Evaluating the State-of-the-Art in Business Process Management Tools and Methodologies

TLDR: In this paper, the authors evaluate the state-of-the-art in BPM tools and methodologies and its suitability for satisfying the expectations of a large financial service provider?s financial accounting department starting with BPM.

Abstract: Although people have tried to control processes for centuries, with the more recent introduction of larger economies-of-scale and the toughening economic environment organisations are increasingly interested in improving their business processes. This has resulted in the emergence of Business Process Management (BPM), a field that has quickly grown into a multi billion euro industry. The development of the industry has led to an abundance of tools and methodologies that claim enormous benefits. In practice however, most organisations attain a low level of maturity in managing their business processes and largely continue to rely on standard office tooling. There is a large gap between theoretical BPM developments and its application in practice. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the state-of-the-art in BPM tools and methodologies and its suitability for satisfying the expectations of a large financial service provider?s financial accounting department starting with BPM. The expectations are elicited using a self-constructed catalogue of criteria and a case study has taken place at a financial accounting department of a large Dutch financial service provider. The empirical results gathered from the case study combined with an extensive literature review allow the main research goal to be answered. Although it is not possible to give a definitive verdict, BPM tools and methodologies do not appear to form a bottleneck in the practice of BPM. This thesis provides recommendations to tool and methodology developers through which they can improve their products and to organisations practicing BPM so they can improve their current approaches. A practical advice is given to the management of the case study department that allows them to determine their BPM strategy. Finally a number of alternative causes for the gap between theoretical BPM developments and practice are introduced.