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Process Modeling, Process Improvement, and ERP Implementation
Sales A/P
Salesperson Auditor
manager clerk
Expenses incurred

Employee prepares
expense report

Employee copies
report and receipts 189

Employee attaches
receipts for all
expenses > $25

Employee mails
expense report to Sales manager
reviews report
sales manager
Expense
Employee modifies report
expense report approved
? Yes
No
Sales manager
mails report back
to employee

Sales manager mails
expense report to
corporate office

1

Source Line: Course Technology/Cengage Learning.

FIGURE 7-4 Deployment, or swimlane, flowcharting of Fitter’s expense-reporting process

Event Process Chain (EPC) Diagrams
SAP’s ERP software supports hundreds of business processes, and SAP has developed
graphical models for many of these business processes using the event process chain
(EPC) format. The EPC format uses only two symbols to represent a business process.
The advantage of the EPC format is that it matches the logic and structure of SAP’s ERP
software design. The EPC modeling technique is available as a software tool through
Software AG’s ARIS (Architecture of Integrated Information System) platform.
In EPC modeling, the two structures used to represent business processes are events
and functions. Figure 7-5 shows the graphical representations of events and functions in

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