APPLYING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO MONITOR

WEB-ENABLED BUSINESS PROCESSES

Noel Carroll, Ita Richardson

Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, Department of Computer Science & Information Systems

University of Limerick, Ireland

Eoin Whelan

Department of Management and Marketing, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Keywords: Business processes, Social network analysis, Process monitoring, Service science, Health sector.

Abstract: The unprecedented growth in service-based business processes over a short period of time has underscored

the need for understanding the mechanisms and theorising the business models and business process

management adopted across many organisations today. This is more evident within the Irish health sector.

This research summarises a survey of the literature and argues that the inability of current Business Process

Management (BPM) techniques to visualise and monitor web-enabled business processes prevents us from

transforming information on network activity and infrastructures. Thus, this research sets out to propose the

need to develop a framework to enhance manager’s ability to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)

while improving business process restructuring practices.

1 INTRODUCTION

In 1993, Hammer and Champy advised us to “forget

everything you have known about how business

should work – most of it is wrong”. In 2010, the

literature indicates that this is largely true as we are

beginning to realise that we are still unclear about

how business processes and services interact and

what is their contribution within and across

organisation (Huffman, 1997; Cross and Parker,

2004; Huysman and Wulf, 2006; Lundqvist, 2007;

Van Heck and Vervest, 2007; Hassan, 2009). This

paper proposes the need to determine introduce

methods to measure service network contributory

value. service network In recent years there has been

significant interest in our ability to manage service-

oriented architecture (SOA), i.e. in our ability to

manage and engineer services. Organisations are

beginning to move away from the traditional

corporate hub of business practice towards a more

diffused and distributed web of relationships and

agile alliances. These webs of relationships are often

comprised of people, information and

communication technology (ICT), and paper-based

records. Across academia and industry we are

beginning to recognise the significance of service

innovation and service systems within the global

‘service’ economy. Understanding the mechanisms

and theory of managing service business models and

processes adopted across many organisations

required the recent introduction of the Service

Science Management and Engineering (SSME)

discipline. However, it is clear that managers

continue to face serious issues in managing

‘invisible assets’ which inhibit their ability to

monitor and exploit the value of agile service

networks (ASN). Understanding the functionality of

these networks and the challenge of managing and

co-coordinating their relationships is becoming more

complex. The literature indicates that there is little

emphasis on service discovery and design.

Understanding the value of these relationships,

especially from a technological perspective can

prove to be extremely problematic. In addition, tools

to create, track, and manage business process

opportunities are incompatible, slow, and difficult to

use. It is also reported throughout literature that

critical business data is not properly collected,

shared, standardised, or analysed to provide business

intelligence.

404

Carroll N., Richardson I. and Whelan E.

APPLYING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO MONITOR WEB-ENABLED BUSINESS PROCESSES.

DOI: 10.5220/0002853904040408

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technology (WEBIST 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-674-025-2

Within the increasingly complex day-to-day

operation of the Irish health service sector (IHSS),

health care providers face a difficult environment

which is abundant in problems particularly in health

informatics. The main area of concern from an ICT

perspective is its ability to manage and engineer a

networked infrastructure. This is largely due to the

lack of ICT investment and process engineering

within this sector. The literature indicates that

technology and business monitoring techniques fail

to provide managers with insight on network

interactions (e.g. Wetzstein et al., 2009), and as

many business practices continues to become more

virtualised, there is an urgency to address this

significant research gap, both in literature and in

industry. Despite considerable progress, the IHSS

remains poorly ranked throughout Europe. The main

areas of concern from an ICT perspective include

patient safety, service quality, compliance processes,

and financial effectiveness. This is largely due to the

lack of ICT investment (i.e. reliance on a paper-

based system) and process engineering within this

sector.

The research in this paper borrows from SNA theory

to present a new approach to monitoring and

managing service networks across several

dimensions. This method simulates future research

attention towards network behaviour and capability.

