Integrated Business Process Management: 'How It All Fits Together'

Much of the current debate around BPR centers on its claims for successful implementation, and its distinctive novelty. In this chapter we seek to move the debate forward by observing that the methodological basis for BPR lacks transparency and, very often, fundamental justification. Most methodological support advanced in the literature is taken too often for granted, and needs to be specified far more exactly and appropriately. As a consequence, many business process professionals can no longer appreciate how the endless list of modeling techniques, the variety of decision making guidelines and the numerous staffing prescriptions 'fit together' into a comprehensive whole to facilitate their decision making. Not surprisingly, many fail to mobilize, exploit and capitalize on the organizational knowledge base, which is needed for inducing business process change. In this chapter, we will explain some of these methodological shortcomings, and offer the SPARTA framework for developing a far more inclusive, integrative and adaptive approach to the field of I-BPM — Integrated Business Process Management. Illustrations from an I-BPM effort in the Financial Services Industry will accompany our understandings.