In the process babel: Definitions, concepts, and tools in a disordered field

• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1543
• Author: Gustavo Silva Rocha,Douglas Rafael Veit,Luis Henrique Rodrigues,Aline Dresch,Daniel Pacheco Lacerda

RESEARCH ARTICLE

In the process babel: Definitions, concepts, and tools in a

disordered field

Gustavo Silva Rocha

1

|Daniel Pacheco Lacerda

2

|Douglas Rafael Veit

2

|

Luis Henrique Rodrigues

2

|Aline Dresch

2

1

Programa de Pós‐Graduação em Engenharia

de Produção e Sistemas—PPGEPS|UNISINOS,

Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, São

Leopoldo, RS, Brazil

2

Grupo de Pesquisa em Modelagem para

Aprendizagem—GMAP|UNISINOS,

Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos—

UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, RS, Brazil

Correspondence

Daniel Pacheco Lacerda, Grupo de Pesquisa

em Modelagem para Aprendizagem—GMAP|

UNISINOS, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos

Sinos—UNISINOS, Av. Unisinos 950, São

Leopoldo, RS 93022000, Brazil.

Email: dlacerda@unisinos.br

The purpose of this article is to increase the understanding of this methodology by showing its

main advantages, disadvantages, difficulties, adaptation of the people, people management, the

implementation steps, and the choice of software. Another objective is to pinpoint some differ-

ences between process automation and Workflow. To that end, a field research was conducted

consisting of semistructured interviews to gather the perceptions of both clients (analysts) and

implementers on business process automation as the main motivators, advantages, disadvan-

tages, and changes that took place in the organization as this methodology was implemented.

The interviews were carried out with implementers and users who applied the process automa-

tion across their organizations. The conclusion that can be drawn from this paper is that automa-

tion of the business process is a methodology that improves the processes in organizations,

increases their agility, reduces costs, assures the integrity of processes, and, mainly, keeps track

of the activities performed.

1|INTRODUCTION

Early in the 20th century, companies were organized adopting rigid

processes with little flexibility, particularly in internal processes. Orga-

nizational structures and management approaches focused in vertical

processes related to organizational functions integrated in the hierar-

chical structure of the organization were adopted (Oliveira, 2006).

Towards the end of the 20th century, it became increasingly clear that,

in order to manage customer service and quality and in order to facili-

tate organizational agility and flexibility, focus on horizontal processes

was necessary. Thus, many organizations were led to make use of pro-

cess‐modeling tools, such as Business Process Management (BPM).

BPM typically involves the use of a wide variety of tools and tech-

niques. Some of these tools and techniques depend on or are imple-

mented through the use of information technology (IT). Therefore,

according to Hedgebeth (2007), IT has an important role to process

management and may significantly help organizations to perform data

consolidation. Consolidation allows the organization to put in place an

integrated management for its business processes.

Some benefits of process automation, according to Davenport

(2000), are identified in IT regarding business processes: clearer infor-

mation; tasks and activities performed in the correct sequence; trace-

ability; better analytical capacity; extrapolation of the organization's

physical boundaries; process integration; and better knowledge

management.

Based on the benefits aforementioned, the aim of this paper is to

discover what is the perception of different actors (analysts and pro-

cess implementers) related to the automation of business processes.

The research question is to verify if there are differences between

advantage and disadvantage perceptions (implementation difficulties)

among analysts and business automation implementers.

One of the main reasons for the development of this paper is to

demonstrate to companies in general (and to managers in particular)

that business process automation brings more advantages than bar-

riers after process mapping and redesign. Among advantages, the abil-

ity to control and improve processes, besides improving process flow,

can be cited. As business process automation has not been much

developed in Brazil, this paper will contribute to show the advantages

that companies and managers would have when business processes

are automated. In addition, this paper will also show the main difficul-

ties that companies and managers may face and the main process

automation software available.

Through systematic research in several databases and journals,

lack of research on business process automation was observed with

respect to the Brazilian reality. Articles about workflow development

were found, but not regarding workflow as a tool, and how this tool

Received: 16 January 2014 Accepted: 10 April 2017

DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1543

196 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Knowl Process Manag. 2017;24:196–203.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm