Business process management in the age of AI – three essential drifts

Rosemann, Michael; vom Brocke, Jan; Van Looy, Amy; Santoro, Flavia

Abstract

Business Process Management (BPM) is a holistic management discipline (Rosemann and vom Brocke 2015) that encompasses methods, techniques, and tools to support the management of business processes throughout their lifecycle, from discovery to execution, monitoring and mining (Dumas et al. 2018). The discipline of BPM covers an established field of research with common building blocks and comprises a wide variety of both technical aspects (e.g., process modelling, execution, mining, etc.) and managerial aspects (e.g., capabilities, governance, mindset, etc.) (Van Looy 2020). Although BPM was characterized by a clear boost in the 1990s and early 2000s due to the waves of business process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993), process innovation (Davenport 1993) and workflow management (van der Aalst and van Hee 2003), the underlying idea and importance of managing operational tasks and value chains have been recognized for centuries and this already since the early rise of factories and the notion of scientific management (Taylor 1919). Other disciplines explicitly recognize the operational level as an additional management layer complementing tactical and strategical viewpoints and which is needed to run a business (Ross et al. 2006).

Keywords
Business process management; AI