Business Process Management (BPM) is an important and timely topic. For many companies, BPM is the key for mastering digital transformation and for innovating their business models. The fast pace of change has also taken a grip on concepts and techniques of BPM, with various new ideas emerging from research and practice. Several excellent sources exist that summarize established concepts of BPM. So far, however, a collection of real-world cases making available the experience of organizations applying BPMfor various objectives was missing. It is the aim of this book to close this gap and to increase knowledge exchange based on real-world BPM projects for fostering both BPM education and practice.
For this book, we have gathered 31 cases on how companies use business process management to achieve outstanding operational results. Each of these cases is organized according to a uniform structure including the following parts:
- Introduction—What is the story of the case? The authors give a brief narrative of the entire story to grasp your interest in the case. This part includes a summary of the key figures of the company.
- Situation faced—What was the initial problem situation? What situation led to the action taken? The authors specify the context of the case as to needs, constraints, incidents, objectives, and beyond.
- Action taken—What has been done? What measures have been taken, as e.g. regarding the process redesign or process innovation? Which methods and approaches have been used? The authors provide a factual passage of the course of events.
- Results achieved—What effects could be observed resulting from the action taken? This could be changes in performance measures as well as qualitative statements from employees, customers, or other business partners. Here, the authors also discuss how far expected results materialize and how far expectations were met or not met.
- Lessons learned—Reflecting the overall case, what can others learn from it? The authors derive around five lessons learned, which are grounded in the case and which are interesting for others to take as an example.
The cases of this book are grouped into four major blocks, which are inspired by the six core elements of BPM by de Bruin and Rosemann. Part I contains cases that relate to strategy and governance. The cases stem from SAP in Germany, S-Y Systems Technologies in Germany, Autogrill in Italy, the Dompe eHospital in Sri Lanka, a leading telecommunications provider in the Middle East, and the Slovene public service company Snaga. Part II presents cases on BPM methods. These cases relate to “Die Mobiliar” from Switzerland, Queensland University of Technology in Australia, the City of Ghent in Belgium, a Brazilian insurance company, the telecommunications provider 3 in Germany, Bolzano Hospital in Italy, an Australian insurance company, Software AG in Germany, and St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital in Australia. Part III discusses cases on information technology and BPM. The cases refer to CrowdStrom in Germany, MELOS in Germany, Deutsche Bank in Germany, BRFkredit in Denmark, a German manufacturing company, Zalando in Germany, Adler Moden in Germany, a Slovak logistics provider, and HEYCO-WERK in Germany. Part IV discusses BPM-related issues of people and culture. It builds on cases from Lufthansa Technik in Germany, 1&1 Internet in Germany, TCE-PE from Brazil, Jade University of Applied Science in Germany, and a Norwegian company in the Oil and Gas sector.
The material presented in this book is complemented by online material for teaching, training, and advisory. The website http://www.bpm-cases.com makes available slides and additional content that can be helpful for using the cases both in teaching BPM and in preparing for BPM projects in practice.
We thank the following people and institutions for their continuous support toward the compilation of this book.
- First, we thank our research teams both in Liechtenstein and in Vienna. There have always been strong ties between Liechtenstein and Vienna not only in BPM but in history, and we emphasize this connection with our book cover that refers to the pattern of the parquet floor of one room in the Palais Liechtenstein in Vienna.
- Second, we thank the organizers of the BPM Conference in Innsbruck 2015 who gave us the chance to bring together many of the case authors of this book by inviting us to organize the industry program of the conference. In Innsbruck, half way between Liechtenstein and Vienna, the idea of this book emerged.
- Third, we thank our colleagues and friends who served on the editorial board of this book and who have dedicated much time and effort in multiple rounds of reviews to further develop the cases presented in this book.
- Fourth, we thank our BPM research colleagues for their continuous inspiration and support, specifically at QUT Brisbane, TU Eindhoven, VU Amsterdam, Uni Tartu, HPI Potsdam, to name but a few.
- Finally, special thanks go to our colleagues from the University of Münster who initiated and coordinate the ERCIS network [European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS)]. Stemming from this network, we also have the opportunity to collaborate with many of our BPM colleagues and friends, in the EU Horizon 2020 project RISE_BPM, provided by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 645751 and the Liechtenstein Government.We are grateful for the financial support through this project, which was essential in making the idea of the BPM Case Book come to life.
We hope you will enjoy reading the book and working with the cases, and we look forward to hearing from you related to any possible feedback!
Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Jan vom Brocke
Vienna, Austria Jan, Mendling