An integrated approach to teaching business process
orientation and integration to business students

Developing a thorough understanding of business processes and information integration among business students is critical for their successful workplace performance irrespective of their specialization in accounting, finance, marketing or human resources or logistics and their potential work roles. Recognising this imperative in business education at the undergraduate level, a comprehensive curriculum that imparts these skills and knowledge to undergraduate business students across three units in the business information systems discipline was designed and implemented in the School of Business. These units incorporate various strategies and software tools starting from simple charting techniques and software applications such as MYOB, to the more sophisticated and integrated process modeling and optimization software tools (such as ARIS) and complex integrated enterprise-wide information systems (such as SAP R/3). High prevalence of these software applications among business organizations today, the challenges faced by the managers in their installation, operations, maintenance and upgrades, and their overarching influence on other organizational dimensions such as structure, work roles and management strategies, has made this attempt academically and administratively challenging. This paper reports on the analysis of this approach that consisted of a theoretical model establishing the relationship between various skill/knowledge factors imparted across the three units and the teaching and learning strategies specially employed. Factors such as modeling ability, process orientation, process analysis and optimization knowledge, implementation and integration knowledge that have evolved from the study are used to compare and measure the direction and strength of these relationships with the assessment outcomes.