Assessing the Need for Visibility of Business Processes – A Process Visibility Fit Framework

This essay reviews the article “Assessing the Need for Visibility of Business Processes – A Process Visibility Fit Framework” which discusses about the concept of Business Process Management and the need for a process which will help to understand the visibility of the relevant information that is present during the business process execution. The article provides a framework which identifies the process and decides the business process on which the technology investment id needed so that visibility of real time is enabled. The purpose of the essay is to analyse the requirement for a process visibility framework in a business process management.

Running head: BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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1. Introduction
This essay will review the article “Assessing the Need for Visibility of Business
Processes – A Process Visibility Fit Framework” which discusses about the concept of
Business Process Management and the need for a process which will help to understand the
visibility of the relevant information that is present during the business process execution
(Sadiq, Soffer and Völzer 2014). The article provides a framework which identifies the
process and decides the business process on which the technology investment id needed so
that visibility of real time is enabled. The framework that has been provided in the article
consists the information technology visibility capabilities along with the visibility
requirements like a process. The purpose of the essay is to analyse the requirement for a
process visibility framework in a business process management.
The article discusses that data analysis in the past few years have not been associated
with the execution of business process. The Traditional Business Intelligence and Analytics
(BI&A) have revolved around the accumulation of data especially historical data which have
been used to form strategies for support decisions in business process. The limitations that are
present in the process have been resolved by the BI&A and hence the visibility of the process
can be created which did not have any existence before. Another aspect of the BI&A have
been notified in this article where managerial tasks are supported by the decision making of
the operations of an organisation with the support and help of the BI&A. The technological
capabilities and the factors which determine the need for visibility in all business processes
have been discussed in this essay.
2. Body
Visibility is a concept which is evident in the research of supply chain management.
Visibility is the outcome which is derived from the sharing of information for the processes
and activities between the partners of the supply chain. Visibility is mandatory for the
exceptional performance of an organisation, however, the degree of visibility is completely
dependent on the relevancy and timeliness of the information that is being shared. Depending
in this the article explains the need for process visibility with the help of an example of the
operations of an airport hub. To explain the process in a more illustrative way the insights
were gathered from several interviews of the staff, workshops and observations on-site. The
process involves different activities that are needed for the successful handling of 60
airplanes every night. The manager wants to determine the number of shipments which are

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present in different phases in the value stream and the lighting of high level traffic which can
show the number of shipments which are in the danger of delaying the outbound flights.
Moreover, the real time metric which is the time taken to load the plane needs to be
determined so that people can be allotted and proper collaboration can be done with the
colleagues to solve any issues that might arise.
The article uses qualitative data with the help of grounded theory to establish the
study. The concepts determined in this study have been collected from different articles,
journals and websites. To make the visibility process more systematic, an evaluation scheme
was derived from a theoretical perspective. Information processing is described as the
collection and gathering of data, transforming the data into useful information and
communicating and storing the information properly in the organisation by the Information
Processing View (IPV). The IPV is used as a theoretical approach in the article since the
above mentioned activities for information processing is required for creating visibility. The
IPV have earlier been implanted at the organisational level for outsourcing relationships and
supply chain management. However, the article aims to implement IPV at a process level for
the creation of visibility. The requirements for information processing is derived as the
amount of data that has to be collected, which has to be then processed and then disseminated
so that a certain level of performance can be achieved. In the IPV literature, the determinants
for the requirement of information are stated as the complex nature of the task environment,
the strategic importance of the process of outsourcing and the interdependence that is evident
within the environment of the task. These three determinants are transformed into a
perspective which is more specific to the process of visibility.
The first and foremost determinant is process intricacy which means the complex
nature of the task. The article take the characteristics of big data under consideration such as
velocity, volume and variety ton explain the nature of complexity. The nature of business
becomes complex when there are a large number of processes and events which needs to be
correlated with each other and the decision speed has to be faster than possible. The high
diversity of the data types, systems and sources also adds to the complex nature of the
businesses. This why the complexity of the process is aligned with volume, variety and
velocity. Wamba et al. (2017) similarly state that big data is important to understand the
different capabilities that are present within the organisation. The different dimensions of big
data would contribute to the process of complexity of the organisation so that proper
solutions can be derived. Secondly, the degree to which the interaction of the processes and

