What is Business Process Management?: A two stage literature review of an emerging field <s> Technology in a BPM Perspective <s> This paper reports on the findings of a survey and case study research into the understanding and application of business process management (BPM) in European companies. The process perspective is increasingly being seen as a mechanism for achieving competitive advantage through performance improvement and in response to market pressures, customer expectations for better and more reliable service and increasing competition. We reveal the level of importance European companies attach to BPM, what it means to them and what they have done in practice. The paper draws on a postal survey conducted with quality directors and business process managers in organisations which are members of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and case studies in a number of organisations regarded as being leaders in the adoption of BPM. The study has helped to highlight some interesting approaches and reveal features which are important for BPM to be successful. <s> BIB001 </s> What is Business Process Management?: A two stage literature review of an emerging field <s> Technology in a BPM Perspective <s> This paper explores the relationship between Business Performance Management and Business Process Management (BPM). It describes the core role that business processes play in enabling the firm to achieve its Key Business Objectives. It outlines the need for a high-level philosophy for BPM and how the technology of BPM helps managers and employees as they evolve operational processes. The paper provides a short overview of the challenges in developing appropriate process standards and considers the essential components of BPM Suites. <s> BIB002 </s> What is Business Process Management?: A two stage literature review of an emerging field <s> Technology in a BPM Perspective <s> This paper focuses on the best practices associated with Business Process Management (BPM) project success. It describes a recipe for success, from the creation of a governance oriented Steering Group and Project Selection, through Business Case Development. and on to gaining Executive Sponsorship. With business commitment to the project, the approach focuses on gaining a deep understanding of business processes, before identifying improvement opportunities and eventual implementation on a BPM Suite. Along the way, the paper highlights a wide range of best practice approaches and pitfalls to avoid. <s> BIB003 </s> What is Business Process Management?: A two stage literature review of an emerging field <s> Technology in a BPM Perspective <s> Collaborative commerce (C-Commerce) is a set of technologies and business practices that allows companies to build stronger relationships with their trading partners through integrating complex and cross-enterprise processes governed by business logic and rules, as well as workflows. Business Process Management (BPM) is a key element of C-Commerce solutions for complex process coordination. It provides a mechanism to support e-businesses in modeling, deploying, and managing business processes that involve various applications with greater flexibility. Traditional BPM solutions often lack the capability to integrate external applications in that they have very limited support for interoperability. In recent years, Web services have emerged as a promising enabling technology for BPM in support of C-Commerce. Web services offer effective and standard-based means to improve interoperability among different software applications over Internet protocols. This paper aims to give an in-depth analysis of BPM and Web services in the context of C-Commerce. We propose an architecture for Web services enabled BPM in C-Commerce and provide technical insights into why Web services can enhance business process coordination. Finally, an implementation of a dynamic e-procurement application based on the proposed architecture is presented. With the advent of Web service standards and business process integration tools that support them, BPM systems enabled by Web services are empowering the development of more flexible and dynamic C-Commerce. <s> BIB004
Technology in a BPM perspective concerns the crucial importance that technology plays in generating value and underpinning the philosophy of BPM by delivering an infrastructure that drives work though the firm, enabling a regime of monitoring, optimization and traceability  . It allows businesses to prepare different scenarios and make the right changes immediately, more effectively and hereby contribute with competitive advantages. Furthermore the technology provides the needed infrastructure to translate strategic choices into concrete plans of action and letting the businesses become more proactive  . The objective of BPM is to increase employee and customer value through innovative, flexible and efficient processes but in such a process-managed organizations is more about business transformation then about technology  . Simply to view BPM as a label for new technology is a misunderstanding  nor an updated version of BPR  . Reluctant behavior by thinking of BPM is not surprising while BPM like BPR emphasizes process thinking as a method to lower cost, increase quality of service and improve personal productivity. BPM and BPR are quite similar but the major difference is that BPM is defined as a continuous performance improvement methodology BIB001 while BPR is not iterative. Both have technology as an enabler but BPM technology at that time in the 1980's did often obstruct process change. In addition the code behind the systems required specialized skills and significant time to change and last, it was proprietary independent of each other applications before the ability to automate the entire process appeared. Today's thinking regarding continual process improvement has significantly changes since the BPR era  . The standards as SOA, XML and Web service has all contributed the advance of BPM technology  and undertaking a BPM initiative without SOA it is nearly unthinkable  . These standards deliver great flexibility and make it a lot easier to invoke complex application processing in BPMS products  and often this lack of interoperability can be solved by various web services BIB004 . BPM and SOA can be thought as a new way of linking the business and IT department together however, BPM is fundamentally a top-down approach whereas SOA is a bottom-up  . A big technological challenge is therefore to identify the commonalities and resolve the differences  , and this need can very well be increasing in the future until the BPM technology mature and find its full potential. BPM technology is a new era of software "that uses process models to drive the work through the organization by routing tasks to the relevant employee". This includes a wide range of software spanning from process modeling interfaces, process engines, business rules engines and activity monitoring and analytics components all integrated in a BPM Suite  . By the ability to model business processes a process engine is acquired to keep track of the work being done, integrating with third party applications, and hereby ensure later traceability in the processes BIB003 . Also modeling provides critical capabilities in bringing business intelligence into focused action BIB002 . The unique about BPM modeling is that changing a process step is as easy as drawing a line between two boxes. This becomes possible because of the models created in a BPMS are linked or integrated directly to the applications and databases by orchestrating the underlying infrastructure completely  . Thereby the process engine can be seen as a software server that keeps track of each individual work item and routing it along to the next task when finished BIB002 . In this context the rule engine becomes a central element in the technology perspective of BPM while it is the place where the business can respond to the continual optimization needs of its processes   . In addition it is recommended that these BPM-based applications is frequently updated and finetuned, which means at least once a quarter or even twice as much  . BPM has in many cases evolved from a feature of workflow to a flexible way of providing strategic value to the business BIB004 . Various ways leads to BPM but the "right" choice depend on the leaders understanding of BPM and the commitment to organizational transformation  . And the businesses needs to appreciate that BPM technology is a lifelong cycle and not a one-off deployment  .