Systems for Interorganizational Business Process Management

Introduction

In the past, many organizations operated their business processes in a rather stand-alone mode. Although cooperation scenarios with other organizations obviously existed, these scenarios were mostly based on the exchange of physical goods and information (e.g., on the basis of electronic data interchange) – not on the execution of integrated business processes by the collaborating partners. A number of developments has changed the context in which organizations collaborate, however. In the first place, products and services produced have become far more complex, thus requiring more business capabilities and hence larger networks of collaborating organizations. The fact that competition forces organizations to retract to core business activities only amplifies this development. Secondly, both product specifications and market circumstances have become much more dynamic, thereby requiring business networks to become more dynamic too. Thirdly, market paradigm changes like mass customization and demand chain orientation require much tighter synchronized business processes across individual organizations in a business chain. Fourthly, time pressure has become much greater in the setup and execution of collaborations between organizations. These four developments are forcing organizations to pay much more attention to how they cooperate, not only to what they exchange. In other words: organizations are forced to operate in business processes that span business chains and take part in the design and management of these interorganizational business processes.

To deal with the complexity of interorganizational business processes and obtain the required efficiency in setting them up and executing them, automated systems are required for interorganizational business process management. These automated systems should support a number of tasks. They should provide support for the design or configuration of interorganizational business processes. As we will see in the sequel of this chapter, support may be in the form of interactive design tools, but may also go into the direction of fully automatic configuration of interorganizational business processes, based on predefined subprocesses within participating organizations. These automated systems should support the automated management of the execution of interorganizational business processes, i.e., that process logic that actually links the internal business processes of multiple autonomous organizations. Then, these systems should support the synchronization of interorganizational business processes with the internal business processes of the organizations.