DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASUREMENT SCALE FOR BUSINESS PROCESS STANDARDIZATION

Process-oriented companies face the dichotomy of process standardization versus process diversity. On the one hand, multinational companies try to realize returns of scale by standardization. On the other hand, markets require businesses to adapt to local needs and government regulations. As of to-day, there is no framework available to measure the degree of process standardization. This is both a problem for companies that want to assess their degree of standardization as well as for research that aims to investigate standardization and its connection with other concepts. In this paper, we address this research gap from the perspective of scale development. We utilize a well-acknowledged method for devising a measurement instrument to specifically and directly measure the degree of standardiza-tion in business processes. Various application scenarios and future research areas are pointed out

Designing a Process Mining-Enabled Decision Support System for Business Process Standardization in ERP Implementation Projects

Process standardization allows to optimize ERP systems and is a nec-essary step prior to ERP implementation projects. Traditional approaches to standardizing business processes are based on manually created "de-jure" process models, which are distorted, error-prone, simplistic, and often deviating from process reality. Theoretically embedded in the organizational contingency theory as kernel theory, this paper employs a design science approach to design a process mining-enabled decision support system (DSS) which combines bottom-up process mining models with manually added top-down standardization infor-mation to recommend a suitable standard process specification from a repository. Extended process models of the as-is process are matched against a repository of best-practice standard process model using an attributebased process similarity matching algorithm. Thus, the DSS aims to reduce the overall costs of process standardization, to optimize the degree of fit between the organization and the implemented processes, and to minimize the degree of organizational change re-quired in standardization and ERP implementation projects. This paper imple-ments a working prototype instantiation in the open-source process analytics platform Apromore based on a real-life event log and standardization attributes for the Purchase-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash processes from three SAP R/3 ERP systems at the industry partner

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE – CASE STUDY OF BOSNIAN AND HERZEGOVINIAN COMPANY

The paper aims to determine the organizational structure and organizational culture of a successful construction company from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Additionally, the paper provides an insight into their interdependence and impact on the overall business operations of the company. The questionnaire examined the main dimensions of organizational structure: formalization, centralization, standardization and specialization. Cameron and Quinn’s Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument was used to examine the organizational culture at the company, while the analysis of the company’s business efficiency was informed by Kaplan and Norton’s Key Performance Indicators: financial, internal business processes, customer, and learning and growth perspectives. After the reliability of the measuring scales used were confirmed by calculating the Cronbach alpha coefficient, the Relative Importance Index determined which dimensions of the organizational structure and culture, and which efficiency indicators have the greatest influence on the design of the company's business system. According to the subjective opinion of the employees who participated in this research, the company can be characterized as hierarchical, highly formalized and structured, and customer-oriented

