BCO5501 Business Process Engineering: BPM and Digital Innovation

This research report delves into the critical intersection of Business Process Management (BPM) and digital innovation, analyzing how emerging technologies enhance organizational processes and efficiency. It discusses BPM's role in analyzing, developing, and improving organizational processes, highlighting the integration of IT to boost efficiency. The report examines various digital innovations like Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence, and their impact on business models, processes, and products. It further explores the challenges businesses face in adopting these technologies and concludes with insights on leveraging digital innovation for sustained competitiveness. This comprehensive analysis provides a detailed understanding of how BPM and digital innovation can drive organizational success.

Running head: BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Discussion......................................................................................................................2
Business process management...................................................................................2
Digital innovation.......................................................................................................5
Relation between business process management and digital.....................................8
Challenges faced by the businesses..........................................................................10
Conclusion....................................................................................................................11
References....................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Business process management is mainly correlated with analysis, development,
implementation and constantly improvement of the processes of the organisation as well. The
introduction of the IT in the business helps in improving majority of the processes of the
organisation and efficiency is introduced. This report intends to analyse the role of digital
innovation in the organisation and how various technologies helps in improving the business
processes. A brief discussion about the various digital innovation has been provided in this
report and then the analysis of digital innovation within business process management has
been provided. At last, this study draws the conclusion with the appropriate conclusion.
Discussion
Business process management
As per various researchers, it has been claimed that any process could be described as
the group of particular functions that are combined together for producing significant value to
customers. The process orientation is mainly rooted in the focus on the customers as well as
the thinking within activities (Chang 2016). During the processes engineering, several
additional information are mainly considered for analysing any process, like the self-
contained, logical as well as the temporal order of the activities along with characteristic of
the business processes for realising the mainly organisational goal or the policy objective
within the provided set of some conditions. Business process management is described as the
science and art of managing the task that is performed within any organisation for ensuring
the constant outcomes as well as taking advantage of the improvement opportunities. Within
this particular context, the improvement aspect might take various meanings relying on
objectives of organisation. The common examples of the objectives of improvement mainly
includes the reduction of costs, reduction of execution times as well as the reduction of error

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rates. The initiatives of improvement might not be significant but it displays the more
constant nature. More importantly, BPM is not regarding the improvement of the method of
performing any activity by individuals. Instead, it is regarding the management of complete
chains of several events, decisions as well as the activities that finally helps in adding value
to organisation as well as the customers. These particular chain of activities, events as well as
the decisions are referred as the processes.
It has been considered that the processes helps in creating significant value for the
businesses. Particularly, the processes helps in transforming the inputs that are received from
the suppliers into the appropriate outputs of significant value to the customers. It is the
pattern that is presently applied to the various units of some analysis, both horizontally across
the boundaries of the organisation as well as the vertically inside any organisation. Provided
with the focus on the issue of significant value creation, the processes resulted as the
appropriate lens for integrating the various perspectives on the business, for example, for
supporting the IT-business alignment. Commonly, the process thinking mainly supports the
designing of the socio-technical systems with assisting the integration of the tasks, people,
technology as well as the various decisions.
While the early BPM mainly focusses on the remote projects of optimisation, it has
been now understood as the permanent accountability offering the capabilities required for
sustaining the competitiveness as well as the performance in the organisation. With the
introduction of this particular aspect, there has been significant evolvement of BPM into the
comprehensive discipline of management that is focussing on the organisation processes at
their point of interest (Harmon 2019). There have been several researches and it has been
determined that for implementing BPM successfully in any organisation, it is required to
integrate the capabilities in all the six areas of the organisation. Variety of assistances are
provided by BPM for each of the areas. Within the maturity models, the main factors have

