Business Process Engineering For Strategy And Implementation - Review Of Selected Paper From BPM 2015

Review of Selected Paper from BPM 2015

Discuss about the Business Process Engineering for Strategy and Implementation.

The 13^th International Conference on Business Process Management took place at Innsbruck, Australia as Business Process Management 2015 (BPM 2015). This conference presented a stage for the business researchers from all over the world to share and exchange their own views on the subject as well as providing some valuable suggestions that would enrich the field of business engineering on an overall. Moreover, different research papers from researchers were accepted and reviewed. The main objective of the conference was to exploit the emerging areas of business process management and review the researchers’ views for understanding the possible techniques and ways with which BPM can be further enriched. From the huge number of submitted research papers, a limited number of papers were selected and published. One of the most prominent and useful papers of all these was “Improving Business Processes: Does anybody have an Idea?” presented by Rob J.B. Vanwersch, Irene Vanderfeesten, Eric Rietzschel and Hajo A. Reijers. The main gist of this research paper was emphasized on the development of business processes in addition to the experimental applications of some techniques (for example, RePro). The researchers also analyzed the performance of business process management on application of different management techniques.

In this essay, a review of the chosen research paper has been conducted and analyzed for further understanding of the subject.

As per the view of the researchers, business process management (BPM) can be redesigned in potentially many ways can improve the performance in the long run. Before presenting their own views, they performed an in-depth analysis of the available works of researchers as well as the most commonly used techniques in different organizations and institutions. They also tried experimental verifications of the existing concepts and finding performance results. According to their findings, most of the practitioners fail to provide proper guidance to the applied techniques and emphasizing on analyzing the case situation instead (Vanwersch et al. 2015). Due to this, many business processes fail to grow or develop. Moreover, due to lack of proper guidance, the possibilities and potentials of the used techniques are never fully explored and this results in lack of creative ideas of the practitioners for using these techniques. However, this is contradictory to Jeston and Nelis (2014) who said that business process management must be emphasized on case situations as business processes are always expected to have immediate impact. According to his research, only the business organizations that enjoy huge amount of extra revenue can have the luxury of exploring the business processes’ potential in the market. Now, back to the paper for the review, the researchers have claimed that instead of regular creative techniques, practitioners can well opt for RePro (Rethinking of Processes) technique that can be efficiently used for further exploitation of the process potential. They also published as research results that the RePro technique promotes the gradual improvement and upgradation of the existing business process but no business organizations opt to spend extra resources on further exploration and creative techniques as long as their business criteria are fulfilled (Weske 2012). The researchers also stated that the RePro successfully integrates process improvement principles and application improvement technique into one common process and can be successfully implemented in a business strategy.

RePro Technique and its Experimental Research

After the review process, the researchers conducted an experimental research on the existing business process along with their own ideas and theories. They mainly focused on the RePro technique and its exploitation for further development of the techniques. They created the RePro technique usage hypothesis by focusing on productivity. For their experiment, they considered two stimulating effects. These were: minimization of negative ideas while starting a new exploration and more creative application to expand the study more within the solution space (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015). In the first stimulation effect, they identified that if too many ideas and theories are assimilated, a negative thought develops, as the practitioner cannot determine a specific path of progress and fails to proceed with the exploration. Hence, the researchers identified one specific approach and technique and hence were able to drive out any negative thought or idea. Again, the researchers found that since the potential of the BPM technique is very high, the solution space is quite large, which is never fully utilized (Fleischmann et al. 2014). For this reason, they wanted to conduct the research such that the solution space is more utilized and new possibilities can come up.

After determination of the feasible approaches, the researchers felt the need of diverse ideas in order to increase productivity. During the course of their research, they published three main hypotheses as follows.

“Hypothesis 1: The RePro technique supports individuals in generating more ideas as compared to traditional brainstorming.

Hypothesis 2: Individuals using the RePro technique are more satisfied with their techniques than individuals using traditional brainstorming.

Hypothesis 3: Individuals using the RePro technique have a positive intention-to-use the technique.”

However, they mentioned in their paper that they did not have sufficient supporting articles regarding their proposed hypotheses. On the other hand, they mentioned that their experimental results fully supported their hypothesis. They found that as they focused on productivity, their proposed hypothesis strongly supports increase in productivity of business process management systems. They conducted their research experiments within an academic environment in a university where they selected some student to help in their experiment. From these experiments, they found some values regarding the business productivity of a particular sector and how it is influenced by manual interference (Chang 2016). As a follow up to their experiments, they focused on business productivity due to application of some specific business process management model. For this part, they used some mathematical calculations that lead them to some specific values regarding business process management and productivity.

Discussion on Business Process Management Techniques

Besides all these calculations and values of business productivity, the researchers focused on whether the business organizations really apply business models appropriately within their process management systems. According to their study, besides some large scale multinational business organizations, most of the regular and big scale business organizations do not follow suitable process management techniques (Dumas et al. 2013). Moreover, they implement their business models simply for immediately improving productivity. However, due to lack of future sight of the business organizations, they do not actually spend extra funds on the further development of the process management along with the development of the organization. Due to this particular reason, the researchers raised their question, “Improving Business Processes: Does anybody have an Idea?” As a part of their research results, the researchers emphasized on the fact that most of the business organizations fail to identify the real potential of process management development and may encounter some stages of failure due to poor development of business process management.

According to some other research works, most notably of van der Aalst (2013), a successful business process management model consists of cyclic development of four distinct processes – process improvement, process excellence, best practice and industry standard. As per their study, if all these mentioned processes are explored and improved properly, then the productivity will automatically develop (Lohrmann and Reichert 2013). These researchers explored into the development of the sub-processes and studied their individual effects on the overall business process management. They also suggested certain steps regarding the cyclic development of the process.