Processus de gestion des litiges dans l'industrie de la construction

RÉSUMÉ : Les projets de construction deviennent de plus en plus complexes et leurs modes de réalisation sont variables. Pour un contrat de type Ingénierie, Approvisionnement et Gestion de la construction, la collaboration entre les différents acteurs est essentielle dès le début du projet pour planifier les différentes échéances afin de prendre en compte toutes les contraintes. Le travail en amont permet de diminuer l’apparition de problèmes pouvant entrainer des réclamations. Tant que la confiance et le dialogue sont présents, les différends peuvent se régler à l’amiable, mais si le dialogue est rompu, les phases de négociation prennent fin. La solution est alors de passer à des méthodes alternatives de règlements des différends faisant intervenir une personne tierce extérieure jouant le rôle de médiateur. Si finalement aucune entente n’est trouvée, le dernier moyen est de passer par la voie judiciaire comprenant l’arbitrage et le litige. Pour pouvoir gérer un litige, il est important d’avoir une personne-ressource ayant du recul sur le projet. Certaines entreprises font appel à des firmes expertes dès le début du projet pour gérer les réclamations au besoin, d’autres y font appel seulement lorsque la réclamation apparaît. Dans les deux cas, une personne ressource-litige doit être capable de suivre l’avancement du litige et d’anticiper les étapes suivantes. Ce projet de recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’amélioration de la gestion des litiges. L’état de l’art révèle un nombre important de travaux écrits sur la gestion des réclamations, s’accordant sur six phases principales. Néanmoins, un seul article propose un processus complet de gestion des réclamations pour le domaine de la chaîne d’approvisionnement et aucun article n’aborde le passage au litige. Les observations faites auprès d’une entreprise partenaire révèlent aussi la non-existence de processus permettant de gérer un litige. L’objectif principal de ce projet est ainsi de développer un processus de gestion des litiges pour l’industrie de la construction au Québec visant à guider les futurs gestionnaires de projet litige, qu’ils soient du côté de la demande ou de la défense. Pour y arriver, la méthodologie Design Research Methodology a été employée. Elle nous a tout d’abord permis de confirmer la problématique soulevée par la revue de littérature en la confrontant à une analyse de l’existant réalisée chez un partenaire industriel. Sans un processus structurant la gestion du litige, les gestionnaires de projet ne sont pas en mesure d’avoir une vision globale de la procédure. Cette méthodologie mixte, jumelant des études empiriques et des approches scientifiques, nous a permis par la suite de développer et de valider un processus de gestion des litiges. Le processus a été élaboré à partir des données disponibles issues d’un projet de litige du partenaire industriel et des retours d’expériences d’un gestionnaire de projet et d’avocats internes de la firme. Le processus conçu lie l’équipe litige, les avocats externes et les experts qui collaborent pour construire un dossier de défense. Ce processus, décomposé en dix phases, contient des séquences d’activités, des ressources, des documents intrants et extrants et des livrables. Finalement, ce modèle a été validé par une succession d’audits avec des avocats et un expert d’une entreprise spécialisée en gestion des différends. Cette validation s’est faite à partir de leurs propres retours d’expériences puisqu’aucun processus cartographié des litiges n’existe ni dans l’industrie ni dans la littérature scientifique. L’évaluation du processus par des indicateurs de standardisation a permis de définir de bonne base pour établir la standardisation du processus, mais aussi sa généralisation puisqu’il est utilisé par l’entreprise experte pour différent type de projet et de contrat dans l’industrie de la construction. Grâce à ce processus, les gestionnaires de projet pourront superviser les litiges, ce qui pourrait permettre de réduire le temps et donc les coûts associés.----------ABSTRACT : Construction projects are becoming more and more complex and various contractual strategies may be employed. For an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management contract, collaboration between the different actors is essential from the very beginning of the project to plan the different deadlines in order to take into account all the constraints. Working upstream reduces the occurrence of problems that could lead to claims. As long as trust and dialogue are present, disputes can be settled by mutual agreement, but if dialogue is cut off, the negotiation phases are over. The solution is then to move to alternative dispute resolution methods involving an outside third-party mediator. If, in spite of this, no agreement is reached, the last option is to proceed to legal proceedings including arbitration and litigation. To be able to manage a dispute, it is important to have a resource person who has some objectivity on the project. Some companies call upon expert firms at the beginning of the project to manage claims as needed while others call upon them only when the claim arises. In both cases, a litigation resource person must be able to follow the progress of the dispute and anticipate the next steps. This research project is part of the improvement of litigation management. The diagnosis of the state of the art reveals a significant number of written works on claims management, agreeing on six main phases. However, only one article proposes a complete claims management process for the supply chain domain and not a single article addresses the transition to litigation. Observations made in a partner company also reveal a lack of processes for handling litigation. The main objective of this project is to develop a litigation management process for the construction industry in Quebec to guide future litigation project managers, whether they are on the plaintiff’s or defendant’s side of the claim. The Design Research Methodology was employed to conduct this research. This approach first confirmed the problem raised by the literature review by confronting it with an analysis of the existing situation at an industrial partner. Without a process structuring the management of the litigation, project managers are not able to have an overall view of the procedure. Second, our mixed methodology, combining empirical studies and scientific approaches, allowed us to develop and validate a litigation management process. The development of the process was based on available data from the industrial partner’s litigation project and feedback from a project manager and the firm’s in-house lawyers. The process designed links the litigation team, outside lawyers and experts collaborating to build a defence case. The process, which is divided into ten phases, contains sequences of activities, resources, input and output documents and deliverables. Finally, the proposed model was validated by a succession of audits with lawyers and an expert from a company specialized in dispute management. This validation was based on their feedback since no mapped litigation process exists either in this industry or in the scientific literature. The evaluation of the process by means of standardization indicators provided a good basis for establishing the standardization of the process, but also its generalization since it is used by the expert company for different types of projects and contracts in the construction industry. With this process, litigation managers will be able to oversee litigation, which could reduce the time and therefore the associated costs