To understand ASN affordances, we can model web-

enabled business process using SNA. This allows us

to place greater attention on business process

dynamics to deploy, monitor, and update cross-

organisation relational functions within the IHSS.

2 BACKGROUND – STATE OF

THE ART

For over the past half century the implementation of

ICT has served many needs throughout the business

environment. It is evident that ICT has been

considered a supportive asset in today’s business

environment. Despite all the attention, business

processes are still relatively poorly understood

(Wetzstein et al., 2009). Significant transformations

have taken place to how business is performed and

to what now contribute towards business

performance metrics. We live in an unpredictable

world. In recent years information requirements for

organisations have changed and it has become more

difficult to plan for informational requirements to

build robust systems, hence the increasing interest

and move towards more agile approaches (Desouza,

2007).

There has been much debate within literature as to

the value of web-enabled business processes. One of

the major issues is the lack of transparency of

practical methods to monitor and measure ‘invisible

networks’ (Cross et al., 2002) which support today’s

organisational environment. Understanding the

functionality and contribution of these networks,

while presented with the challenge of managing and

co-coordinating networked relationships, is

becoming more complex. In today’s economic

climate, the phrase “organisational restructuring” is

rampant throughout our economy and within

managerial mindsets. Many of the business shared

processes amongst organisations have been

‘flattened’ (Friedman, 2006), and remain more

hidden within industry. Understanding the value of

these processes and relationships are of vital

importance as more if the IHSS is to understand the

true value of existing network and strategies.

Agility is a concept which attempts to address some

of these issues. Defined by Van Oosterhout et al.,

(2007) agility is “an innovative response to an

unpredictable change”. It is concerned with taking

greater control of unpredictable changes. Agility

within an organisation is the collective ability to

adapt rapidly, be cost efficient, and overall to

operate as economically as possible, without

jeopardising the quality of the product or service, in

response to customer needs and changes in the

business competitive environment. Web services

allow business to initiate agile business processes to

carry out a specific transaction on demand.

Identifying changes within business processes is

critical for either preventing or encouraging certain

workflows across web services. Defined by Hung et

al., (2004) a web service is “an autonomous unit of

application logic that provides either some business

functionality or information to other applications

through an Internet connection”. Web services are

transcending from a ‘promising technology’ to

becoming widely used within industry (Papazoglou,

2003). However, managing data across web services

can be problematic. One of the major problems, as

outlined by Becker (2007), is that managers are

faced with a serious issue of how to manage “a

completely invisible asset”. Another major issue

includes the overall lack of confidence amongst

managers in today’s business world

(PriceWaterCooper, 2009).

There is also a lack of practical methods to monitor

and measure invisible networks which support

today’s ASN environment. Understanding the

functionality of these networks and the challenge of

managing and co-coordinating their relationships is

APPLYING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO MONITOR WEB-ENABLED BUSINESS PROCESSES

405

becoming more complex. The literature indicates

that there is little emphasis on service discovery and

design (Qiu, 2008; Plumb and Zamfir, 2009; Hsu,

2009). This inhibits our ability to monitor large and

dynamic digital networks. In addition, tools to

create, track, and manage outsourcing business

process opportunities are incompatible, slow, and

difficult to use. It is also reported throughout

literature that critical business data is not properly

collected, shared, standardised, or analysed to

provide business intelligence (Qiu, 2008; Plumb and

Zamfir, 2009; Hsu, 2009). Thus, the research

focuses on various areas including analysis and

design of interactions between service network

partners, service pattern behaviour of network

partners, and enactment and management of service

networks (people, ICT, and paper-based).

3 IDENTIFIED RESEARCH

PROBLEM

The issue of agility across web-enabled business

processes is not self-evident as one would expect in

today’s dynamic and distributed business

environment. Galliers (2007) identifies three main

problems when we discuss aligning business

strategies with ICT:

1 The requirement of consistent flexibility or

agility due to the dynamic nature of

organisations;

2 The failure to forecast the future and therefore

the dynamic change in information

requirements;

3 The role in which information plays on

assisting agile responses (to become

proactive).

