Sales amount, profit, costs, time required, number of employees
Other (+α)	Business risk, etc.

 

● Other requirements for business engineering tools

Let's overview the other requirements that business engineering tools should have as follows.

· Affinity with system development
Recently, when performing business reform, almost all the renovation will be done with information systems. Even when developing new products or building a new customer channel, it is necessary to develop or modify the information system in some way in its execution and operation. Therefore, it is desirable that the output of the business engineering tool representing the plan created by the business engineer should be handed over to the system development process as smoothly as possible without undergoing major reconfiguration and reinterpretation.

 

· Team Collaboration

It is difficult for a single person to create a complete execution plan that reforms the business, and usually the team will formulate a plan. Therefore, it is desirable for business engineering tools to have team collaboration support function to integrate work of multiple members.

As shown below, Biz_CAD provided by BizArchitec Corporation has high conformity as a tool to support business engineer's activities.

• Biz_CAD can create three models; functional Model, Process Model and Organizational Model. Using these models, you can model the business from three perspectives of functional structure, process, and organization system.
• The model of Biz_CAD is represented in the same notation from the bird's-eye view to the concrete image of the field level. Also, you can freely move between several layers with drill down/drill up function. These features enable the utilization from various viewpoints of the company from executives to the specified local site.
• Biz_CAD can simulate the cost, total time, and response time to customers for a new process designed. With this function, you can evaluate the effect of process change in advance.
• Biz_CAD can monitor processes and organizations from the viewpoints of cost, time required, sales, cost and number of employees. These values can be referred to while comparing the present value (As-Is) and the target value (To-Be). These features enables to detect quickly the inefficiencies, cost issues, and service levels of internal processes and organizations.
• Biz_CAD emphasizes user friendliness, including graphical icons and animation features. This makes it possible for business executives and workers to understand the meaning of diagrams at first glance.
• Biz_CAD can represent a wide range of business 5W2H+α such as business flow, organizational structure, product line, required time, sales amount, cost, means of conducting, customer segments, information systems, business risks etc.
• Biz_CAD can be used as the basis for enterprise management platform, tools for BPR/BPM, office manual, organization management tool, consulting tool, analytical tool for system development, or EA (enterprise architecture).
• By these multi-functionality, the models created with Biz_CAD will be continued to be utilized in various phases by the various hierarchies in the company. Biz_CAD is based on object-oriented approach, and Biz_CAD can provide the Java source code template. These features enable to deliver model output to system development projects.