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.