Olivera Marjanovic

Towards formal modeling of e-contracts

The emerging B2B technologies allow for more automated management of e-contracts including contract drafting, negotiation and monitoring. As technology infrastructure becomes available for electronic exchange of contracts and contract-related messages, the IT community is becoming more interested in modeling of contracts as governance structures for many inter-organisational interactions. The paper presents our initial ideas for formal modeling of e-contracts. This includes specification of deontic constraints and verification of deontic consistency associated with roles in a contract, precise modeling of temporal constraints/estimates and verification of temporal consistency of an e-contract, and finally scheduling of the required actions. The paper also introduces visualisation concepts such as role windows and time maps and describes how they could be used as decision support tools during contract negotiation.

The Next Stage of Operational Business Intelligence: Creating New Challenges for Business Process Management

Current practices in the area of business intelligence (BI) and business performance management (BPerM) confirm the need for better integration of BI and business processes (BPs). This is especially the case with operational BI that aims to unify strategic and tactical decision making, by integrating BI solutions with organisations constantly evolving BPs. However, operational BI has a very limited view of BP and business process management (BProM) systems. In essence, it focuses on a limited number of core, transactional BPs that are, by definition, highly structured and repetitive. This paper argues that in order to support customer-facing employees in service-oriented industries, it is necessary to consider knowledge intensive BPs and their possible integration with operational BI. This paper offers a critical analysis of case-handling BPs in the context of operational BI. It then identifies a number of research challenges related to a new type of case-handling BProM system

Role of process knowledge in business process improvement methodology: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance and role of process knowledge in the business process (BP) improvement methodology with the help of a case study.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a literature review that highlights the challenges and issues in the existing BP improvement methodologies. An in‐depth case study that has embarked on a major BP improvement initiative that emphasizes individual and collective process knowledge in a real‐life complex organization is presented.Findings – The paper confirms that BP improvement is, in fact, a complex, knowledge‐intensive, collaborative process that consists of a set of coordinated, contextualized knowledge management processes. The design of the “to‐be” process in this study is a knowledge co‐creation process that uses collaborative exploration of different scenarios and contexts. Compared with the traditional BP improvement methodologies where the main emphasis is on the design of a new process model, the...

Towards IS supported coordination in emergent business processes

Purpose – The main objective of this paper is to investigate information system (IS) supported coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. These are business processes that cannot be pre‐defined as their models evolve during process execution from the accumulated experience. Consequently, these processes require a high level of knowledge‐sharing, collection and reuse among all participants in the process.Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers a critical analysis of the main limitations of workflow technology that is widely considered to be the leading process‐oriented, coordination technology. It illustrates why this technology cannot be used to support coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. The paper then identifies a number of requirements for possible IS support.Findings – The main conclusion of this paper is that coordination in knowledge‐intensive processes is, in fact, a knowledge‐intensive process itself, and as such it cannot be fully pre‐defined. Therefore, au...

Knowledge Intensive Business Processes: Theoretical Foundations and Research Challenges

In very recent times, the pressing need to compete on the basis of human-centered knowledge rather than process automation, has expanded the field of Business Process Management (BPM) to include knowledge intensive business processes. This paper proposes a theoretical framework that combines the related research in BPM and Knowledge Management (KM) fields, including a holistic model of BPM, a process/knowledge continuum and the so-called reversed knowledge pyramid. More precisely, this conceptual paper analyses the reversed knowledge pyramid, along the process/knowledge continuum, taking a holistic approach. This, in turn, sets the much-needed foundations explaining how strategy, processes, people, knowledge and technology (both KM and BPM) all fit together for different types of BPs and create opportunities for value creation and competitive differentiation. The proposed multidisciplinary framework is also used to indentify the key research questions that lie at the intersect of BPM and human-centered KM and require a multidisciplinary approach.

Understanding Knowledge-Intensive, Practice-Oriented Business Processes

In order to create new opportunities for competitive differentiation, organisations are starting to shift their focus from transactional operational business processes (BPs) to other types of processes that cannot be easily replicated. Their key ingredients are human knowledge, experience and creativity that cannot be standardised, prescribed and easily acquired. While Business Process Management (BPM) research and practice will remain focused on highly structured operational BPs for quite some time, there is a need to better understand other types of BPs, especially their knowledge aspect. This is expected to lead to new knowledge management strategies and processes designed to better leverage human capital to ensure continuous improvement of business processes. This paper focuses on knowledge-intensive, practice-oriented BPs. It describes an exploratory case study of a complex practice-oriented BP in a large, multi-unit organization and illustrates how our research findings expand current BPM boundaries, especially in the area of BP improvement methodologies.

The Importance of Process Thinking in Business Intelligence

The growing field of Operational Business Intelligence (BI) has resulted in increasing interest in BI-supported Business Processes (BPs), including their management and ongoing improvement. This has led BI practitioners to consider another field–Business Process Management (BPM)–that is closely related to business performance management. However, current approaches to the BPM and operational BI integration have been limited and reduced to the problem of technical integration of BPM and BI systems. This paper argues that by adopting process- thinking in BI, further opportunities for business value creation could be discovered through systematic analysis of the non-technical aspects of BI and BPM integration, including strategy alignment, human-centered knowledge management, and ongoing improvement of BI supported processes. The authors propose a theoretical framework founded in the related research in BPM, BI, and Knowledge Management (KM) fields, describing the ways it has been used to guide ongoing empirical research in diverse case organizations across different industry sectors.

Business Value Creation through Business Processes Management and Operational Business Intelligence Integration

Current approaches to Business Process Management (BPM) and operational Business Intelligence (BI) integration have been very limited and simply reduced to the problem of technical integration between BPM and BI systems. This paper argues that further opportunities for business value creation could be discovered through systematic analysis of the non-technical aspects of BI and BPM integration, especially in terms of strategy alignment, human-centered knowledge management and ongoing improvement of BI supported processes. The paper proposes a theoretical framework founded in the related research in BPM, BI and Knowledge Management (KM) fields and describes how it has been used to guide our empirical case study research in service organisations in the context of BI-supported customer-facing processes.

Managing the Normative Context of Composite E-services

As more and more companies provide their services over the Internet, the need to better understand and manage the normative context of composite services (including rights and responsibilities of all parties involved) becomes evident. Unfortunately the normative perspective of both individual and composite services seems to be left out from current e-service research and practice. Yet, this perspective of e-service provision is very important not only because of the possible legal consequences but also because of its implications on customer’s trust. The main objective of this paper is to investigates the normative perspective of a composite e-service offered by independent as well as affiliated service providers. It proposes a formal model of the normative context investigates the problem of its management and defines the requirements for a value-added service that could be used both by customers and providers of composite e-services.

The Current State of BPM Education in Australia: Teaching and Research Challenges

As business processes, services and relationships, are now recognized as key organizational assets, the demand for the so-called boundary-spanning roles and process-aware professionals is continuing to grow. The world-wide demand for these roles will continue to increase, fueled by the unprecedented interest in Business Process Management (BPM) and the other emerging cross-functional disciplines. This, in turn, creates new opportunities, as well as some unforeseeable challenges for BPM education, both in university and industry. This paper reports on an analysis of the current BPM offerings of Australian universities. It presents a critical review of what is taught and how it is taught, and identifies a series of gaps and concerns. Explanations and recommendations are proposed and a call made for BPM educators worldwide, for urgent action.