KeyPro - A decision support system for discovering important business processes in information systems

Abstract

Prioritization is essential for process decision-making. Organizational decision-makers frequently do not have clear perceptions of which processes are of prime and secondary importance. Further, research does not provide a satisfactory definition of process importance and quantifiable proxies. Thus, this paper derives dimensions of process importance including the number of process executions, involved process stakeholders, customer or supplier involvement, and value chain position from literature, and introduces measurable proxies from information systems for each dimension. The artifact “KeyPro” is developed to explore important processes bottom-up from log data in SAP-ERP systems with visualization in interactive dashboards. As process library, we retrieve 220 processes from 52 process experts across four real-world companies. 773 ERP transactions are matched to these processes to measure which processes constitute important processes along the importance dimensions. We implemented KeyPro in three real-world SAP-ERP systems and a focus group of process experts. An evaluation in two case studies reveals significant deviations between perceptions by decision-makers and the results suggested by KeyPro.