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been briefly described that helps in the identification of the particular areas of capability
associated with the implementation of the Business Process Management (Mendling et al.
2018).
The research done on the methods simulation and the methods analytics have been
able to provide the methods to analyse the method according to the requirement of specific
significance of the strategies. The improvement of the process mainly tends in emphasising
on the devil’s quadrangle analysing the quality, cost, time and the flexibility. With
identification of business process management as appropriate discipline of management, the
performance evaluations of those procedures have been increasingly integration within the
corporate management and reporting systems. The research done on the performance of the
process management system has efficiently explored design as well as the use of the vital
indicators of the performance, which is able to help in monitoring the performance of the
methods from various stakeholders’ perspective (Van Der Aalst, La Rosa and Santoro 2016).
The Business Process Management that is mainly value based is also recommended to come
up with the needed support for the decision making during redesign the process. Process
transformation return is mainly considered as the monetary measure, which can be used
efficiently to evaluate the other process design that is based on the return on investment. With
following the theory of stakeholders, main objects is to balance the multi-perspectives
considerations over the processes, mainly considering the stakeholders that includes the
employees, customers, society as well as the shareholders.
The activities in the business process management could be categorised into the
various categories like designing, modelling, execution, observing as well as the
optimisation. The process design mainly includes the recognition of the recent processes and
the design, which will be under process (vom Brocke, Zelt and Schmiedel 2016). The
modelling mainly takes theoretical design as well as introduces the combination of the

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variables. The monitoring activity in business process management includes tracking of the
individual processes for allowing the clear display of information along with the multiple
performance statistics of the business process. In the process optimisation activity of BPM,
the retrieval of information of performance of the process from monitoring and modelling
phase is included (Rahimi, Møller and Hvam 2016). It is included with the identification of
bottlenecks along with the key opportunities for multiple improvements and saving the cost
as well as applying the improvements in process design. The data mining software or tools of
process help in discovering the impoetant activities as well as the bottlenecks, allowing the
creation of higher business value. In the re-engineering phase, when process becomes to be
significantly inefficient or complex, and the optimisation activity is not providing the
intended output, it has been commonly recommended by the committee of the companies to
re-engineer the complete process cycle (Vom Brocke and Mendling 2018). The business
process re-engineering is presently utilised by the organisation for attempting to gain the
productivity as well as the efficiency at work.
Digital innovation
At the core, the digital innovation could be described as the application of various
new technologies to the existing business issues as well as the practices that is executed in
phases. Each of the phases is makes by the developments in the technology as well as
innovation. While the recent trends in digital innovation are developing the increasingly
connected world using the expanded ecosystems of the partners, it is also exposing the
businesses to the increased security risks. Along with this, the alteration of the data protection
laws as well as the increased privacy concerns is considered to drive the increasingly
progressive as well as the disseminated security processes. The introduction of digital
innovation is drastically impacting the method by which the business are working using the
conventional methods. Some of the modern companies who are using digital in their business

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could be considered as Uber, Airbnb, spotify and the Netflix. Uber, with the help of modern
technology are presently challenging the taxi sector. Airbnb has presently gained significant
competitive advantage in hotel sector and spotify in presently gaining popularity in the music
industry. Netflix is using several modern technologies for providing the best entertainment
services to their customers. The main question in this aspect is that how the area of BPM
could efficiently deal along with digital innovation as well as effectively prepare for future.
Several researchers have described the digital innovation like the process, business model and
product, which is considered as the new, needs the vital alterations adopter’s sector and could
be easily coordinated by the utlization of IT. Digital innovation could be described as the type
of innovation, which implies the business transformation using some kind of IT. In the
modern times, digital innovation mainly uses IT in two major ways, one is during innovation
process or for describing the process outcomes of innovation.
In present times, there are several technologies that are used in the business for
adding value and eliminate any identified issues. Some of the popular technologies that are
used for introducing the digital innovation in the businesses are:
Blockchain: Blockchain could be defined as the increasing record list, considered as
the blocks, which are efficiently connected with cryptography. Every block comprises of the
previous block’s cryptographic hash, the timestamp as well as the transaction data (Nambisan
et al. 2017). With designing, the blockchain is significantly resistant to any modification of
data. It could be described as the distributed, open ledger that could help in recording the
transactions among the two parties effectively as well as in permanent and verifiable method.
For using this technology as the disperse ledger, the blockchain is commonly handled by the
peer-to-peer network combined obeying to the system protocol for the inter-node interaction
as well as the validation of the new blocks. Blockchain is also considered as the distributed,
decentralised as well as public, digital ledger that has been used in the present times for

