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DrndorferSeel2016 Theimpactofmobiledevices
DrndorferSeel2016 Theimpactofmobiledevices
DrndorferSeel2016 Theimpactofmobiledevices
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Abstract
The success of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets has changed the e-commerce.
However, the management of business processes have not been affected in the same way
by the possibilities of mobile devices and applications yet. With these devices it is possible to
measure context information, which could influence the whole business process management
lifecycle. Context information could be anything that is measurable with a sensor or available
via information systems and important to a specific situation like location, customer history or
the next appointment in the calendar. This paper introduces the possibilities of mobile devices
and their application for business process management. Therefore, it gives a brief overview
of the actual literature on this field. In addition it shows how the business process lifecycle
could be affected by mobile devices and applications. Thus, the business process lifecycle
will be divided in its atomic parts and the possible effects of the mobile devices will be
presented.
1 Introduction
With the emergence of smartphones the way of buying goods online has changed. So far,
mobile devices have little influence on the business process management. The possibilities,
which come with these devices are huge, because they can measure context information. This
information can be anything that is measurable through a sensor or available via information
systems and important to a specific situation like location, customer history or the next
appointment in the calendar. Hence, these devices have the potential to influence business
processes and improve their procedure.
Davenport [Dave13] defined business processes as “a structured, measured set of activities
designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market”. They also support
the critical organisation functions and help to achieve defined goals. To manage these
processes, a business process lifecycle (BPL) has been defined. It is typically divided into the
parts of design, implementation, execution and controlling [GeTs98], [Wesk07]. The BPL is
repeated iteratively to improve continuously the processes. Mobile devices have the ability to
influence the entire BPL. They have sensors, for example to measure positioning,
acceleration, brightness etc. on board. These sensors could help to gather context information
about business processes, which can be used further to analyse, adapt and improve business
processes in the future.
1
This article was supported by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Media, Energy and
Technology as a part of the “Internetkompetenzzentrum” program.
This paper therefore shows the potential of mobile devices and their application for business
process management. The next section presents a brief overview over the actual literature in
the field. The subsequent section explains how the BPL is affected by mobile devices and
their applications. Hence, the BPL is divided in its atomic parts and the possible effects will be
presented. At the end the conclusion and further work will be presented.
2 Related Work
Mobile devices can measure the context which surrounds them. In the field of informatics the
term context was defined amongst others [ScAW94], [ScBG99], [Weis91] by DEY [Dey00],
[Dey01], [DeAb00]. He stated:
Context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An
entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a
user and an application, including the user and application themselves. [Dey00]
This definition is widespread in the scientific community, therefore it should be taken into
account when thinking about context in mobile business processes.
Context evaluation and interpretation can be used to investigate its impact on business
processes and furthermore, the business process lifecycle (BPL). The BPL is most often
divided into the following parts: design, implementation, execution and controlling [GeTs98],
[Wesk07]. Each of the current work in this field focusses only on one of the different parts of
the BPL. For example ROSEMANN et.al. [RoRF08] focus on the design phase, by showing the
need of context in business processes by revealing the limitations of the event-driven process
chain language when depicting flexible processes. They present a concept of context
classification and typing of different influence factors on a business process. Another design
approach is presented by LA VERA ET. AL. [La++10]. Their aim is to identify all variants of a
business process depending on the given context. First the basic business process is defined,
then the context of the business process is analysed, thirdly the inter-dependencies between
the context variables and the tasks of the business process is investigated, and finally all
possible variants of the business process are modelled. More design approaches can be
found in [SaNu07], [Pl++09], [BoD’11], [Neub11], [RoRF08], [GoVJ07], [LaWR10].
In the implementation phase there are also approaches to measure the context with mobile
applications [BuWL12], [Ar++07], [Es++12]. Some approaches combine design and
implementation like MATES ET AL. [MaRH14], but the impact and a holistic concept of context
on the entire BPL is missing in the literature so far.
3 Mobile devices and their impact on the business process lifecycle
Smartphones, its sensors and its applications can influence every phase of the BPL. The
following section gives a holistic view over the phases, with the possibilities of context-
sensitive mobile applications for the BPL. Figure 1 shows the phases of the adapted context
sensitive business process lifecycle.
Context Sensitive
Design
• Modeling of context sensitive
mobile business processes
• Modeling of context
• Modeling of context
Interdepences
BPM
Context Sensitive
Execution
• Adaptable application
• Gathering of context sensitve
data
• Context sensitve data
transmition
Transform DSML
into XML
No
Generate code
Proofe code
functions and
implement
application
Proof application
workflow
Approved?
Yes
This paper introduced the possibilities of mobile devices and context-sensitive applications in
business processes, not only for single business process phases, but for the whole BPL. The
impact of mobile devices, which can measure the context is so strong, that only this holistic
consideration is appropriate to make full use of the presented opportunities.
Therefore, the individual phases were examined about the impact of context. In the design
phase, a need for a DSML was presented to enable the modelling of mobile context-sensitive
business process. The DSML could then be transformed into XML by proposed the
framework. In a second step the proposed framework auto generate parts of the mobile
application, which can measure the context and support the business process. The DSML
enables to plan such an application and generates the important decisions automatically as
source code via the framework. In the third phase the context data has to be gathered by the
mobile application and transferred to a database. This context information will be used to
analyse the business process. There are also new opportunities in the controlling phase by
collecting context data. This data will show if a business process works as expected and if it
does not, the data can also be used to examine the weak point or the bottle neck and improve
the process.
This paper reveals the potential of mobile context-sensitive applications, but there is still work
to do. The DSML has to be designed and introduced. In addition the introduced ideas of the
first three phases require the proposed framework, which has to be implemented. These
requirements are:
• Transform the DSML into XML to ease the programming of a context-sensitive mobile
applications.
• Automated code generation from the designed application workflow.
• Define context information which should be measured during the run time of a business
process to evaluate the business process in the controlling phase.
• An interface for context data transmission.
Furthermore, a new way of controlling has to be worked out and established to use the
introduced opportunities.
Bibliography
[ScAW94] Schilit, B.; Adams, N.; Want, R.: Context-Aware Computing Applications: First
Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA), 1994;
pp. 85–90.
[ScBG99] Schmidt, A.; Beigl, M.; Gellersen, H.-W.: There is more to context than
location. In Computers & Graphics, 1999, 23; pp. 893–901.
[ScSe03] Schmelzer, H. J.; Sesselmann, W.: Geschäftsprozessmanagement in der
Praxis. Kunden zufrieden stellen, Produktivität steigern, Wert erhöhen ; Neu:
Six Sigma in Geschäftsprozessen, komplettes Praxisbeispiel. Hanser,
München, 2003.
[Weis91] Weiser, M.: The Computer for the 21st Century. In Scientific American, 1991,
265; pp. 94–104.
[Wesk07] Weske, M.: Business process management. Concepts, languages,
architectures. Springer, Berlin u.a., 2007.
Contact
Julian Dörndorfer
Hochschule Landshut
Am Lurzenhof 1, 84036 Landshut
T.: +49 (0) 871 506 731, julian.doerndorfer@haw-landshut.de
Christian Seel
Hochschule Landshut
Am Lurzenhof 1, 84036 Landshut
T.: +49 (0) 871 506 649, christian.seel@haw-landshut.de