Although relevant in the IHSS context, many

technologies and business models are incapable of

meeting or modelling dynamic requirements of

today’s business world, and appear to employ a

continuous ‘reactive’ approach, forcing

organisations to compensate for technological

inadequacies (Orlikowski, 1992; Doherty et al.,

2003; Wetzstein et al, 2009). For example, Galliers

(2007) explores how IS strategies tend to focus on a

rational analysis “either in response to an extant

business strategy and/or an analysis of current ICT

capability” (p. 3). This is also true with respect to

human knowledge transfer and paper-based record

retrieval. Organisations fail to visualise and

understand the contributory value to further enhance

decision making tasks in relation to restructuring

business processes. Cross and Parker (2004), caution

that this lack of understanding can have substantial

consequences for both the individual and cross-

organisational performance. This raises important

questions in regard to modern trajectories of IHSS

structures.

The core research question focuses on how IHSS

business processes can be modelled, managed, and

improved in a dynamic and agile environment: “how

can we develop a framework to identify, monitor,

and map KPIs of web-enable business processes

across agile service networks (structure, formation,

and behaviour)?”

4 OUTLINE OF OBJECTIVES

This research aims to explore service discovery and

design approaches to business process architecture

within the IHSS. More specifically, the research will

explore methods to monitor, map, and manage

processes across an agile service network. The aim

and focus of this research can be further specified

through the following objectives:

1 Explore the current state of business process

patterns within the IHSS.

2 Propose and validate a modelling and

methodological framework to discover and

design service processes across agile service

networks.

The rationale behind these objects is centred on the

need to investigate service discovery, traceability,

and design, i.e. modelling processes (human, ICT,

and paper-based) and KPIs within the IHSS. This

will allow management to embrace the concept of

agility within service networks and manage change

more effectively. Within this research, agility

focuses on the IHSS ability to reconfigure according

to changing information requirements or change

within the systems environment. This can be

modelled at various levels, including business

(processes and information), services (intermediate

level), and software (applications level).

5 METHODOLOGY

The strategy will employ a number of case studies

(using both questionnaires, semi-structured

interviews) across a number of departments in the

IHSS using SNA. SNA is an approach and set of

techniques which studies the exchange of resources

through staff, ICT, and paper-based records. SNA

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406

focuses on patterns of relations among nodes such as

people, groups, organisations, or information

systems (Scott, 1991). SNA demonstrates the ties

and relationships between each node to provide a

visual and mathematical representation of interaction

and exchanges which influence behaviour. Managers

realise that the key to continued success is within

their understanding of how workflows and business

processes can be optimised (e.g. Papazoglou, 2002).

Few studies explore how people, ICT, and paper-

based exchange contribute towards business

processes. Hassan (2009) demonstrates that by

studying IT-enabled processes within an

organisation, we can identify the contribution of IT

to business process success, or improved

performance by mapping business process

contributions and performance metrics. Therefore,

SNA is a very fitting methodology to deploy within

this research to uncover more ‘truths’ as to the

activities and their patterns within agile service

networks mapping the contributions and

performance metrics across the KPIs.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

RESEARCH

This paper has introduced some of the main

concerns within BPM and organisational

performance literature and summarises the state of

the art literature. It has identified some of the key

problems and the need to introduce methods to

visualise agile service networks across the IHSS. We

will model service interactions through a number of

phases (human, ICT, paper-based network exchange

network). The expected outcome of this research is

to present a reusable and practical framework which

will empower managers within IHSS to perform ad-

hoc analysis of web-enabled business processes

across ASN.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research leading to these results has received

funding from the European Community’s Seventh

Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant

agreement 215483 (S-Cube). For further information

please visit:

http://www.s-cube-network.eu/.

Partially supported by Science Foundation Grant no

03/CE2/I303.1 to Lero – the Irish Software

Engineering Research Centre.

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