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4 SUMMARY AND
CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented the MPL method, which aims
to model, analyse and improve mobile business pro-
cesses. We have shown that current approaches do
not consider mobility adequately. But, since many
industries have to deal with such processes, a spe-
cialised method is required. Therefore, we presented
the MPL approach that provides a catalogue of pre-
defined evaluation objectives and support for the cre-
ation of appropriate models. The evaluation of the
resulting model can be automated, leading to substan-
tial results that show possible process and application
improvements. The method was applied to a process
improvement project from the insurance industry. It
was shown that the intended benefits could be real-
ized. Nonetheless, the method has also a couple of
limitations. Firstly, the modelling requires a person
having strong skills in UML and CPN. Secondly, the
quality of the produced results depends heavily on the
model quality. An experienced modeler with the eval-
uation objectives catalogue in mind will most likely
produce good models, while an unexperienced first-
time modeler may not. Thirdly, the method produces
- as all process modelling approaches - a relatively in-
flexible model due to the nature of sequences, decsion
nodes, and so on. But especially mobile business pro-
cesses usually allow a great flexibility at the point of
service, i.e., being able to do anything anytime and
anywhere. Further research is planned to extend this
method. Currently, the tool support is still in the pro-
totype stage. The development of a more convenient
tool would be useful. Also, the evaluation objectives
catalogue has potential for extension.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Applied Telematics/e-Business Group is en-
dowed by Deutsche Telekom AG. We would like to
thank Matthias Book and Ralf Laue for their valuable
comments on this paper.
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