Anne Cleven

Towards a business process-oriented approach to enterprise content management: the ECM-blueprinting framework

In today’s digital information age, companies are struggling with an immense overload of mainly unstructured data. Reducing search times, fulfilling compliance requirements and maintaining information quality represent only three of the challenges that organisations from all industry sectors are faced with. Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising approach addressing these challenges. Yet, there are still numerous obstacles to the implementation of ECM technologies, particularly fostered by the fact that the key challenges of ECM adaptation processes are rather organisational than technological. In the present article we claim that the consideration of an organisation’s business process structure is particularly crucial for ECM success. In response to this, we introduce a process-oriented conceptual framework that systematises the key steps of an ECM adoption. The paper suggests that ECM and business process management are two strongly related fields of research.

Design alternatives for the evaluation of design science research artifacts

Within a consideration of cost effectiveness the evaluation of design science research artifacts is of major importance. In the past, a plenitude of approaches has been developed for this purpose -- partly artifact-specific, partly artifact-neutral. Nonetheless, there is a lack of a comprehensive overview over existing methods as well as a systemization of those with regard to fundamental structuring criteria. The paper at hand surveys existing methods and introduces a framework that equally supports the designer and the user of artifact evaluation approaches. Subsequent to the embedding of the framework into the design science research process two exemplary application scenarios are described.

Uncovering Four Strategies to Approach Master Data Management

Just recently much Information Systems (IS) research focuses on master data management (MDM) which promises to increase an organizations overall core data quality. Above any doubt, however, MDM initiatives confront organizations with multi-faceted and complex challenges that call for a more strategic approach to MDM. In this paper we introduce a framework for approaching MDM projects that has been developed in the course of a design science research study. The framework distinguishes four major strategies of MDM project initiations all featuring their specific assets and drawbacks. The usefulness of our artifact is illustrated in a short case narrative.

Regulatory Compliance in Information Systems Research – Literature Analysis and Research Agenda

After a period of little regulation, many companies are now facing a growing number and an increasing complexity of new laws, regulations, and standards. This has a huge impact on how organizations conduct their daily business and involves various changes in organizational and governance structures, software systems and data flows as well as corporate culture, organizational power and communication. We argue that the implementation of a holistic compliance cannot be divided into isolated projects, but instead requires a thorough analysis of relevant components as well as an integrated design of the very same. This paper examines the state-of-the-art of compliance research in the field of information systems (IS) by means of a comprehensive literature analysis. For the systemization of our results we apply a holistic framework for enterprise analysis and design. The framework allows us to both point out “focus areas” as well as “less travelled roads” and derive a future research agenda for compliance research.

Managing Process Performance to Enable Corporate Sustainability: A Capability Maturity Model

Sustainability is among the key issues that organisations face today. Sustainability is frequently defined as economic activity that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. Despite being intensely discussed, however, the concept of sustainability is not as clear cut as is commonly believed. Likewise, neither kind nor scope of the capabilities organisations need to develop in order to become truly sustainable are currently well understood. This chapter proposes that process performance management (PPM) is a vital approach that organisations can use to address their sustainability concerns. Using a quantitative, questionnaire-based approach, the Rasch algorithm, we develop a capability maturity model that allows organisations to determine their current PPM maturity level and to identify required improvements regarding their process performance. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the use of PPM to incorporate corporate sustainability in day-to-day operations.

Process performance management – identifying stereotype problem situations as a basis for effective and efficient design research

Just recently many organisations get involved with process performance management (PPM) It appears, however, that PPM initiatives confront organisations with multi-faceted and complex challenges that call for a detailed problem analysis before any solution is developed In this paper we introduce two patterns for identifying stereotype problem situations in design research (DR) and apply one to the field of PPM The application gives detailed insights into typical PPM problem situations and illustrates the usefulness of our approach.

Process Performance Management as a Basic Concept for Sustainable Business Process Management – Empirical Investigation and Research Agenda

Sustainable development, the sustainable organization and sustainability strategies are all terms that are being intensely discussed in the business community just now. Nonetheless, the concept of sustainability still remains vague. Especially its meaning and implications for the field of Business Process Management (BPM) are as of yet by and large unclear. In this paper we set out to advance the understanding of economic sustainability in the context of BPM. We argue that Process Performance Management (PPM) represents a basic approach for establishing and maintaining economic sustainability in BPM. Although the economic dimension of sustainability is commonly believed to have the highest maturity an empirical investigation reveals that organizations are experiencing major difficulties with its implementation(in particular on a process level. Based on the findings, we propose a research agenda for future research efforts in this field.

Finding Balanced Scorecards for Business Driven IT Service Portfolio Management: A Literature Review

During the last decades information technology IT management has changed. Starting from being a costly and rare resource, IT has evolved into a vital enabler for almost any kind of business today. This development demands for highly flexible management concepts allowing the business to actively control and govern IT performance. A widely used approach for multi-dimensional performance measurement in the context of IT management is the Balanced Scorecard BSC. The authors aim at investigating the state of the art of IT BSC use through a comprehensive literature analysis. They also evaluate the adaptability of the different types of this concept to the most recent developments in IT management.

Process Performance Management - A Systematic Problem Analysis and Identification of Design Principles

Business processes are the means by which organisations create value. Consequently, organisations need to continuously monitor and control their processes’ performance so as to provide a consistent and predictable execution quality. A number of today’s organisations, however, appear to encounter difficulties with measuring and improving their processes’ performance. In this paper, we set out to identify the gap between how organisations currently approach process performance management (PPM) and what they are striving to realise in the future. The systematic gap analysis results in a set of design factors that are valuable in guiding future design efforts for useful and relevant PPM solutions.

Towards Private-Public Research Partnerships Combining Rigor and Relevance in DWH/BI Research: The Competence Center Approach

Business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DWH) research represent two increasingly popular, but still emerging fields in the information systems (IS) academic discipline. As such, they raise two substantial questions: Firstly, “how rigorous, i.e., fundamental, constituent, and explanatory, is DWH BI research?†and, secondly, “how relevant, i.e., useful and purposeful, is this research to practitioners?†In this article, the authors uphold the position that relevance and rigor are by no means dichotomous, but two sides of the same coin. Naturally, this requires well-defined approaches and guidelines—for scholarship in general and DWH/BI research in particular. Therefore, this paper proposes the competence center (CC) approach—a private-public partnership between academia and practice. The authors illustrate how the CC approach can be applied within the field of DWH/BI and suggest that a close link between research and practice supports both enhancing relevance to practice and strengthening rigor of research.