Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

Business Value Creation through Business Processes Management and

Operational Business Intelligence Integration
Olivera Marjanovic
University of Sydney, Australia
o.marjanovic@econ.usyd.edu.au
Abstract
Current approaches to Business Process
Management (BPM) and operational Business
Intelligence (BI) integration have been very
limited and simply reduced to the problem of
technical integration between BPM and BI
systems. This paper argues that further
opportunities for business value creation could
be discovered through systematic analysis of the
non-technical aspects of BI and BPM
integration, especially in terms of strategy
alignment,
human-centered
knowledge
management and ongoing improvement of BI
supported processes.
The paper proposes a theoretical framework
founded in the related research in BPM, BI and
Knowledge Management (KM) fields and
describes how it has been used to guide our
empirical case study research in service
organisations in the context of BI-supported
customer-facing processes.

1. Introduction
An ever increasing volume of business data
that a typical organisation needs to manage,
analyse and ultimately turn into actions, has fast
tracked the field of Business Intelligence to the
top of the CIOs and CEOs priority lists
worldwide [1]. While organisations with
enterprise-wide data warehouses will continue to
benefit from the strategic BI, in terms of longterm decision making support, dynamic nature of
everyday business creates a need for a different
type of tools to be placed in the hands of
operational decision makers. Operational BI is
now bringing powerful analytical tools from the
back office and designated knowledge workers,
to the front office and customer-facing
employees, turning them into a new type of
knowledge workers. Supported by BI tools that
are giving them more insight into customers
behaviour, these employees are now in a position
to inject more personalised knowledge into

their business processes (BP) making them

harder to copy by their competitors.Operational
BI builds on existing technology standards to
make business intelligence more flexible,
transparent and cost-effective, by tightly
integrating BI with organisations constantly
evolving business processes [2].
Real-time decision support in the context of
operational, customer-facing processes has
created a pressing need for better understanding
of BI and BP integration, especially in terms of
value creation. The business value of BI lays in
its use within management processes that impact
on the operational processes which in turn, drive
revenue or reduce costs, as well as in its use
within those operational processes themselves
[3]. As more organisations are gradually
reaching a higher level of BI maturity, they are
becoming increasingly aware that BI-supported
BPs need to be managed, improved or even
redesigned to take the full advantage of BI
solutions. BI leaders are now starting to consider
BP-related issues that have been the main focus
of another field Business Process Management
(BPM) for the last two decades.
However, current consideration of BI and
BPM integration has been very limited and
reduced to technical integration between BI and
BPM systems. This paper argues that further
opportunities for business value creation could
be discovered through systematic analysis of
non-technical aspects of BPM and BI
integration, especially in terms of strategy
alignment,
human-centered
knowledge
management and ongoing improvement of BI
supported processes.
The paper uses the exploratory case study
research to investigate the non-technical patterns
of BPM and operational BI integration, across
people, processes and strategy components of a
holistic BPM model. It focuses on the following
research question:
What are the existing non-technical patterns
of BPM and Operational BI integration in the
context of customer-facing BPs in service
industries?

978-0-7695-3869-3/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

The paper proposes a theoretical framework

founded in the related research in BPM, BI and
Knowledge Management (KM) fields and
describes how this framework has been used to
inform our empirical case study research in
organisations that are currently using BI
solutions to support their customer-facing BPs.
In addition to its main research contribution
in the form of a theoretical framework and an
evolving set of integration patterns, this work
also makes contributions to the current BPM and
BI practice. It offers an evolving road map of BI
and BPM integration that could be used by
practitioners to guide their integration efforts
beyond technology.

