TOWARDS PROCESS-AWARE
ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS
A Framework
Bela Mutschler, Johannes Bumiller
DaimlerChrysler Research & Technology,Wilhelm-Runge-Str.11, 89013 Ulm, Germany
Manfred Reichert
University of Ulm, Department Databases/Information Systems, Germany
Keywords: process-awareness, evolving enterprise software environments, business process management and integra-
tion, economic-oriented assessments of process-oriented technologies
Abstract: To stay competitive at the market companies must tightly interlink their software systems in a process-
orient
ed manner. While the business process paradigm has been widely accepted in practice, the majority of
current software applications are still not yet implemented in a process-oriented way. But even if, process
logic is hard-wired in the application code leading to inflexible and rigid software systems that do not reflect
business needs. In such a scenario the quick adaptation of the software systems to changed business proc-
esses is almost impossible. Therefore, many software systems are already out of date at the time they are in-
troduced into practice, and they generate high maintenance costs in the following. Due to this unsatisfactory
business process support a software system’s return on investment is often low. By contrast technologies
which enable the realization of process-aware enterprise software environments will significantly contribute
to improve the added value of IT to a company’s business. In this paper we characterize process-aware en-
terprise software environments, describe benefits and present a conceptual framework outlining our theses.
1 MOTIVATION
A significant change has occurred in how value of
IT for business is realized. Technology innovation,
not long ago the dynamic driver of both business and
technology infrastructure change, is thereby not seen
as an important value driver anymore, but mainly as
the source of high costs. Therefore, it becomes an
important task to identify technology innovations
that have a measurable positive impact on a com-
pany’s added value. Concerning this claim one spe-
cial area of high relevance is software since the de-
velopment of new applications has to realize a posi-
tive return on investment (ROI) as well (cf. Tockey,
2004).
Designing and implementing enterprise applica-
t
ion software a tight interweavement between soft-
ware systems (e.g., a product data management sys-
tem) and business processes (e.g., the process of
developing a new car) is indispensable for economic
success. However, very often there is a big gap be-
tween business needs and the respective business
process support offered by current software systems.
Even more, today’s enterprise applications are
static an
d inflexible. Consequently, in many cases
software systems are already out of date at the time
they are introduced to the market or brought into
operational use (e.g., if the business process origi-
nally to be supported has changed in the meantime).
Instead, software systems are neede
d that provide
adequate business process support through their en-
tire lifecycle. As software lifecycles are continu-
ously increasing (with the goal to avoid the high
effort of developing a new application or migrating a
legacy system) software more and more has to face
changes directly influencing it.
Changes can have their origin in both internal and
external dri
vers (cf. Fig. 1) leading to new require-
ments (e.g., the company-wide use of new hardware
or software technologies). The scope of changes can
additionally be confined by both internal and exter-
nal restrictions (e.g., laws).
374
Mutschler B., Bumiller J. and Reichert M. (2005).
TOWARDS PROCESS-AWARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS A Framework.
In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 374-378
DOI: 10.5220/0002544703740378
Copyright
c
SciTePress
Drivers and restrictions influence a company’s soft-
ware infrastructure leading to a highly dynamic IT
evolution. Therewith, we distinguish two basic evo-
lutionary concepts: organization-driven IT evolution
and technology-driven IT evolution (cf. Fig. 1).
Organization-Driven IT Evolution
Technology-Driven IT Evolution
Internal Drivers
Enterprise
Software
Environment
External Drivers
Internal DriversExternal Drivers
Restrictions confining the scope
of possible changes
Figure 1: Drivers and restrictions influencing today’s en-
terprise software environments´.
Applications lacking the capability to adequately
deal with changes generate high costs. Thereby it is
especially the operation and maintenance phase that
significantly impacts a software system’s economic
efficiency (as well as its return on investment). In
particular, the number of errors can be identified as a
major cost factor. Adapting a software to emerging
requirements when it is already in use is by orders of
magnitudes more expensive than doing this in earlier
phases (e.g., during design or implementation).
Moreover, if process logic is hard-wired within the
application code (as it is often the case in current
software systems), it becomes even more difficult to
rapidly and correctly adapt software to the changes.
High costs may result as new errors are made during
the necessary implementation of the changes.
