A Qualitative Research Perspective on BPM Adoption and the Pitfalls of Business Process Modeling

Abstract. Business Process Management (BPM) is used by organizations as a method to increase awareness and knowledge of business processes. Although many companies adopt BPM, there is still a notable insecurity of how to set it up in the most effective way. A considerate amount of research concerning partial aspects of BPM adoption has been done, such as the pitfalls of business process modeling. However, up until now hardly any empirical research has been conducted that aims at validating them. In this paper we address this research gap by conducting eleven in-depth interviews with BPM experts from various companies. We use the Grounded Theory approach to qualitatively analyze the data. Our contribution is twofold. First, we derive a conceptual framework showing the insights of BPM adoption by organizations. Second, we use the evidence from the interviews to discuss the pitfalls of business process modeling and show the countermeasures that are taken by companies

ERP lifecycle: When to retire your ERP system?

A lot of research has been undertaken focusing on ERP systems lifecycles, but very little paid attention to retirement. ERP retirement means the replacement of an ERP with another. The aim of this research paper is to investigate why and when should organizations retire their ERP systems. A convenience case study of an SME has been selected from Egypt. The case study under investigation has retired their local ERP system and replaced it with SAP ERP. Results of our analysis indicated that reasons of retirement were: wrong selection, users were not involved in the selection process, and lack of an official implementation methodology. This is considered a new finding since main stream literature was mainly focused on retirement after maturity