Assignment – Business Process Management 2020-2021

(Prof. Dr. Jochen De Weerdt)

Task 1. Process modelling of booking-to-cash process at “Perfect Pixels”

(50 points)
Your task is to model the booking-to-cash process at a photography company. A narrative description of the
“as is” process is given below. If you find that the description below is not detailed enough, you can make
your own assumptions, but you need to clarify them in your solution. On the other hand, in the description
below, you might also find information that is irrelevant for the modelling exercise. You are asked to design
a detailed BPMN process model reflecting the current state of the process, i.e. the “as-is” process model.
This BPMN model should not only deal with the “normal course” of action, but it should also show how
different types of errors or exceptions are handled, including changes, cancellations and over-due invoices.
Your model should also include organizational elements such as pools and lanes.

Scenario
“Perfect Pixels” provides photography services in the fields of family photography, personal event
photography (e.g. weddings and party photography) and commercial photography (mainly corporate events
photography). With a portfolio of 25 photo studios, “Perfect Pixels” is the largest chain of photo studios in
Belgium. “Perfect Pixels”' 2019 turnover was 20.5 Million euros, out of which 25% from sales to corporate
customers and the rest from private customers.

One of core processes of “Perfect Pixels” is its booking-to-cash process, which goes all the way from the
moment a customer makes a booking for a photo shooting session, through the order placement, and up to
the moment the customer pays and obtains the ordered pictures. In 2019, “Perfect Pixels” received 20K
orders from commercial customers, and 80K orders from private customers.

The process starts when a customer makes a booking for a shooting session at a photo studio. A booking can
be done via phone or via e-mail addressed directly to a specific photo studio. The request is handled by a
customer service representative at the photo studio. Each studio employs two customer service
representatives: a senior one, who is also manager of the studio, and a junior one. The customer service
representative enters the details of the booking into the photo studio information system. The entered data
includes

 Customer data (full name, phone number, e-mail, and if applicable company name, company address
and company registration number for invoicing purposes)
 Booking data: start of the session, duration, type of shooting (family, personal event or corporate
event) whether the shooting session is in-studio or "on location", special equipment required (e.g.
lighting equipment)

The booking is assigned to one of the photographers of the studio. Each studio works on average with 3 to 4
photographers. An in-studio session lasts approximately 45 minutes, while an on-location session lasts 3.5

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hours (including transportation time). One in five private customer shootings and all of corporate customer
shootings are on-location.

After a photo shooting session, the photographer uploads the pictures to a file server. Eventually, a technician
cleans up the pictures by deleting duplicates and failed shots. Later the technician edits the remaining shots
and arranges them into a photo gallery using a dedicated photo studio software tool. Once the gallery is
completed, the customer is notified by e-mail. The notification includes an URL where the customer can find
the pictures.

Customers can view the gallery, select the pictures they wish to order in print (and how many copies) and
those they wish to get in digital copy (full resolution). Customers can also annotate a selected picture in order
to ask for additional editing (special requests). When placing their order, customers can specify whether they
will pick-up the printed copies at the studio or have them delivered by post. In the latter case, a shipment
fee is added to the order.

Once the customer has placed an order, a technician performs additional editing (if required by the
customer). In the case of special requests, the technician may need to communicate with the customer by e-
mail or phone to clarify the request and to determine how to fulfill it, and whether the special request will
entail an additional fee and how much. If printouts are required, the technician prints them out, puts them
in an envelope and drops them in the studio's counter. Digital copies are placed on a Dropbox folder with the
order number. The link is only shared with the customer after payment.

Once the pictures are ready, a customer service representative determines the amount to be invoiced
(including additional fees for special requests), produces the invoice and sends it to the customer. The
customer can pay by bank transfer or directly at the studio, for example when they come to pick up printed
copies.

When a customer service representative detects that payment has arrived by bank transfer, they mark the
corresponding order as paid. If required they pack and send any printout orders for postal delivery and if
applicable they send the Dropbox link with digital copies to the customer.