In summary, today’s enterprise software environ-
ments are increasingly faced with flexibility. Obvi-
ously, there is the need for adaptable software with a
high return on investment.
Our new concept of Process-Aware Enterprise
Software Environments (PAESE) illustrated in this
paper offers promising perspectives concerning this
request (cf. Section 2.2). Such an environment is
implemented using various process-oriented ap-
proaches and software technologies. In our opinion,
the PAESE concept can significantly contribute to
improve the added value of IT for a company’s busi-
ness and strengthen its market position, its profit-
ability, and its economic efficiency.
In this paper we analyze our theses and discuss
relevant topics in detail. The remainder of this paper
is organized as follow. In Section 2 we describe the
correlation between enterprise software systems and
the business processes they shall support. In particu-
lar, Section 2 sketches aspects of evolving enterprise
software environments (including a description of
drivers leading to this evolution). Section 3 presents
a conceptual framework illustrating our theses. Fi-
nally, Section 4 motivates the accomplishment of
economic-oriented assessments (e.g., cost benefit
analyses) of process-oriented approaches and soft-
ware technologies (e.g., workflow management sys-
tems) and finally gives an outlook as well.
2 EVOLVING ENTERPRISE-
SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS
Enterprise software environments identify the main
components of an organization’s software infrastruc-
ture and the ways in which these components inter-
act with each other in order to achieve defined busi-
ness goals (cf. Sowa, 1992; Zachmann, 1987).
Realizing effective and efficient enterprise soft-
ware environments with a high return on investment
is only possible, if an adequate handling of a com-
pany’s entire process map is achieved. The key to
success will be the continued alignment of existing
software systems not only to short-running, but also
to long-running business processes.
Emerging requirements can be a serious problem
in the effort to sustain the requested alignment. As
already stated in Section 1 such emerging require-
ments can be driven by various internal or external
events, as well as by a number of restrictions.
2.1 Drivers of Evolution
Dealing with changes in software can be seen as a
daily challenge in many organizations (cf. Reifer,
2002). As motivated, it is not sufficient to provide
only a static view on process-centric applications. In
contrast, business processes, functions, and applica-
tions are continuously subject to change.
In the following we classify and describe relevant
internal or external drivers in more detail. Doing so,
we distinguish between events leading to a technol-
ogy-driven IT evolution and events leading to an
organization-driven IT evolution (cf. Fig. 1).
At first, we discuss technology-rooted drivers for
process changes (and related restrictions).
TOWARDS PROCESS-AWARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS
375
One internal driver in this context stems from the ef-
fort to align business processes (e.g., development of
a new car or treatment of a patient) to new informa-
tion and communication technologies. Very often
this is accompanied by process optimization efforts.
As an example take healthcare procedures. The
introduction of mobile devices (e.g., a PDA to store
patient data) in hospitals requires the solution of
technical problems such as security, privacy, and
reliability of services offered by those devices.
These solutions can only work in practice if they
align with the business processes employing these
devices, and if these processes themselves are redes-
igned to work effectively with these devices. Even
more ambitious is the introduction of ambient tech-
nology such as wireless body area networks for
health monitoring. Apart from the difficult technical
problems in making these devices communicate se-
curely and reliably, healthcare processes must be
redesigned to work effectively with them.
external
drivers
internal
drivers
technology-
driven
organization-
driven
process optimization
enterprise goals
management
competence
process optimization
reduction of a
system’s complexity
norms & standards
user acceptance
new technologies
compatibility with both
customers and suplliers
business cycle reduction
market development
and evolution
legislation
Figure 2: Internal/external drivers influencing enterprise
software environments
Another internal driver stems from the effort to re-
duce the complexity of enterprise environments.
This is a success-critical factor since control and
maintenance of these environments become more
and more difficult. The higher the complexity of a
software system is the higher error rates and there-
fore costs are. Current development processes in the
automotive sector, for example, are based on a mul-
titude of heterogeneous applications.
A very important internal driver can be a bad ac-
ceptance regarding the usage of software systems. In
large scale environments, hundreds up to thousands
of users may work with an enterprise application
(e.g., a document management system). While some
of them are working with the system every day, oth-
ers do this rather seldom. Additionally, users may
have varying tasks, skills, and experiences. For the
design of high-quality human-machine-dialogues it
is thereby essential to consider for which kind of
user a system is intended. This is important as dif-
ferent user classes have different requirements re-
garding interfaces (cf. Mutschler, 2004).