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recording the transactions among several computers for eliminating the chances of
modification of the involved records. It mainly allows the verification as well as the auditing
of the transactions independently by the participants. The database of blockchain is mainly
managed autonomously with the utilisation of the peer-to-peer system network as well as the
disperse server of timestamping.
Cloud computing: Another popular digital innovation tool for the businesses in the
present times is the cloud computing technology. The technology, cloud computing could be
defined as on-demand resource availability of the systems, mainly storage of data and the
power of computing, underprivileged of the user’s direct active management. This term is
utilised for describing the data centres that are present to several users over internet. The
large clouds, predominant in the present times, frequently have the functions that are
dispersed over the numbers of locations from the main servers. The businesses in the modern
times introduce the cloud computing technology for gaining extensive agility. Cloud
computing helps in improving the agility of the organisation as this technology helps in
increasing the flexibility of the users with the re-provisioning, expanding or even adding the
resources of technological infrastructure. The business gain significant depletion in the data
management cost (Svahn, Mathiassen and Lindgren 2017). The cloud providers offer
significant cost reduction. The public-cloud model of delivery helps in converting the capital
expenditures for the operational expenditure. It helps in lowering the obstacle to entry, as the
infrastructure is commonly offers by the third parties and are not required to be acquired by
the organisations for the one-tome or infrequent computing tasks. The feature of this
technology of location and device independent allows the business with accessing the
systems using the web browser of the location or the kind of system the business is presently
using. As the infrastructure is mainly off-site and easily accessed using the internet facility,
the users could easily connect with this technology from any place.

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Artificial intelligence: The most promising innovation for the businesses in the
present times is the introduction of the artificial intelligence systems. Artificial intelligence
technology could be described as the simulation of processes of human intelligence by the
devices, specifically the systems. The particular applications of the artificial intelligence
involves the natural language processing, machine vision, speech recognition and the expert
systems. The deep learning and the artificial neural networks sectors of artificial intelligence
are developing rapidly and the business are integrating this technology in their daily
operations. The development of the sectors is mainly observed because huge quantity of data
is processed by artificial intelligence rather quickly and provides the accurate predictions
more efficiently than the humans (Nambisan 2018). The robotic process automation is
presently being integrated in the business where there are several repetitive tasks executed by
the humans. The algorithms of machine learning is presently being introduced within the
CRM platforms as well as the analytics for uncovering information on the methods by which
the customers could be server better. The businesses are also introducing the chatbots within
the websites for providing immediate services to the customers.
Relation between business process management and digital
Business process management integrates the knowledge from information technology
and science management for creating methods, tools as well as the techniques for supporting
the management, design and enactment as well as the evaluation of the operational business
processes (Hinings, Gegenhuber and Greenwood 2018). With the help of digital innovation,
the business are integrating the IT tools in their business processes and improving their
business. The main conventional emphasis of the research on BPM is always been role of the
information technology within the enactment, management as well as the innovation of the
business processes. This particular emphasis has resulted to rise of the workflow management
systems, the process mining technology as well as the BPM suites (Nambisan, Wright and