Pictures from a shooting session are kept in the corresponding gallery for up to 30 days (a reminder is sent
to the customer 5 days before the expiry date). If a customer has not placed an order past this period, an
invoice is sent for the minimum billing amount (see below). Invoices are payable within 7 days of their issue.
A customer service representative sends a reminder in case they detect an overdue invoice. Similarly, a
customer service representative sends a reminder if they detect a customer has not collected printouts more
than 7 days after these have been ready for pickup. Private customers completing an order worth more than
€200 receive a voucher for a 15% reduction for a next shoot.

Booking or order cancellations can occur in three ways: (i) prior to the shooting session (booking
cancellation); in case of no-show (the customer did not show up to the shooting session and did not re-
schedule it); or (iii) after the shooting, if the customer does not order any pictures within 30 days.
Cancellations prior to the photo shooting session do not incur a fee. Cancellations due to no-shows do not
attract a fee if they are in-studio; they attract a fee of EUR 50 if they are "on location". In case of a no-show,
the customer may re-schedule the booking to a later day but the no-show fee for on-location shootings is
charged to the customer in any case. If a customer does not order any picture after a shooting session, the
customer is invoiced a photo shooting fee of EUR 100 for in- studio sessions and EUR 200 for an on-location
one.

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Question – Model the as-is process in BPMN
Model the booking-to-cash process in BPMN. Your model will be evaluated according to the following criteria,
in decreasing order of importance: (1) readability and layout, (2) semantical fit (completeness and
correctness), (3) syntactical correctness, and (4) documentation. Make sure that your model complies with
the seven process modelling guidelines (7PMG) as much as possible. Observe that modelling a process
involves making decisions and assumptions. There is no single optimal solution. You need to submit:

1) A readable printout of the model (make use of the export functionality in Signavio, see here). Nice
looking models are preferred, so pay attention to lay out and hierarchy. You can use at most four A4-
pages to represent your model (including subprocesses, if used). Unreadable models or model parts
will not be evaluated and will automatically lead to a score of 0 for this part of the assignment.
Therefore, verify yourself whether the printout of your models is readable!
2) Please make deliberate choices on which pools and lanes to model and whether or not to model
parts of the process as subprocesses. Always make sure to verify readability and understandability
of your model!
3) A complementary and structured description (you don’t necessarily need to write full sentences or
paragraphs) of your model (max. two A4-pages), indicating particular assumptions and/or choices
made in terms of the modelling perspective, included/excluded activities, events, control-flow
choices, hierarchies, pools and lanes, data objects, etc. This description should complement your
model so that it can be easily understood. Don’t leave key assumptions unexplained! Also, in this
description, don’t copy text from the case description, there is no point in re-explaining, use the two
pages to detail your process model and the choices made so as to make it fully understandable to
someone with knowledge about the process. The page limit is a maximum, it is likely that you don’t
need the full two pages.

Do not submit more than six A4-pages for answering this question. Additional pages result in a subtraction
of 5 points per additional page. Unreadable models or model parts will not be evaluated and will
automatically lead to a score of 0 for this part of the assignment.

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Task 2. Process Mining analysis of the Direct Payments Process of the
European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (50 points)
The European Union spends a large fraction of its budget on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Among
these spendings are direct payments, which are mainly aimed to provide a basic income for farmers
decoupled from production. The processes that govern the distribution of these funds are subject to complex
regulations captured in EU law. The member states are required to operate an Integrated Administration and
Control System (IACS), which includes IT systems to support the complex processes of subsidy distribution.

In your role as business analyst, you are asked to analyze the process for handling of applications of direct
payments for German farmers by the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund. Direct payments are a key
element of the common agricultural policy (CAP) of EU that provides income support for farmers and
promotes competitiveness, sustainability and environmentally-friendly farming practices. Direct payments
benefit nearly 7 million farms throughout the European Union and often represent an important share of
their agricultural income (see https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/direct-support/direct-payments_en).

The German Ministry of Agriculture has hired your team to conduct a fully data-driven analysis of this direct
payment process. The questions below will give a guidance as to what kind of insights the report needs to
include. However, make sure that in answering the questions, you position yourself in the role of
process/business analyst with the task to investigate the process and report on your analysis.