A typical external driver can be the lack of ade-
quate rules and standards. For example, there are a
lot of proposed process description standards (e.g.,
Business Process Execution Language). But due to
missing or too complex standard features a decision
to use one of the existing standards can turn out as
false in the future.
Another important external driver is the introduc-
tion of new information technologies like computing
on-demand, grid-computing, and the semantic web.
In many cases hypes arise around the market intro-
duction of new technologies. This can produce sig-
nificant pressure on enterprises to invest into such
technologies without deeper reflection.
The third important external driver concerns a
company’s compatibility with both customers and
suppliers (this is known as the extended enterprise).
The customer’s wishes (e.g., car features) as well as
the supplier’s requests concerning work collabora-
tion and approaches of data exchange (e.g., the
Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data)
have to be met. Original Equipment Manufacturers
(OEMs) in the automotive industry, for example,
have to distribute the well-developed solid models
and documents of a vehicle (the managed product)
to all people involved within the extended enterprise
in a synchronized way.
After having described important technology-
focussed drivers and restrictions, we now summarize
organization-rooted drivers and possible restrictions.
Key internal drivers, for example, include the
strategic objectives of the enterprise (e.g., to sell a
certain number of cars within a given quarter). They
are usually introduced and controlled by the man-
agement board and directly influence a company’s
organization. To achieve defined objectives it is
necessary to adapt an organization and its business
processes to these goals.
Business process optimization and reengineering
are other internal drivers. The objectives of respec-
tive efforts may be to shorten process cycle times
(e.g., in order to reduce time-to-market) or to in-
crease product/service quality.
A powerful external driver, for example, can be
change at the market site (e.g., the trend to drive
Sports Utility Vehicles) requiring reactions from a
company to defend its market position.
The most relevant external restrictions are
changes in law. Each country can have different
rules and laws concerning certain technology as-
pects. A globally sold product (e.g., a car) has to
fulfil certain security aspects (e.g. concerning air-
bags) in one country in a more restrictive way than
ICEIS 2005 - DATABASES AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
376
in another country. Despite this variety every special
law has to be met in the respective local markets.
Whenever laws change, the respective business
processes have to be adapted accordingly.
Only the capability of organizations to react to these
dynamic drivers and restrictions assures that changes
can be successfully and rapidly treated. The faster a
company adapts its software to emerging require-
ments the better its position in the market will be.
2.2 Process-Aware Enterprise
Software Environments
As stated before, business processes and information
technologies have to be well orchestrated within an
enterprise, but changes can complicate this request
significantly. To simplify and fasten the adaptation
of changes, existing applications must easily be
aligned to the changed business needs. The new
concept of Process-Aware Enterprise Software En-
vironments (PAESE) supports this claim.
In particular, process-aware enterprise software
provides more agility compared to classical, func-
tion-oriented software. It is realized by strictly fol-
lowing the process paradigm during software devel-
opment and the intensive use of process-oriented
approaches. While the ladder includes software tech-
nologies like workflow management systems or en-
terprise application integration tools, the former is
based upon the strict separation of process logic
from application code, and the system-supported
modelling, execution, and monitoring of business
processes by powerful process engines.
Process-aware enterprise software can be charac-
terized by the following requirements. It
has to support process-oriented perspec-
tives and ways of thinking; this means that
the basic building block is the process.
must allow the fast and cheap realization
and customizing of new/existing processes.
must enable easy integration of self-
developed as well as of bought-off-the-
shelf software components.
must support rapid business process
changes as well as the propagation of these
changes to current process instances (if
possible and desired by the users).
must provide an extensive support of proc-
ess-oriented functions (e.g., process analy-
sis or temporal constraint management).
Following the strict separation of business logic and
application functionality, business process changes
can be handled at a high semantic level and maybe
without the need for recoding the complete applica-
tion (or parts of it). This, in turn, helps to reduce the
overall complexity of software systems. But if it is
necessary to change an application’s implementa-
tion, the reduced complexity makes it easier anyway.
Thus, the development of enterprise software can
be realized faster and cheaper (and with reduced
error rates) than with conventional software tech-
nologies (where process logic is still directly hidden
in the application code). Altogether, the maintenance
effort decreases while a software systems cost effec-
tiveness increases. Only enterprises that meet these
requirements are able to generate a short term return
on investment and a long-term value.