2. Background and motivation

As the BPM and BI fields have reached a
converging point, it has become evident that the
respective views and understanding of the
fundamental concepts such as business
process, business intelligence or even
business process intelligence are quite
different. For example, in the field of BI, BPs are
often reduced to fully automated, workflowsupported processes that were the main area of
practice and research in the BPM field in the
mid-90s. At the same time, BPM tends to reduce
business data to the process data, mainly those
captured and processed by the BPM systems.
Furthermore, BPM and BI integration has
been predominantly considered at the technical
level and is often vendor driven. Without any
doubt, technical integration is a complex
problem. When solved properly, it brings value
to organisations by helping them to turn insight
into action that may result in significant
efficiencies, increased responsiveness to the realtime problems and opportunities, and crossorganisational visibility [1]. Driven by the need
to gain a better insight into operational BPs and
better decision-support within these processes,
technical integration efforts will continue,
especially in organisations where BPM and BI
are perceived to be technical areas. However, by
focusing solely on the technical integration,
organisations are yet to reach the full potential.
For many companies, achieving operational BI
simply means viewing operational data from
their primary ERP system, namely SAP [4].
New insights and opportunities are created
when the integration problem is extended beyond
technology. First of all, BI-supported BPs need
to be managed and continuously improved.
While one could argue that BP improvement

efforts should not be affected by the underlying

BP-support technology, we argue that this is not
the case with BI-supported operational BPs. As
illustrated later in the paper, BI changes the
nature of work for the process participants by
giving them better insights and more
opportunities to make their operational processes
knowledge intensive. Consequently BI-supported
BPs call for a different type of improvement
methodology, with more emphasis placed on the
experiential knowledge.
In fact, even the term Business process is
too generic or coarse-grinded when considered
for the integration purposes. For example,
primary BPs will require different type of
integration than supporting BPs that could
continue to benefit from the traditional BI
reporting tools. Customer-facing BPs themselves
will vary in terms of types of decisions involved
and the level of expertise required, as well as the
relationships between processes, information and
decisions. Furthermore, the volume of business
transactions, competitiveness of the given
industry and the actual types of products and
services will determine the nature of the
customer-facing BPs and business value that
could be generated through their integration with
BI. For example, for companies competing on
the bases of product differentiation, their need
for BI integration will be very different than for
those competing in highly commoditized
industries. In the later case, a better customer
insight provided by BI, will offer opportunities
for differentiation on the basis of efficiency, and
to some degree process personalization, even
with large volumes of transactions.
Integration of BPM and operational BI, also
impacts on the people component, in particular
training methods and strategies for sharing of
best practices among customer-facing officers.
These are especially needed for organizations
aiming for more knowledge-intensive BPs.
While both BI and BPM independently seek
to align their strategies with the overall business
strategy, BI and BPM integration in the context
of operational BP, also requires their mutual
alignment. For example, the BPM strategy
considers the overall enterprise BP architecture
and how different crossfunctional BPs fit
together at the enterprise level. The BI strategy
also looks at the big picture of enterprise-wide
cross-functional integration, but through the
lenses of data rather than processes. These
different integration paradigms, data- versus
process-centric, make the process of BI and
BPM strategy realignment very challenging as

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

these viewpoints are often incompatible.

Consequently, any integration effort requires a
multi-perspective approach. However, as hard as
it is, this integration is very important, especially
in the case of customer-facing BPs. As
organisations are learning more and more about
their customers, through BI-enabled customer
segmentation, cross-functional data integration
gives a customer-facing employee a 360 view
of the customer. At the same time, crossfunctional
process
integration
enables
implementation of customer-centered end-to-end
processes and provides a context for more
detailed customer analysis.
Based on the above discussion, we argue that
the BI/BPM integration needs to be considered
beyond technology at the levels of strategy,
people
and
processes,
including their
management, ongoing improvement and
redesign. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a
holistic rather than a technical view.