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Feldman 2019.). The introduction of information technology could be considered as most
crucial intervention within performance of the business processes in the recent decade. The
PAIS or the Process Aware Information System are defined as the information systems that
efficiently manages as well as executes the business processes that includes people,
information sources as well as the technologies. The Workflow management systems as the
particular kind of PASI that allows the implementation of the logical flow of processes that
could be easily executed across the functions as well as the organisations as per the particular
rules of the business (Dery, Sebastian and van der Meulen 2017). Several businesses are
introducing digital innovation in their business by introducing the various information
systems that helps in simplifying some of the major business processes. The Enterprise
Resource planning offers the generic solutions for the particular business functions as well as
the economic sectors that could be easily customised as per the particular requirements of the
business.
From the discussion of the modern advancements in the IT sector in the above
section, it could be observed that blockchain, cloud computing as well as artificial
intelligence are the most popular tools used in the businesses. Blockchain is the significantly
efficient method of storing all the information (Henfridsson et al. 2018). Some of the
businesses in the modern times use the blockchain technology for improving their supply
chain management process. When any order is placed by the small-business owner to the
suppliers, there is substantial transaction executed among the suppliers and the business
owners (Monteiro 2018). By the introduction of transparency within the supply chain of the
business, the blockchain allows the business owner in completely viewing the product
information from the manufacturers to the suppliers. As the requirement of reconciling the
documents such as the invoices as well as the billing statements is completely eliminated with
the help of blockchain, the payments could be made almost immediately. It could have

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substantial effect on the cash flow of the business that includes the businesses that depends
on the reimburements of the insurance (Zott and Amit 2017).
The cloud computing technology is another technology that is used by the businesses
for simplifying their business processes (Abrell et al. 2016). The cloud computing helps in
managing the files of the organisation more efficiently. The businesses could efficiently
manage all their data and files in secure cloud setup and protect the vital information with
extensive security mechanisms. Another feature of the cloud computing is data backup
(Svahn et al. 2017). The cloud storage provides the place for backing up the data that is kept
in the remote location and would help in keeping the data safe in secure environment. In the
situation of any disaster, the recovery of the files from the cloud storage is significantly
simple. The files, data and the programs could be efficiently recovered from the cloud storage
and normal business functions could be maintained (Kohli and Melville 2019). With the
introduction of the cloud computing in the business, the vital aspect that is gained by the
businesses is the leveraging of vast amount of data, which is both unstructured as well as
structured. This helps in harnessing the major benefit of the value extraction of the business.
The retailers as well as the suppliers are increasingly extracting the information that is gained
from buying patterns of the consumers. It allows them with the strategic targeting of the both
the marketing as well as the advertising campaigns for any specific segment of the
population. The social network platforms are presently offering the required analytics on the
basis of the behavioural patterns that are being utilised by the organisation for obtaining
important information (Chae 2019).
Challenges faced by the businesses
While introducing the modern technologies in the business, there are several
challenges that are encountered by the businesses (Guellec and Paunov 2017). The new
technologies in the business is required to be efficiently integrated within the present business

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processes for utilising the complete potential. The prevailing systems as well as the
procedures are required to be appropriate modified for incorporating the innovative
technology in the proper method that restricts the disruption and the implementation process
needs huge amount of additional training. Another challenge faced during the implementation
of the modern technologies in the employee resistance. The employees have been observed to
be significantly comfortable with the existing business processes and how the businesses are
functioning (Holmström 2018). Change is not always appreciated by the employees and it
leads to the complete failure in the implementation of the modern technologies.
Even though the technologies are implemented, the business processes would be
improved when the employees have the proper knowledge of how to work with the
technology (Chan et al. 2019). This is an issue that is faced by the modern businesses where
significantly huge amount of the capital is spent on providing the required training to the staff
regarding the proper use of the technologies.
Conclusion
Therefore, this draws the conclusion from the above discussion in which the
implementation of the modern technologies leads to the digital innovation of the companies
and several business processes of the businesses are improved. Business process management
is described as the science and art of managing the work that is performed within any
organisation for ensuring the constant outcomes as well as taking advantage of the
improvement opportunities. The activities in the business process management could be
categorised into the various categories like designing, modelling, execution, observing as
well as the optimisation. Digital innovation could be described as the type of innovation,
which implies the business transformation using some kind of IT. In the modern times, digital
innovation mainly uses IT in two major ways, one is during innovation process or for