AS-IS - TO BE...Business Process Management

When I work/worked on BI projects, one of main reason for initiating a project is to make a process better for the business and provide increased value to business in terms of revenue/profits. A good analysis and design of the business requirements would yield very good results. One of the methodologies i have been exposed to as part of Business Process Management is the AS IS TO BE analysis method. As part of this method the first step that is to be done is to understand the current process which is called as the AS IS State. Here one builds a flow diagram of the present system/process in place. Once this completed, the analysis of the current process takes place. In this step any possible flaws/deficiencies are identified, also any possible opportunities to optimise the process is also discussed/documented. The goal here is to identify steps that improve the overall process and provide Business value. Once this step is completed, then we move on to the TO BE stage where the proposed/improved process is documented. In this step the improvements/optimisations are captured. A walk through of the proposed process is performed and made sure that the design can be implemented. There are different tools to perform the AS IS-TO BE methodology. One of the tools available is from visual paradigms, here is the link http://www.visual-paradigm.com/. The specific product that helps with the AS-IS - TO-BE Process is Logizian: Here is the description of the tool from the web site at a high level. One of the reasons to write a blog post on this topic was to highlight the importance of analysis and design in a project where BI solutions are going to be implemented.
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/lz/

Logizian - BPMN 2.0 Business Workflow Design Software

Easy-to-use and cross-platforms business process design tool that supports business process modeling with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0, Data Flow Diagram (DFD), decision table and organization chart. Logizian supports also advanced business modeling features like to document working procedures for workflow elements, animating business process diagram, process simulation, reports generation and publishing workflow design to website.