In fact, process-orientation is even fundamental
for enterprises as it enables the requested tight inter-
weavement between business process support and
the existing IT infrastructure requiring also a closer
integration of the business processes with the busi-
ness functions (cf. Katsma, 2004).
To provide a process-oriented baseline, various as-
pects reaching from modelling and analysis issues to
the system-supported control and monitoring of
processes have to be handled.
Our framework illustrated in the following chap-
ter outlines the idea of a Process-Aware Enterprise
Software Environment and provides initial thoughts
about how to validate our theses.
3 THE FRAMEWORK
Figure 3 illustrates our conceptual framework to
illustrate the requirements and challenges of realiz-
ing the new concept of an efficient and highly adapt-
able Process-Aware Enterprise Software Environ-
ment (PAESE).
Process-awareness represents the bridge between
the business processes and the software systems
used to support them. Both business processes and
software systems are installed in a dynamic and fast
changing environment influenced by various drivers
and restrictions. To continuously meet real-world
requirements, enterprises have to adapt both their
business processes and software systems to these
changes. Doing so, process-oriented approaches and
software technologies offer promising perspectives.
We distinguish between business process technolo-
gies and software development technologies. While
the ladder is used to handle the technology-driven IT
evolution, the former supports the adaptation of the
organization-driven IT evolution. To pool software
technologies and approaches we envision two logi-
cal containers in the framework – each of them col-
lecting process-oriented concepts and technologies.
TOWARDS PROCESS-AWARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS
377
Typical examples of process-oriented software con-
cepts focussing on business processes (technology
class 1) are enterprise application integration, work-
flow management, business process analysis, and
business process performance management. We col-
lect respective technologies in a container called
Business Process Technologies (cf. Fig. 3). This
container is additionally divided into two sub-
classes. Problems concerning the integration of
business processes and software systems can be
solved by Business Process Integration approaches
and technologies (BPI technologies) like enterprise
application integration. In contrast, problems con-
cerning process management changes can be en-
countered with the idea of business process man-
agement approaches and technologies (BPM tech-
nologies) like workflow management.
Promising approaches regarding the development
of flexible, process-aware software systems (tech-
nology class 2) are agile development methods (e.g.,
eXtreme Programming) or process-oriented usability
engineering methods. These approaches are col-
lected in an alternative container called Software
Development Technologies (cf. Fig. 3).
4 THE NEED FOR ECONOMIC-
ORIENTED ASSESSMENTS
From the business perspective enterprises are faced
with an increasingly competitive, global market-
place. This situation forces them to streamline and
accelerate their product development operations and
their organizational business processes. To survive,
they must look for better ways to do business (cf.
Pisello, 2003). They must be able to realize changes
in a quick and cost-effective manner. Such changes
and the investments in promising approaches and
technologies to handle the changes need to be justi-
fied: otherwise why make them? Only a systematic
methodological approach can integrate relevant ar-
guments into a meaningful economic-oriented
evaluation baseline (cf. Boehm, 2003).
But despite the relatively intensive use of busi-
ness ratios (like return on investment or net present
value) in many IT departments, there currently exists
no overall method which allows an integrated analy-
sis or an economics-oriented assessment of process-
oriented technologies (enabling process-awareness).
But regarding the assessment of process-oriented
approaches, as already seen for example in (Horwitz,
2002) or (Sinur, 2004), it is exactly such an inte-
grated method to assess process-orientation that is
needed in our opinion. Therefore, the presented the-
ses have to be validated by case studies, experiments
and cost benefit analyses.
Doing so, special process performance databases
could be used (cf. Fig. 3) to store any kind of eco-
nomic-oriented characteristics and attributes (such as
cost, benefit or risk factors or other business ratios)
as well as external data to enable benchmarking. To
be able to accomplish assessments on such a data-
base, suitable data has to be derived from adequate
value metrics at first (cf. Boehm, 2004).
Motivating companies to use process-oriented tech-
nologies can only be successful if the economic effi-
ciency of investments in the described technologies
is proven. Therefore, future research efforts address
the goal to systematically outline the impacts of
software technologies enabling process-awareness.
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