Now, in the current research paper (case study), the researchers did not much emphasize on these sub-processes, rather they emphasized on the total process management on a whole. Their main objective was to find the possible flaws within the business organizations that are unlikely to develop their business models for the future evolution of the business productivity. Hence, even though, their research paper contained a good number of legitimate points, they had some flaws as well (Röglinger, Pöppelbuß and Becker 2012). As discussed previously, they only emphasized on exploration and future development of the business process management models. However, they did not sufficiently emphasize on the constraints faced by the organizations in developing the model. They also did not research on the possible solutions that can be implemented by the business organizations so that they can further research on their business model for improving the process management (Krumeich et al. 2014). In every research activity, there are several parts – development of research scope, study of the research topic, analysis of the constraints and mitigation of the constraints, while these researchers only researched on their research topic. Hence, the validity of their research claims are questionable if they are unable to provide suitable risk analysis results as well as solutions for the constraints that might be faced by the organizations if they follow their model.

Conclusion

Final Analysis Results of the Chosen Research Paper – After the review of the chosen paper, a final analysis result can be discussed by comparing with the current business situation in a global background. In the current global business background, most of the business organizations are trying to find instant success with large productivity value in the market. For this purpose, they implement a business model and instruct their practitioners immediately develop the model according to standard norms and techniques for achieving immediate success. In this selected paper, the researchers accused these business organizations of not having any idea of business model development. This is mainly because of the fact that the business organizations do not further explore the possibilities and the potential of their chosen model. Also, they do not further think about the potential new techniques that will increase their productivity in the long run if the model is developed properly. Up to this point of their research, there are many contradictory research papers that claim the implementation of business model quite differently. In spite of this, the researchers provided some valid points regarding the business process management that can be considered by the business organizations. However, the main problem with this research paper is the failure of the researchers to provide suitable justifications of their claims as well as not discussing anything about the constraints to be faced by the business organizations if they choose to develop their business model further. Another issue with their research is that, they mainly conducted their research in an academic environment with academic human resources. Hence, it is still questionable whether their claims and suggestions are really applicable in the global stage within a large scale government organization. As a final statement of the review of this research paper, it can be said that:

This research paper provides an open scope of the development of the business process management that can be extremely beneficial for the business organizations that are seeking to increase their business productivity. However, this paper does not give a proper idea regarding the constraints and problems that might be faced by the business organizations. Hence, the concepts and the hypotheses suggested by these researchers can be used as a basis for further research and development only if a proper study is conducted regarding the issues and constraints of the suggested process management technique.

Conclusion

In this essay, a review of the chosen research paper has been conducted and analyzed for further understanding of the subject. The 13^th International Conference on Business Process Management presented a stage for the business researchers from all over the world to share and exchange their own views on the subject as well as providing some valuable suggestions that would enrich the field of business engineering on an overall. One of the selected research papers, which is the focus of this review essay, was “Improving Business Processes: Does anybody have an Idea?” by Rob J.B. Vanwersch, Irene Vanderfeesten, Eric Rietzschel and Hajo A. Reijers. According to their findings, most of the practitioners fail to provide proper guidance to the applied techniques and emphasizing on analyzing the case situation instead. Due to this, many business processes fail to grow or develop. They performed an in-depth analysis of the available works of researchers as well as the most commonly used techniques in different organizations and institutions. They also tried experimental verifications of the existing concepts and finding performance results. They mainly focused on the RePro technique and its exploitation for further development of the techniques. However, the main problem with this research paper is the failure of the researchers to provide suitable justifications of their claims as well as not discussing anything about the constraints to be faced by the business organizations if they choose to develop their business model further. Hence, the final conclusion is that this research paper gives a bright idea regarding the development of the business process management but also lacks sufficient exposure on the constraints of the whole management process.

References

Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press.

Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J. and Reijers, H.A., 2013.Fundamentals of business process management (Vol. 1, p. 2). Heidelberg: Springer.

Fleischmann, A., Schmidt, W., Stary, C., Obermeier, S. and Brger, E., 2014.Subject-oriented business process management. Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated.

Jeston, J. and Nelis, J., 2014. Business process management. Routledge.

Knuplesch, D., Reichert, M., Fdhila, W. and Rinderle-Ma, S., 2013. On enabling compliance of cross-organizational business processes. InBusiness Process Management (pp. 146-154). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Krumeich, J., Weis, B., Werth, D. and Loos, P., 2014. Event-Driven Business Process Management: where are we now? A comprehensive synthesis and analysis of literature. Business Process Management Journal,20(4), pp.615-633.

Lohrmann, M. and Reichert, M., 2013. Understanding business process quality. In Business Process Management (pp. 41-73). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Röglinger, M., Pöppelbuß, J. and Becker, J., 2012. Maturity models in business process management. Business Process Management Journal,18(2), pp.328-346.

Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process management. In Handbook on Business Process Management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Schmiedel, T., Vom Brocke, J. and Recker, J., 2014. Development and validation of an instrument to measure organizational cultures’ support of business process management. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.43-56.

Trkman, P., 2013. Increasing process orientation with business process management: Critical practices’. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), pp.48-60.

van der Aalst, W.M., 2013. Business process management: a comprehensive survey. ISRN Software Engineering, 2013.

Vanwersch, R.J., Vanderfeesten, I., Rietzschel, E. and Reijers, H.A., 2015, August. Improving business processes: does anybody have an idea?. InInternational Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 3-18). Springer International Publishing.

Weske, M., 2012. Business process management architectures. In Business Process Management (pp. 333-371). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.