The Internet-of-Things Meets Business Process Management: Mutual Benefits and Challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected devices collecting and exchanging data over the Internet. These things can be artificial or natural, and interact as autonomous agents forming a complex system. In turn, Business Process Management (BPM) was established to analyze, discover, design, implement, execute, monitor and evolve collaborative business processes within and across organizations. While the IoT and BPM have been regarded as separate topics in research and practice, we strongly believe that the management of IoT applications will strongly benefit from BPM concepts, methods and technologies on the one hand; on the other one, the IoT poses challenges that will require enhancements and extensions of the current state-of-the-art in the BPM field. In this paper, we question to what extent these two paradigms can be combined and we discuss the emerging challenges

Supporting Collaborative Business Processes: a BPaaS Approach.

Collaborative business processes are increasingly driven by business flexibility and agility. Cloud-based business process management services have provided small medium enterprises (SMEs) with a pay-per-use manner for their daily business needs, i.e. some simple business process applications, e.g. salesforce provides cloud-based CRM to boost SMEs' sales. This raises the question how cloud-based business process management solutions can support the fast pace of change of business collaborations among business partners? For example, collaborative processes for managing industrial incidents are short term, low frequency processes. This paper proposes an architecture meta-model, which is used to design the concrete architecture and to further analyse the performance of the proposed solution. A real world case of collaborative processes for incident and maintenance notifi cations is used to explain the design and implementation of the cloud-based solution for supporting collaborative business processes. Service improvement of the new solution and computing power costs are analysed accordingly

The Impact of Social Business Process Management on Policy-making in e-Government

The combination of social media and Business Process Management (BPM) has given rise to the emerging field of “social BPM”. The new devel-opment of social BPM is expected to provide bene-fits like flexibility for knowledge-intensive pro-cesses, like policy-making. The goal of this paper is to understand the impact of social BPM on poli-cy-making. We first present a literature survey showing that social BPM is a new and emerging research area and limited attention has been giv-en to social BPM in e-government. The literature reviews showed a lack of empirical research into the accomplished benefits of social BPM. To bridge this gap, a comprehensive case study in a Dutch government social BPM platform was con-ducted. While not all the benefits suggested in the literature were identified in the case study, nega-tive impact of social BPM were also found. A ten-sion was found between accomplishing flexibility and accountability and user efficiency

Green BPM as a business-oriented discipline : a systematic mapping study and research agenda

Green Business Process Management (BPM) focuses on the ecological impact of business processes. This article provides a systematic mapping study of Green BPM literature to evaluate five attributes of the Green BPM research area: (1) scope, (2) disciplines, (3) accountability, (4) researchers and (5) quality control. The results allow developing a research agenda to enhance Green BPM as an approach for environmentally sustainable organizations. We rely on a dichotomy of knowledge production to present research directives relevant for both academics and practitioners in order to help close a rigor-relevance gap. The involvement of both communities is crucial for Green BPM to advance as an applied, business-oriented discipline