Design of Data-Driven Decision Support Systems for Business Process Standardization

Increasingly dynamic environments require organizations to engage in business process standardization (BPS) in response to environmental change. However, BPS depends on numerous contingency factors from different layers of the organization, such as strategy, business models (BMs), business processes (BPs) and application systems that need to be well-understood (“comprehended”) and taken into account by decision-makers for selecting appropriate standard BP designs that fit the organization. Besides, common approaches to BPS are non-data-driven and frequently do not exploit increasingly avail-able data in organizations. Therefore, this thesis addresses the following research ques-tion: “How to design data-driven decision support systems to increase the comprehen-sion of contingency factors on business process standardization?”. Theoretically grounded in organizational contingency theory (OCT), this thesis address-es the research question by conducting three design science research (DSR) projects to design data-driven decision support systems (DSSs) for SAP R/3 and S/4 HANA ERP systems that increase comprehension of BPS contingency factors. The thesis conducts the DSR projects at an industry partner within the context of a BPS and SAP S/4 HANA transformation program at a global manufacturing corporation. DSR project 1 designs a data-driven “Business Model Mining” system that automatical-ly “mines” BMs from data in application systems and represents results in an interactive “Business Model Canvas” (BMC) BI dashboard to comprehend BM-related BPS con-tingency factors. The project derives generic design requirements and a blueprint con-ceptualization for BMM systems and suggests an open, standardized reference data model for BMM. The project implements the software artifact “Business Model Miner” in Microsoft Azure / PowerBI and demonstrates technical feasibility by using data from an educational SAP S/4 HANA system, an open reference dataset, and three real-life SAP R/3 ERP systems. A field evaluation with 21 managers at the industry partner finds differences between tool results and BMCs created by managers and thus the po-tential for a complementary role of BMM tools to enrich the comprehension of BMs. A further controlled laboratory experiment with 142 students finds significant beneficial impacts on subjective and objective comprehension in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and relative efficiency. Second, DSR project 2 designs a data-driven process mining DSS “KeyPro” to semi-automatically discover and prioritize the set of BPs occurring in an organization from log data to concentrate BPS initiatives on important BPs given limited organizational resources. The project derives objective and quantifiable BP importance metrics from BM and BPM literature and implements KeyPro for SAP R/3 ERP and S/4 HANA sys-tems in Microsoft SQL Server / Azure and interactive PowerBI dashboards. A field evaluation with 52 managers compares BPs detected manually by decision-makers against BPs discovered by KeyPro and reveals significant differences and a complemen-tary role of the artifact to deliver additional insights into the set of BPs in the organiza-tion. Finally, a controlled laboratory experiment with 30 students identifies the dash-boards with the lowest comprehension for further development. Third, OCT requires organizations to select a standard BP design that matches contin-gencies. Thus, DSR project 3 designs a process mining DSS to select a standard BP from a repository of different alternative designs based on the similarity of BPS contin-gency factors between the as-is process and the to-be standard processes. DSR project 3 thus derives four different process model variants for representing BPS contingency factors that vary according to determinant factors of process model comprehension (PMC) identified in PMC literature. A controlled laboratory evaluation with 150 stu-dents identifies significant differences in PMC. Based on laboratory findings, the DSS is implemented in the BPM platform “Apromore” to select standard BP reference mod-els from the SAP Best Practices Explorer for SAP S/4 HANA and applied for the pur-chase-to-pay and order-to-cash process of a manufacturing company