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the steps is taken is known as process interdependence. IPV shows that the high number of
inter-unit tasks are dependent on each other and therefore produces more uncertainty due to
the unexpected changes that are evident in the task environment. The dependency nay be
present for both single process steps as well as multiple processes. Thirdly, the impact of the
process on the competitive nature of the organisation is known as process importance. This
determinant urges that extensive monitoring be done to the process so that the uncertainty can
be overcome which can contribute to the creation of value for the organisation and support
the competitiveness of the organisation. Chae and Olson (2013) proposes the idea that
business analytics as well as proper monitoring of the data can help in a proper SCM process
within the organisation. Moreover, the data that is derived from the business analytics will
help in creating value and bring innovation in the different processes of the organisation.
There are different aspects of the BI&A which can help to cover several aspects of the
visibility of the process. These aspects are Operational Business Intelligence, Business
Activity Monitoring and Business Process Intelligence. However, these aspects would not be
capable of overcoming the challenges that come with the process of visibility. One of the
important challenges are the huge increase in the data amount which can cause serious
problems on the visibility process. There are many vendors who offer other solutions which
can help to overcome these challenges. According to Graupner et al. (2014) BI&A states big
data as the solution to the problem of this large amount of data. The author says that big data
is the huge amount of data which can be managed with the help of different big data
technologies which will help the organisation to manage the data and use them at appropriate
times when it is needed by the organisation. Similar to the process that is being discussed in
the article, Graupner proposes data streaming as one of the important characteristics of big
data which will help in the visibility process as the data will be more organised. Based on
these trends of the BI&A the different capabilities of the visibility process will be determined
by the organisation as well as the requirements of the organisation to make a compact process
of visibility within the organisation. The requirements can be lower than the capabilities of
the process or might be higher depending on the degree of the process visibility.
3. Conclusion
The article concludes that the huge amount of data which is available in the
organisations can be processed in the right way if a framework or concrete process is
determined. The article states that process visibility is the present trend which is being driven

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by the BI&A to become a big data based process which can support real time decisions. With
the help of Information Processing View (IPV) a framework has been determined in the
article citing the example of an airport hub operation process which will help to understand
the business process visibility. The paper describes the capabilities and requirements of the
process visibility that would be determined by the organisation. The essay also takes into
account the review of three authors who have conducted researches on the same aspect which
is being discussed in the article. However, there were many limitations which were evident in
this paper. The process was not able to overcome many challenges of the visibility process
and hence the framework would not be sustainable in the long run for the organisation.
However, the essay stated that big data process would be helpful in managing one of the
challenges that has emerged with the visibility process which is the large amount of data.
This large amount of data also known as big data can be arranged and used in a productive
way by the organisation if they are assembled with the proper technology and hence
contribute to the visibility process and the development of the organisation.

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4. References
Chae, B. and Olson, D.L., 2013. Business analytics for supply chain: A dynamic-capabilities
framework. International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, 12(01),
pp.9-26.
Graupner, E., Berner, M., Maedche, A. and Jegadeesan, H., 2014, September. Assessing the
need for visibility of business processes–a process visibility fit framework. In International
Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 383-391). Springer, Cham.
Sadiq, S., Soffer, P. and Völzer, H. eds., 2014. Business Process Management: 12th
International Conference, BPM 2014, Haifa, Israel, September 7-11, 2014, Proceedings (Vol.
8659). Springer, pp.383-391.
Wamba, S.F., Gunasekaran, A., Akter, S., Ren, S.J.F., Dubey, R. and Childe, S.J., 2017. Big
data analytics and firm performance: Effects of dynamic capabilities. Journal of Business
Research, 70, pp.356-365.