How to Identify Gaps in Business System Activities

We learned in class that "business system" is "a line of activities that need to be performed to produce desired business result and to deliver the result to customers". When I talked with Shirin regarding my business system in the last class, I found out that she could point out some gaps in between business activities in my proposed business system. That is, although I initially thought that my business system would be sufficient in terms of process, from other people's perspective, they can see gaps between activities. Then, the points that I would like to study here is: how can I identify gaps in business system?

One possible method that I can think of is: as we did class activities last class, we can ask around other people what they think about our business system. Ask people what they think; ask our enterprise advisors what their opinion is; ask any experts in our business environment (e.g. agriculture, Pakistan, Korean business environment) whether there are any missing parts in our initial business system models. They could pinpoint any lacking steps and any gaps in our business system.

Some other method is using if-then analysis. It would be a qualitative method, rather than quantitative method. For example, we say, "if" an activity "A" happens, "then" would the next activity "B" naturally occur? Is there any subset of "if-then" statement would be between activity A and B? Is an effect between A and B lapping too much? From this if-then analysis, we can get more complete set of activities in business system.

Another possible method could be: to check with existing models that have "similar or identical processes in other organizations" so, as a new entrepreneur, we can identify any discrepancies in our business system and gain insights from the existing models (Source link: http://sourcemaking.com/uml/modeling-business-systems/business-processes-and-business-systems).

The last possible method I can think of is: to come up with "business process concepts", using business process requirement, modeling technique, and standard (Source: Rukanova, Slooten, and Stegwee. "Business Process Requirements, Modeling Technique and Standard: how to Identify Interoperability Gaps on a Process Level. University of Twente. The Netherlands).

 

 

If there is a gap between the business process concepts, covered by the requirements, the modeling technique, and the standard, is the gap that we need to address. 

 

 

The below table would explain how the gaps can be identified through analyzing the concepts under the three elements:

Class, do you have any more suggestions to identify any gaps in business system? I think it is very important to have a comprehensive business system from the beginning in order to run the enterprise smoothly, if we are not going to fix the process once after confronting a problem in the system. What would be your suggestion or any sources that I can look into? Thank you!