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 Therefore, many software systems are already out of date at the time they are in-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-

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

 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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