3. Literature review
A very comprehensive literature review
confirms that the need for better integration of
BPM and operational BI had been identified in
the trade press long before it was considered by
BI and BPM research communities. So far, this
problem has been investigated mainly by the
computer science researchers. For example
various research projects focus on BP
intelligence and implementation of BI tools on
top of BPM systems (e.g. see [5] and [6]).
Alternatively, BPM systems are used as one
of the sources of enterprise data. This approach
is very popular among BI vendors that tend to
focus merely on adding process metrics to their
product architecture for traditional reporting and
analysis [5]. Process-related data are also
provided by the BAM (Business Activity
Monitoring) systems, even though these systems
do not offer process management support as
BPM systems. However, process-data provided
by any BPM or BAM system, regardless of its
level of sophistication, are only a subset of the
overall enterprise-wide business data and
therefore incomplete.
While the CS community continues to
explore the technical aspects of BP and BPM
integration looking for example, for more
efficient ways to integrate enterprise-wide data
with rule-based workflows, better ways to mine
and visualise process data and create more
flexible decision support tools, the information
systems (IS) community remains very much

silent on the integration issue. A very

comprehensive review of the current IS literature
including the leading IS journals (A and A+), ISrelated specialist journals and IS conferences
over the last five years, confirms a very large
research gap. Excluding the papers that only
mention BPs in the BI context and vice versa, BI
and BPM integration has been broadly discussed
only by few IS research papers, more as a side
point and always from a single perspective
(BPM or BI). This confirms that the area of BPM
and BI integration, so far, remains virtually
unexplored by the IS researchers.
Having achieved technical integration, the
companies are now facing the IS-related
integration issues. In the absence of well
established integration frameworks, or even a
broad set of guidelines, they are left to invent
and use their own solutions. We argue that the
problem of BPM and operational BI integration
is now becoming an important IS research
problem. The much needed integration
frameworks and systematic methodologies
require the socio-technical rather than the IT
perspective, creating opportunities to address the
widely known problem of IS relevance, as
identified by [7], [8], [9] and [10].

4. Theoretical foundations
4.1. A holistic model of BPM
From an earlier focus on technologies for BP
automation and BP reengineering, BPM has
evolved into a management practice that
provides for governance of a business process
environment towards the goal of improving
agility and operational performance. BPM is a
structured approach that employs methods,
policies, metrics, management practices and
software tools to manage and continuously
optimize an organisations activities and
processesThese practices incorporate myriad
resources: people and the organisation, the
processes themselves (considered as assets) and
BPM
technologies,
as
well
as
the
interrelationships of the processes within the
context of the business and its goals. [11].
Business leaders are increasingly adopting
the so-called holistic model of BPM that
encompasses
four
highly
intertwined
organisational components: strategy, people, BPs
and technology [12]. While strategy defines the
overall BPM-related organisational goals and
directions for value creation, the actual business

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

value is created and delivered to customers via

BPs. In general, a BP is defined as a set of
coordinated
activities/tasks,
guided
by
organizational policies and procedures towards a
shared business goal. BPs are supported by BPM
technologies, ranging from simple BP
automation to complex systems designed to
provide user-driven support for ad-hoc
communication, collaboration and coordination.
The strategy component of the holistic model
includes the enterprise-level process architecture,
issues related to process-related performance
measurement and BPM governance. The BP
component includes methodologies for process
design and ongoing improvement. The people
component includes BPM related knowledge
management, training and BP ownership issues.
Finally, the technology component includes
various BP support systems.
The holistic model of BPM provides a
theoretical framework that could be used by
organisations to better understand the
interconnected nature of different components
and adopt the systems perspective when
analyzing the effects of change. It could be also
used to help BPM managers to identify
opportunities for BPM-related business value
creation and competitive differentiation.

4.2. The knowledge dimension of BPs

The holistic BPM model has resulted in an
increased recognition of the knowledge and
experience people develop, use and share, while
participating in all phases of the BP lifecycle. In
response, BPM has started to evolve beyond
transactional to include knowledge-intensive
BPs. While in the case of transactional BPs their
value comes from improved efficiency, it is now
becoming clear that in the case of knowledgeintensive BPs, their value can be directly
attributed to peoples knowledge and experience
required for situational decision making. This
observation is very important for operational BI,
as knowledge-intensive processes require
different BI support than operational BPs in
manufacturing organisations.
We have knowledge workers who for the
most part work on non-routine tasks and
complex efforts. Emergent work practices are
becoming common rather than prescribed
projects. Most of the simple tasks have been
automated or soon they will be [13].
Obviously, knowledge workers rely on highquality data from a wide variety of data sources,
both internal and external and a system support

that cannot be always pre-determined in advance.

