BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Business Process Management

Abstract

This paper studies the role of business process management in creating a higher business process orientation. The purpose is to analyze previously suggested practices to identify those that are critical at a certain business process orientation maturity level and those that are not. A case study is used to identify the critical success factors. With the evolution of customer's needs, innovation becomes a core competency of organizations to success in the intense global competition nowadays. Business process orientation (BPO), as “a state of mind” of the organization, emphasizes to employ a customer-and-process-oriented way to rethink and reengineer business. It is interesting and important to understand the role of process-oriented thinking and working in the innovation-driven economy. To better understand BPO, this study applies McCormack's definition to consider BPO's influences on innovation in both employee and organization levels in aspect of three main components. Results from questionnaire survey of Japanese companies show that BPO has positive association with employees' innovative behavior, and then enhance company's innovation performance sequentially. Meanwhile, employees' innovation is a mediator in this link. Therefore, BPO supports innovation, but it cannot guarantee success. Motivating all employees to participate and do innovation is a key for generating innovative solutions for customer through being BPO. This paper contributes to the research by understanding the deeper link between BPO and innovation in Japan which is a highly relevant but understudied context. The findings also recommend companies to motivate employees' innovative behavior as well as improving BPO to being innovative.

Keywords : Business process management; Critical success factors; Critical practices; Factor analysis; Decision trees

Table of Contents

Abstract2

1. Introduction2

2. The role of BPM2

2.1. Critical view on BPM2

2.2. BPM as a tool for increasing BPO3

2.3. Critical success factors4

2.4. Critical practices5

3. Case Study6

4. Discussion6

4.1. Strategic alignment6

4.2. Performance measurement6

4.3. Organizational changes7

4.4. IS support7

4.5. Employee training and empowerment8

4.6. Non-critical practices8

5. Discussion and conclusion9

References11

Business Process Management

1. Introduction

Improving organizational business processes has been high on companies' and researchers' agendas for years ( [McCormack et al., 2009] and [Ranganathan and Dhaliwal, 2001]). The main challenge remains how to implement process principles into an organization's operation. Therefore, several approaches such as total quality management, continuous process improvement, and business process reengineering have been proposed to increase business process orientation (BPO). One of these approaches is business process management (BPM), which seems to be the most comprehensive, well-known, and widely used practice (Rohloff, 2009) because it incorporates many aspects of the earlier approaches. In line withLee and Dale (1998) we consider BPM to be a structured, analytical, cross-functional, continuous improvement of processes.

However, BPM includes a myriad of practices from different fields. There are several fundamental problems that remain unsolved by current approaches. It is necessary to rigorously identify the practices likely to lead to improved BPO and consequently to provide a clearer roadmap for companies. Most previous research and professional papers seem content with merely identifying critical success factors (CSFs). They rarely provide empirically proven actionable points for companies on their journey towards a higher BPO ...