Improving the business processes of a bank

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the business processes of a bank by considering a graphical and a descriptive view in order to find critical processes and to improve them. Design/methodology/approach – A methodology with which the business processes are modeled based on the flow diagram (FD) and integrated definitions (IDEF0) techniques. Findings – Detects the descriptive and graphical view of the main critical business processes of a bank. Allows to propose correct and effective improvements to them and considers different views and degrees of detail. Research limitations/implications – This study considers a static view of the processes. A future line of research includes the simulation of the critical business processes of the bank detected with the modeling techniques herein proposed. Practical implications – The business process modeling techniques apply to one subsidiary of a bank company, and can thus be extended to all subsidiaries to compare their performance and to apply the improvements by considering global objectives. Originality/value – This paper proposes a structured modeling to capture the critical business processes of a bank through well‐known techniques, such as the FDs and IDEF0, and helps compare and detect these relevant aspects for the bank.