How business process modelling tools could be applied by interns.
By: Boburjon Abdukhamidov
Tags: Business Modelling, Intern, Critical Thinking, Tools, Analysis

Young and ambitious is how we feel when we graduate from college, buckled up for what the future has prepared for us. But not all of us could be prepared for post-graduation and it is just fine. Little could be known about what is coming or where we are going, but then again “those who wander are not lost.” This is especially true when you are not sure about where you want to go and the only way to find it out is a brute force, to try.

Unlike in college, picking a job, a career or a company does not have one correct answer and you don’t get graded on it. Most of the time, the only way to find out if a certain company or a position is good for you is to actually try and work there. I was there, trying to figure myself out, through internship experiences at various organizations ranging from private to public, local to international, profit to non-profit. It brought me an incredible insight into the world of people creating values. Though, there was a difficulty in assessing my experiences in a systematic and objective way.

Indeed, there are not many tools available to understand a business as an intern. When asked about their impressions, most interns will cite the character of their coworker or food served for lunch and paint up the whole organization in that color. While it might be up for a personal judgement to assess one’s feelings, I came to recognize a great need for a systematic set of tools to better understand an organization, especially for those interning and trying to find out if it is the best fit.

Recently, I came across a set of business process modelling tools through Linked online classes that are used to create various business models. These comprehensive yet simple tools are extremely useful in understanding any organization. I came to realize that these tools could be well applied for assessing a company during an internship as well. For the rest of this piece, I will be delving into these business modelling frameworks and will take look back at my experiences through these business analytics lens.

Before we get into the tools, it is important to understand some elements of UML (Unified Modelling Language):

arrow — interaction;

circle — what you have a control of;

box — what you have an influence over.

The first is the context model framework. It is used to understand how a company interacts with the outside world and to do so, you will need to put the company in the middle and all other entities it interacts with around it. Drawing arrows from and to the bodies, you will need to specify the type of interaction it is. Like in the example below, where it shows how a company interacts with its customers by offering products and services, while customers return with purchase orders and payments. The interaction is not limited to fiscal. It could be any means by which a company has influence or is influenced by the outside world.

This tool will help you greatly in identifying whether the company actually lives up to what it claims to be. I remember interning at a medical tourism company with a great hope to pursue a career in the field. It was definitely of my interests to use my knowledge of technology and languages and apply it in the field to help those in need. However, I realized how the company, though claiming to be medical tourism, was more in the field of plastic surgery operations. Applying the context model showed me arrows coming out of the company pointing to plastic surgery hospitals and therefore deeper insight into the context that the company was in. It was a great experience which further directed me by showing what I am not up for.

The second framework is a functional flow. It is an entity centered approach to understanding the workflow. It helps you see what are the parties involved in performing a function with relation to that entity. In the example below, you can see that by focusing on a customer, we can find out which bodies within the organization are involved to perform a task in relation to that customer.

This is especially useful to comprehend what exactly your team is doing. In one of my first internships I was working in the “plant” team but was not sure where exactly we stood. In fact, companies tend to have confusing names for their departments which will make it confusing to understand their roles. Performing the functional flow analysis, it was more vivid to see that my team was involved in managing projects of installing electric equipment in plants.

Third is cross-functional flow analysis. It is a function centered approach to analyzing different departments involved to perform a particular function. A convention is to draw rows for different departments and pinpoint the onset of a function, pointing with arrows tasks performed by different departments. In performing a sale, for instance, you start with a customer placing an order and start “swimming” across teams involved in executing it. Such tool could be used to see where your team stands in the “food chain”.

The cross-functional flow is a must-have for anyone starting their work anywhere. It helps you visualize the workflow and where exactly you stand, thus enabling you to better adapt and learn. It has been especially useful since the swimming row style of visualization makes it all crystal clear. Though these tools are a great help in clarifying the details, there is still much more to consider in making a final evaluation.

Though the better part of the focus has been on applying business process modelling tools to the internship experiences, it is also important to recognize that there are both objective and subjective assessments. It is not to say that you should not take your feelings into consideration, but it is important that emotions do not take over the rational thinking no matter how lost you might feel. Stay relevant and away from hasty decisions. Cheers!