Question 1 – Exploratory and discovery analysis of the event logs

You receive data from two subsequent years 2018 and 2019 (eventlog2018.xlsx and eventlog2019.xlsx). In a
first phase, the German Ministry of Agriculture wants you to assess the potential of using process mining for
analyzing the available data, as well as understanding the main characteristics of the data sets and underlying
processes. Given that the ministry is not committed to any particular process mining tooling yet, you are
allowed to use any available process mining tooling. The output of this first analysis should be a slide deck of
maximum 20 slides (created in Powerpoint or any other presentation editor). The target audience of this
presentation is the “chef de cabinet” of the German Ministry of Agriculture and his/her adjunct-directors. As
a guideline for the presentation, they have the following questions:

- What are the main characteristics of the both logs in terms of the number of cases, number of tasks,
etc.?
- Is there a resource perspective in this data? Are there handovers? Describe your analysis with visual
outputs.
- Each case is processed by one out of four departments. What does the distribution of cases across
departments look like? Do departments collaborate? Do departments work differently (in terms of
control-flow or overall performance)? Are there particular differences between both years?
- Do the event logs contain additional data attributes? Are they potentially useful for further analysis
(e.g. for filtering, root cause analysis, etc.)?
- What are the most frequent control-flow variants in these processes? Can you recognize a happy
path? Are the happy paths the same in both years?

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 - Can you visualize the processes both at an abstract level as well as in a more detailed way? Are there
any specific visual differences?
- Would you call these processes structured or unstructured? Why (not)?
- Can you provide insights into the performance of the processes? Are there any bottlenecks present?
Are there specific differences between both years in terms of performance?

In the presentation, you should always try to pinpoint differences and/or similarities between the logs of
both years. That is the overarching objective. Note again that the questions are a guideline, you can report
on other aspects of the data. You should not stick to the order of the questions to structure your
presentation.

Practical information: Please add the slides (e.g. by exporting and importing them as images) to the main
document that you hand in. It is preferred that you add two slides per page. Avoid full text on the slides. You
can use an additional two pages to detail important aspects of your methodology. As such, the maximum
amount of pages for documenting the solution to this question is 12 pages! Additional pages result in a
subtraction of 5 points per additional page.

Question 2 – Undesired outcomes

Typically, a case is opened around May of the respective year and should be closed by the end of the year.
By “closed”, we refer to the timely payment of granted subsidies. There are, however, several cases each
year where this could not be achieved:

 Undesired outcome 1: The payment is late. A payment can be considered timely, if there has
been a “begin payment” activity by the end of the year that was not eventually followed by “abort
payment”.

 Undesired outcome 2: The case needs to be reopened, either by the department (subprocess
“Change”) or due to a legal objection by the applicant (subprocess “Objection”). This may result
in additional payments or reimbursements (“payment_actual{x}“ > 0, where x ≥ 1 refers to the
xth payment after the initial one)

On both the 2018 and 2019 datasets, provide insights regarding the undesired outcomes.

- How frequent is each undesired outcome in each year?

- Are there significant differences based on which department handled the case?
- Are certain undesired outcomes more likely for young farmers?
- And what about small farmers?

Similarly as for question 1, you should present your analysis in the format of a set of presentation slides. For
the undesired outcomes analysis, you create a separate set of slides (with a new title slide, and max. 7
additional slides) for communicating your analysis. Please provide a quantitative analysis, but also add
information regarding your methodology (how you obtained the results) in the slides or in one regular
additional page you may use for this purpose. As such, do not submit more than 5 pages for answering this
question. Additional pages result in a subtraction of 5 points per additional page.

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Data background
The processes from which the data stems originates at the level of federal ministries of agriculture and
local departments. The focus is on the yearly allocation of direct payments, starting with the application
and, if all goes well, finishing with the authorization of a payment. The data can be understood in terms of
documents, where each document has a state that allows for certain actions. These actions can be
executed manually at any point in time through document specific tools or they can be scheduled
automatically. The latter is implicitly apparent if a large number of actions is performed by the same user
at around the same time (batch processing).There are four different document types in the data listed in
the table below.

