Business Processes & Information Systems

My research evolves around two central issues that significantly determine the success of a company: business processes and information systems. These issues are closely related as the main purpose of a corporate information system is to support the business process in an effective and efficient way. Within this overall problem there are a number of important sub-problems. Their solution contributes substantially towards the solution of the overall problem.

One of these issues concerns the alignment of the IT systems with the strategy of the business. This activity can be seen as quality assurance concerning the actual support the systems provide. One way of doing that is to design both the business and the IT systems together, i.e. within one project.			Business and IT Co-design & Collaborative Modeling
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Another important sub-problem concerns situations where a number of businesses join forces to provide a common product or service. Forming such a business network has become more and more common as companies face growing demands for increasingly complex products and services. As a consequence business processes often cross organizational boundaries, i.e. there is no central instance that can manage and coordinate them. This in turn leads to a serious problem of governance that makes it necessary to look for new forms of coordination.			Business Network Governance
In any case we are always faced with the problem of assuring the quality of the business process itself because even an optimal IT support cannot turn an ineffective process into an effective one. An important objective of IS research is therefore the development of methods for improving the quality of business processes with the help of simulation.			Business Process Simulation & Improvement