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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address two questions: what is the difference between relationship processes and purely product‐oriented processes? And to answer this question we should bear in mind what we mean by relationship, and why a customer is willing to establish and maintain a relationship at all.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical analysis subjected the motives of customers and factors for the establishment and expansion of customers' relationships. In this context the relationship motives and factors can act as base to derive strategic goals of CRM and relationship processes in a further step.FindingsBased on strategic relationship goals the paper will give answers to a systematic identification and engineering of relationship activities and processes. Thereby relationship‐oriented activities complement present product‐oriented processes. In contrast to this we derive purely relationship‐oriented processes as well, such as the customer recovery process. Such processes do not target product sales any more than rather the sustainability of relationship (in particular to valuable customers).Originality/valueThe benefit of the paper is an integrated and goal‐oriented derivation and design of relationship processes and activities. An example in financial services illustrates the approach and shows its application in parts.

PurposeThe paper aims to improve business processes.Design/methodology/approachDescribes various steps needed to improve business processes and the goals required at each step.FindingsThe steps required are: what goals should the process meet? How do we model the goals? How do we map the goals in the (IT) system? How do the goals influence the IT execution? Which goals have been achieved? Must we adjust the process, the goals, or both?Originality/valueExplains the power of goal‐based processes.

PurposeOrganizations of today are becoming ever more focused on their business processes. This has resulted in an increasing interest in using best practices for business process re‐engineering. Two problems arise in connection to using best practices: how to find a best practice that suits particular purposes, and how to ensure that the process from the best practice has the same nature as the process under re‐engineering. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper suggests using business process patterns, i.e. relatively high level business process models, for making near formal comparison of business processes. The paper analyzes widespread modeling techniques to find out which of them suits the task of building patterns for comparison. Based on this analysis, the state‐flow modeling technique is chosen and first steps towards formal definition of business process patterns based on this technique are suggested.FindingsA pattern is defined based on the notions of state space, goal, as a surface in the state space, and valid movements towards the goal. A thinkable procedure of constructing patterns is demonstrated on two real‐life examples. A hypothetical procedure for comparing process is suggested but it still needs to be verified in practice.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper is the way the patterns are formulated and the underlying model, the state‐flow view of processes, upon which the patterns are founded.

The paper describes a project in the domain of business process modeling that concerns loosely-structured business processes, i.e. processes for which it is difficult to establish an order of activities. The process in focus is the lobbying process, i.e. a process aimed at influencing decisions of others, e.g. politicians. The project was carried out at a non-profit interest organization, and the paper describes the project's motivation, structure, methodology, results, and how the results were exploited, including a short description of an IT system built to support the lobbying process. As the commonly spread workflow technique is not particularly suitable for loosely-structured business processes, the project exploited an original state-flow technique for developing a model of the lobbying process. The state-flow technique is based on the state-oriented view on business processes that has been used as a foundation for building the support system. The paper reports a number of problems encountered during the introduction of the system into operational practice. These problems led to the needs of reducing the level of details initially introduced into the system; they will be reintroduced at the later stage when the users become more accustomed to work in the process-oriented manner. In the conclusion, the paper discusses success factors important for modeling projects, and pros and cons of the modeling method used, as well as a broader research context of which the work presented in the paper is a part. ; INKA

PurposeThe paper aims at providing a conceptual framework based on clearly defined concepts and notions, which integrates goals into process modeling and specifically distinguishes goals from soft‐goals or business measures. The application of this framework facilitates a systematic use of soft‐goals in process design.Design/methodology/approachThe framework is developed on the basis of Bunge's well‐established ontology. It is applied to processes taken from the SCOR supply chain reference model for demonstration and evaluation.FindingsApplying the framework to the SCOR processes resulted in a set of focused relations between soft‐goals and processes, as opposed to the ones suggested originally in the SCOR model. This demonstrates the usefulness of the framework in process design.Research limitations/implicationsThe approach presented in the paper is still rather a theoretical framework than a fully validated procedure. It should be tested on larger‐scale cases in more practical settings and evaluated accordingly.Practical implicationsApplying the clearly defined concepts of the framework and the suggested analysis procedure is expected to lead to focused and applicable measures tied to business process during process design, and provide a basis for process measurement requirements to be supported by an information system.Originality/valueThe contribution of the paper is both theoretical and practical. It provides clear‐cut ontology‐based definitions to concepts which so far have been assigned fuzzy and ambiguous meaning and uses these definitions for systematically tying business measures to business processes.