Therefore, knowledge-intensive processes will
have different information requirements than
simple transactional BPs.
This section provides a brief overview of a
model, previously introduced by [14] to describe
a knowledge dimension of different types of
BPs. This dimension will provide a critical link
among BPs, types of decisions people make
within these processes and their information
needs, as illustrated later in the paper.
Even though it is not often considered during
BPM projects, knowledge is inseparable from
BPs. In reality, all processes combine, to some
degree, both explicit and tacit knowledge. The
explicit knowledge can be written down, easily
shared with other people within the same
context. Examples include well structured
organisational procedures. On the other hand,
tacit knowledge is not documented and is very
hard to externalise. Examples include knowhow, mental models and experiential insights.
Externalisation of tacit knowledge and its
gradual refinement result in organisational
practices. They are developed over time by
employees through their ability to make
decisions, solve problems and critically reflect.
Figure 1 depicts a theoretical framework used to
describe the knowledge dimension of customerfacing BPs.
Procedural BPs are highly structured and
repetitive,
typically
found
at
the
operational/transactional level. Technology
developers often rely on standardisation and
predictability of organisational procedures to
design BPM solutions. This is why the existing
solutions remain suitable for transactional BPs.
Knowledge
Explicit
Procedures
(speed,
quantity,
control)
Procedural
BPs
(purchaseto-pay BP)

Tacit

Business
Processes
Casehandling
BPs
(customerfacing BP)

Practices
(experiential
tacit)
(quality,
agility)
Practiceoriented BPs
(creative &
emergent BPs)

Figure 1. The knowledge dimension of BPs

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

On the other hand, in the practice-oriented

BPs, people develop new experiential knowledge
while participating in collaborative tasks and
problem solving activities. The explicit
knowledge comes in the form of policies that are
used to help the participants to stay within the
normative boundaries of their organisation as
well as the wider legislative environment. In the
case of practice-oriented BP the main emphasis
is placed on process effectiveness, quality and
creative solutions designed to meet customer
needs. Finally, the case-handling BPs also
combine procedures and practices. Here, the
experiential knowledge comprises the practices
people develop while handling various nonstandard cases of otherwise predefined BPs.
It is important to note that the initial focus of
BPM was on procedural BPs. However, in very
recent times, while looking for opportunities for
competitive differentiation, organisations are
now starting to shift their focus from more-orless standard transactional BPs to the other types
of BPs that cannot be easily replicated, due to the
knowledge and experience of people involved.

4.3. Linking decisions and information

The second theoretical framework used in
this research has been recently introduced by
Davenport [15], based on a very comprehensive
study of various types of complex decisions in
26 organisations. The main objective of that
study was to investigate how organisations
ensure that decisions are made on the basis of the
best possible information and that the right
information is gathered and analysed to support
decision processes. The study has resulted in a
theoretical framework that identifies three
different types of information environments,
each characterised by a different type of
relationship between information and decisions:
Loosely-coupled information environments
The required information is made broadly
accessible to analysts and decision makers, along
with the tools to analyse it. As this information is
intended to inform a wide range of possible
decisions, its use is based on individual initiative
and not predetermined by any procedures or
models. This is a typical approach used by
todays BI systems regardless of the decision
support needs. However, Davenport argues that
in this context new approaches are required to
provide much more than simply make the
required information available. But at the same
time, more structure or automation may not be
appropriate or necessary.