Documents and subprocesses

DOCUMENT TYPE SUB PROCESS EXPLANATION
CONTROL Main A document containing the summarized results of various
SUMMARY checks (reference alignment, department control)
GEO PARCEL Main / Declared / The document containing all parcels for which subsidies are
DOCUMENT Reported requested.
PAYMENT Main / Application The application document for direct payments, usually
APPLICATION Objection / Change made each year
REFERENCE Main A document containing the results of aligning the parcels
ALIGNMENT as stated by the applicant with known reference parcels

For each document type, one or more sub-processes can be found in the data. These sub processes refer to
the overall sequence of events that influence a document. The leading document is always an application for
which a number of other documents are created. Typically, documents are created by the initialize activity.
Then, documents are edited, typically shown by begin editing until finish editing or a similar pair. While
editing, several things may be recorded, for example some calculations are made or the application is saved.
The log shows the times at which these events are completed and there are considerable dependencies
between the sub-activities of different documents. For example, you will usually only be able to decide on
an application after all the other documents are in a final state.

Case level attributes

The following attributes are recorded for each case, where each case represent one application of one
applicant in a specific year.

ATTRIBUTE TYPE EXPLANATION

CASE ID Literal Id of the case (application)
DEPARTMENT literal Id of the local department
YEAR literal The current year
NUMBER_PARCELS discrete The number of parcels
AREA continuous The total area of all parcels
SMALL FARMER boolean Application for small farmer scheme
YOUNG FARMER boolean Application for payment for young farmers
PAYMENT_ACTUAL{X} continuous Amount (in Euro) actually received by the applicant. For
the meaning of {x}, see question 2.

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Event Level Attributes
The following attributes are recorded for each event. All events are included in the application log and
within each application, events are ordered by timestamp.

ATTRIBUTE EXPLANATION
ACTIVITY literal Activity that was performed of which this event indicates
the completion.
DOCTYPE literal Type of the document as indicated in the list of document
types above.
SUBPROCESS literal Subprocess to which the event belongs. Each document is
subdivided in a number of subprocesses
COMBINED_ACTIVITY literal A concatenation of the Doctype, Subprocess and Activity.
This can give you the finest level of detail in terms of
activity level control-flow.
RESOURCE literal indicates the resource responsible for the event.

COMPLETE TIMESTAMP timestamp Time at which the event occurred. Note that ordering of
events with identical timestamps cannot be concluded
from the file. Also note that some timestamps are
manually entered and may therefore contain mistakes.

Practical arrangements
- You need to hand in a written report with your answers to the questions. You can use either Dutch or
English. Take into account the page limitations. At all times, be as concise as possible. Observe that your
assignment report will be evaluated in a typical management-style approach, so make sure that your
report is concise and easy to read.

- You will work in groups of three (3) or four (4) students. No exceptions allowed! You are free to form
groups with students who follow the course in a different language or students who are in a different
program.

- Please observe that each of the page limitations detailed above is a maximum, not a goal. Try to be as
concise and clear as possible. Make sure to use the template (see Toledo). Fill out the front page. The
report should be stapled in the left-hand corner. Apply the “waste elimination” principle and therefore
do not hand in your report in plastic folders of any type.

- Deadline: Every group will hand in a physical copy of their assignment no later than Friday December 11,
3pm. Otherwise, as of Monday December 7, there will be a box outside office HOG 03.122 in which you
can deposit your assignment every day between 9am and 4pm. Failing to hand in on time will result in a
score of 0 for the assignment. Next to the physical copy, you will also need to upload your Word or pdf-
file as well as an export of your Signavio process model (as a BPMN 2.0 diagram XML) on Toledo (through
an assessment which will be made available, only one person per team should upload). These electronic
files will be used to check for plagiarism. The same deadline applies for the electronic files. Please note
that only your physical copy will be scored!