What are the Types of Business Processes?
Henk Kleijn and Fred Rorink, in their book ‘Change Management, identified 5 different kinds of business processes in any company (organization):
- Primary processes: these are the main processes in a business, such as inbound logistics, operations (incl. production), outbound logistics, marketing and sales, services. According to some also R&D and purchasing could be viewed as primary activities / processes.
- Secondary or supporting processes: these processes support the work of the primary processes.
- Systems, or steering systems: these are the processes which help the primary processes (typical on a corporate level).
- Decision processes: these processes interact with and guide the primary processes.
- Communication and information processes: these are also integrated in the other processes. The accuracy of the choices and decisions made by managers is strongly dependent on the maturity of these communication and information processes.