Mobiilse värkvõrgu protsessihaldus

Värkvõrk, ehk Asjade Internet (Internet of Things, lüh IoT) edendab lahendusi nagu nn tark linn, kus meid igapäevaselt ümbritsevad objektid on ühendatud infosüsteemidega ja ka üksteisega. Selliseks näiteks võib olla teekatete seisukorra monitoorimissüsteem. Võrku ühendatud sõidukitelt (nt bussidelt) kogutakse videomaterjali, mida seejärel töödeldakse, et tuvastada löökauke või lume kogunemist. Tavaliselt hõlmab selline lahendus keeruka tsentraalse süsteemi ehitamist. Otsuste langetamiseks (nt milliseid sõidukeid parasjagu protsessi kaasata) vajab keskne süsteem pidevat ühendust kõigi IoT seadmetega. Seadmete hulga kasvades võib keskne lahendus aga muutuda pudelikaelaks. Selliste protsesside disaini, haldust, automatiseerimist ja seiret hõlbustavad märkimisväärselt äriprotsesside halduse (Business Process Management, lüh BPM) valdkonna standardid ja tööriistad. Paraku ei ole BPM tehnoloogiad koheselt kasutatavad uute paradigmadega nagu Udu- ja Servaarvutus, mis tuleviku värkvõrgu jaoks vajalikud on. Nende puhul liigub suur osa otsustustest ja arvutustest üksikutest andmekeskustest servavõrgu seadmetele, mis asuvad lõppkasutajatele ja IoT seadmetele lähemal. Videotöötlust võiks teostada mini-andmekeskustes, mis on paigaldatud üle linna, näiteks bussipeatustesse. Arvestades IoT seadmete üha suurenevat hulka, vähendab selline koormuse jaotamine vähendab riski, et tsentraalne andmekeskust ülekoormamist. Doktoritöö uurib, kuidas mobiilsusega seonduvaid IoT protsesse taoliselt ümber korraldada, kohanedes pidevalt muutlikule, liikuvate seadmetega täidetud servavõrgule. Nimelt on ühendused katkendlikud, mistõttu otsuste langetus ja planeerimine peavad arvestama muuhulgas mobiilseadmete liikumistrajektoore. Töö raames valminud prototüüpe testiti Android seadmetel ja simulatsioonides. Lisaks valmis tööriistakomplekt STEP-ONE, mis võimaldab teadlastel hõlpsalt simuleerida ja analüüsida taolisi probleeme erinevais realistlikes stsenaariumites nagu seda on tark linn.The Internet of Things (IoT) promotes solutions such as a smart city, where everyday objects connect with info systems and each other. One example is a road condition monitoring system, where connected vehicles, such as buses, capture video, which is then processed to detect potholes and snow build-up. Building such a solution typically involves establishing a complex centralised system. The centralised approach may become a bottleneck as the number of IoT devices keeps growing. It relies on constant connectivity to all involved devices to make decisions, such as which vehicles to involve in the process. Designing, automating, managing, and monitoring such processes can greatly be supported using the standards and software systems provided by the field of Business Process Management (BPM). However, BPM techniques are not directly applicable to new computing paradigms, such as Fog Computing and Edge Computing, on which the future of IoT relies. Here, a lot of decision-making and processing is moved from central data-centers to devices in the network edge, near the end-users and IoT sensors. For example, video could be processed in mini-datacenters deployed throughout the city, e.g., at bus stops. This load distribution reduces the risk of the ever-growing number of IoT devices overloading the data center. This thesis studies how to reorganise the process execution in this decentralised fashion, where processes must dynamically adapt to the volatile edge environment filled with moving devices. Namely, connectivity is intermittent, so decision-making and planning need to involve factors such as the movement trajectories of mobile devices. We examined this issue in simulations and with a prototype for Android smartphones. We also showcase the STEP-ONE toolset, allowing researchers to conveniently simulate and analyse these issues in different realistic scenarios, such as those in a smart city.  https://www.ester.ee/record=b552551

How to Exploit the Digitalization Potential of Business Processes

Process improvement is the most value-adding activity in the business process management (BPM) lifecycle. Despite mature knowledge, many approaches have been criticized to lack guidance on how to put process improvement into practice. Given the variety of emerging digital technologies, organizations not only face a process improvement black box, but also high uncertainty regarding digital technologies. This paper thus proposes a method that supports organizations in exploiting the digitalization potential of their business processes. To achieve this, action design research and situational method engineering were adopted. Two design cycles involving practitioners (i.e., managers and BPM experts) and end-users (i.e., process owners and participants) were conducted. In the first cycle, the method’s alpha version was evaluated by interviewing practitioners from five organizations. In the second cycle, the beta version was evaluated via real-world case studies. In this paper, detailed results of one case study, which was conducted at a semiconductor manufacturer, are included

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history