PurposeThe paper aims to provide business process designers a formal yet user friendly technique to evaluate the implications of a process design on process performance even before its implementation.Design/methodology/approachBased on practical experience, the paper has built on past research to hypothesize structural metrics for business processes that help assess the influence of process design on organizational goals.FindingsThis paper suggests a list of structural metrics that can be used to approximate common performance goals (i.e. soft goals) at the stage of process design. Distinct views for process depiction are discussed to explain how each metric can be calculated and what kind of performance goals it can approximate.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper has assumed an intuitive relationship between process structure and process performance which has to be validated empirically. There is scope for developing formal methods to translate changes in structural metrics to monetary value for business and also to refine the structural metrics further if required.Practical implicationsThe suggested list of structural metrics and the corresponding process views can be used to compare process design alternatives to select a process design better aligned to organization goals.Originality/valueA list of structural metrics based on practical experience can be easily applied by business process designers to create a formal yet user friendly approach for process design evaluation.

PurposeThe purpose of research is to examine the communication optimization theory by comparing two business process representation approaches and related redesign guidelines through an experiment.Design/methodology/approachThe experiment examined two process representation approaches involving 114 subjects. Each method gravitated around a different business process representation – one placed emphasis on business process activities and their sequencing, and the other on the web of communication interactions found in business processes.FindingsThe key finding was that an emphasis on a communication‐oriented view of processes seems to increase perceived modeling quality and redesign success.Research limitations/implicationsData were collected from various information systems classes at a university. The participants were not redesign team members in an actual organizational redesign project. Future studies should focus on the characteristics of the designers.Practical implicationsThe findings should allow managers and practitioners involved in operational‐level process redesign to acknowledge and focus on the flow of information rather than just the activities performed or at least determine a balance between these two approaches. Further, the information system developers and designers should be able to better align information systems design with business processes techniques. Using communication flow methodologies in the analysis stage should significantly help the design and the development processes.Originality/valueThis research was one of the first experimental studies to test the communication flow optimization theory and its effect on business process redesign.

The growth of the Internet and information technology often leads to more customer requests and can mean that a small staff must cope with a large number of business processes. Effective management under these circumstances requires a computer system able to support these business processes. Such a system cannot be developed without modeling business processes, which requires a great deal of "in‐house" information from the people who participate in business processes – information on routines, rules, etc. In general, it is not enough to get the process participants to describe their actions – they should first achieve a deeper understanding of the processes themselves (in terms of goals, activities, etc). A technique called state flow (SF) has been developed to help process participants understand processes. The paper gives an overview of the application of the SF technique in building models of two business processes: a decision‐making process; and a process of recruiting new members (for a non‐profit association).

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding value‐added and abuse prevention activities in business processes.Design/methodology/approachThe paper considers business processes as a regulation mechanism that an organization uses to survive and flourish in its environment. It proposes a theoretical framework based on the concept of homeostasis, the maintenance of identity in a changing world. In this framework the paper classifies business processes into three levels (strategic, operational, regulative) and analyse the relationships between these three levels. Based on this framework, the paper extends the "Use and Misuse Cases" technique to support modelling of value‐added and abuse prevention activities.FindingsThe main finding is the importance of considering business processes as regulation mechanisms. Traditionally, business processes are analysed through the goals they are designed to achieve. This paper analyses what the organization aims at maintaining. This makes it possible to explicitly model the potential abuses (threats) to business processes and their associated corrective measures (regulative processes).Practical implicationsUse of this framework enables process designers to explicitly model abuse prevention activities, even though they are traditionally considered as not participating in customer value creation. This should lead to better‐fitting business processes.Originality/valueThe framework is useful because it provides a theoretical justification for the value creation and abuse prevention activities that can be found in business processes. The three levels that we use to analyse business processes (strategic, operational and regulative) constitute an innovation in business process modelling where only two levels (strategic and operational) have been considered thus far. Few, if any, business process theoretical frameworks provide this kind of rationale for abuse prevention activities.

PurposeMost of the process models concentrate on who does what, when, i.e. on the description of the operational performance of tasks. The goal driven approaches try to establish a close relationship between the "whys" and the "whats". The former captures the strategic goals of the organisation whereas the latter tells us how they are achieved through tasks carried out by actors. In addition, managers do not naturally make the distinction between what to achieve (the goal) and the manner to achieve it (the strategy). This confusion often leads to the expression of manners as goals. In order to make clear the fundamental distinction between these two concerns and to master the complexity of process modelling, this paper seeks to propose a goal‐perspective, the map‐driven process modelling approach.Design/methodology/approachThe map representation system conforms to goal models in the fact that it recognises the concept of a goal but departs from those by introducing the concept of strategy to attain a goal.FindingsA business and its supporting system change in a concurrent way. In order to help the propagation of the intentional changes onto operational ones, we adopted the two levels hierarchical spiral process model. The intentional spiral deals with the production of the business process models using the map formalism and the operational one deals with the specifications of the supporting systems.Originality/valueA business process is defined in terms of goals and strategies of reaching these goals. The approach allows choosing an appropriate level of details when analysing and redesigning business processes.