Dipl.-Wirt. Inform. Burkhard Weiß

Location: Brisbane

Arrival: Mar 2nd 2011

Departure: Apr 3rd 2011

Burkhard Weiß
Fostering BPM Research in Financial Service Networks

Mission statement

  • To establish the position of a research coordinator in Brisbane on behalf of the University of Muenster to foster joint research in the area of BPM.
  • To exchange ideas for future research in the field of BPM in the financial sector, and service networks with QUT's BPM Group and SAP Research, Brisbane.
  • To initiate new joint publications on process modeling and risk-aware business processes together with Prof. Michael Rosemann and Dr. Jan Recker as well as further staff members from QUT's BPM Group.
  • To seek new funding opportunities to create a sustainable continuation of the binational cooperation program,               especially with regards to identifying joint BPM research funding opportunities in the financial sector in Australia and Germany in close collaboration with the new ERCIS competence center „BPM in Financial Industries“.

Research results

During my stay in Brisbane I had a number of opportunities to collaborate with some of the most distinguished BPM researchers in the IS field - including Prof. Dr. Michael Rosemann and Dr. Jan Recker. After an introduction to the people working within QUT's BPM group I had a chance to talk to Prof. Dr. Rosemann on March 4th with regards to joint research collaboration opportunities. Especially in the area of risk-aware business process modelling the QUT was successful in receiving a grant and started research in this area, whereas in Muenster this research stream already evolved for about 1,5 years in the context of several third party funded projects in Germany's banking sector. Within the BPM Seminar Series, I myself was given the chance to present a wide scope of my research - ranging from business process modelling, process analysis and operational risk management to business process compliance - on March 10th to QUT's BPM group, including many of their senior and junior researchers. The feedback that I gained from my peer Australian researchers significantly helped me in focusing and summing up my various research endeavors in my final phase of my PhD studies on BPM in banks (banks being one of the largest service industries worldwide).

Furthermore, multiple talks with Dr. Jan Recker, one of Australia's top-ranked BPM researchers, gave me the chance to investigate joint research collaboration activities in the area of organizational process modeling, theory building and empirical research. This turned out to be a valuable basis for further empirical studies I have conducted recently.

On March 16th, I was invited to participate in the ERA celebrations of the IS department at the QUT, as the QUT had just been ranked the only top university in the field of IS research by Australia's nation-wide ERA ranking scheme.

On March 17th, I had the chance to gain insights into further studies on theory building and empirical research in the BPM area through a presentation that Dr. Jan Recker gave on the topic of "Effects of Learning Process for Process Model Understanding". In addition, I was invited to attend the BPM Group Strategy Meeting 2011, which gave me many insights into QUT's excellent research and education program and the drivers that make their program so succesful in the BPM area.

Along with my focus on process analysis, I also attended a presentation on cost-aware business process management, which introduced me to some of QUT's most prestigious work in the area of workflow management systems, which is closely linked to the BPM research stream in the context of the ongoing and highly prestigious YAWL research initiative.

Finally, within the last two weeks of my stay at the QUT, I was also introduced to Prof. Dr. Arthur ter Hofstede and his fellow researchers Dr. Ouyang Chun, Dr. Moe Wynn and Dr. Marcello la Rossa, which resulted in initial work on the subject of operational risk management and business process management in the context of risk-aware business process modeling and analysis, which has since then been fostered from both sides of the world in a virtual team collaboration and will most likely result in future joint publications.

Blog

BPM Series Talk on "Process Modeling and Analysis in Banks" on 10.3.2011
published on 03/15/2011 - 03:11

On 10.3.2011 I gave an invited 1,5 hour talk on "Process Modeling and Analysis in Banks" within QUT's BPM Seminar Series. In this talk I outlined substantial parts of my current PhD research on business process modelling and analysis in the banking industry.

I set out with giving an overview on the current status quo and challenges of process modelling and analysis in the banking sector in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Continuing, I gave an introduction to semantic business process modelling and how this new approach was adapted to the banking sector to ease the effort of modelling, enable process analysis and ease the communication of the resulting process models. I also introduced a new approach to business process analysis, with a focus on extracting information from semantic business process models by using pattern search and key indicators for analysing processes with regard to business process optimization potentials and for benchmarking purposes. Finally, I gave an introduction on banking sector specific extensions of these new approaches for the purpose of identifying, modelling and analysing operational risks in business processes, as well as modelling business process rules and analysing business process compliance.
I very much appreciated that many current BPM researchers from QUT's BPM Group as well as SAP Research in Brisbane attended this seminar session, as QUT's BPM Group is one of the largest BPM groups in the world with a high international visibility and recognized for cutting-edge academic BPM research, published in leading IS journals and conference proceedings. Thanks to the abundant BPM research stems, ranging from process and service modling, context-aware and risk-aware business process modeling to workflow management at the QUT, I also highly enjoyed much of the constructive feedback on research methods and significant contributions of my current research results.

As a follow-up during and after my presentation I had the opportunity to get in close contact with dedicated BPM researchers to outline future possibilities for joint research collaboration, especially in the area of organizational process modeling and risk-aware business processes.