Structured human-decision environments

In these environments decisions are still
made by human professionals, but specific
efforts have been made to improve decision
making processes or contexts by determining the
specific information and other process resources
needed to make better decisions faster [15].
Compared to the loosely coupled ones, these
environments have a narrower focus on
particular decisions. They are designed to
support decision making by, for example
providing additional structure or necessary tools
around decision processes. Obviously this
approach is not suitable for all types of decisions
and should focus only on those that are critical,
due to the cost and complexity involved.
Automated decision environments
These environments include decision rules
and algorithms embedded in the automated
business processes. Decision making is delegated
to the rule-engines while humans take care of
exception handling. The main objective is to
make the process fully automated and therefore
very efficient. This only works with decisions
that are well structured and reducible to a set of
rules. This also means that all information needs
are determined in advance so that each decision
could be easily automated.
Davenport argues that the above three
environments should be used to guide any
organisational
implementation
of
BI
applications. More precisely, in order to select
the right tools for a particular type of
environment, it is necessary to focus on critical
decisions that need to be made but also to fully
understand the relationship between these
decisions and information required.
Compared to Davenport's framework for
linking decision and information, this paper goes
one step further and aims to link processes and
types of decisions made in the context of these
processes and then, via these decisions, link
processes with information needs. We argue that
this particular link provides a starting point for
further consideration of BPM and BI integration.

5. BPM and BI integration framework

This section describes a theoretical
framework that has been used to guide our
exploratory research of non-technical aspects of
BI and BPM integration, based on the above
described theoretical foundations It is also
informed by a very comprehensive literature
review and founded in the previous BI and BPM
case studies conducted by the author.

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

First of all, it is important to point out that the

problem of BPM and BI integration could be
investigated in the context of different types of
BPs and across different organisational levels.
This paper focuses on customer-facing BPs as
they are much more complex and have a greater
potential for competitive differentiation than
transactional processes. In terms of their
knowledge intensity, these BPs range all the way
from procedural on one end of the spectrum, to
practice-oriented on the other.
Taking a holistic approach, we posit that
different types of integration of information,
decision and BPs require different type of BP
improvement methodologies as well as different
processes and strategies for knowledge sharing,
and transfer. They, in turn, also determine the
most suitable training methods for BI/BPM
practitioners in this context.
The main research contribution of the
proposed framework is that it considers the
integration problem along the BP knowledge
continuum, linking information and decision
with three different types of processes, thus
extending Davenports framework with the
process and knowledge components. The key
observation is that decisions are always made in
the context of a BP, and by considering the
knowledge dimension of this BP, it is possible to
determine the types of decisions and decisioninformation links. In other words, it is possible to
establish various patterns of relationships
between processes and decisions, that, when
combined with Davenport's framework, enables
us to link processes and information.
Furthermore, when each decision is investigated
in terms of data and decision latency, it is also
possible to determine the type of BI support for a
particular type of BP. For example, some
customer-facing processes may require a
structured human-decision environment with
ready-time or even real-time BI support,
while others may require loosely coupled
information environments and read-only BI
support in the form of reports.
It is important to point out that the proposed
framework has been used to guide our
exploratory case study research (described in the
following section) and as such, it is constantly
evolving. Following the recommendations made
by Roseman and Vessay [10], an applicability
check had been performed with the BI
practitioners to confirm the relevance of the
indentified problem and of the initial theoretical
framework, before it was used in the case
organizations.

The following analysis describes the

framework including the initial set of nontechnical challenges for three different types of
BPs. These challenges were derived from the
relevant literature and previous case studies and,
as such, represent our initial understanding of
these processes in terms of decisions types,
information needs and knowledge required
before the case studies were conducted.
Procedural BPs
- Decision types: By definition, procedural
BPs involve highly structured decisions with
predefined inputs and outcomes. In fact, the
existence of structured decisions is the main
reason why it is possible to model these
processes in advance, with deterministic
outcomes. Note that in some cases, these
decisions could be fully automated, while in the
others, human expertise is required to make a
selection among the possible outcomes.
- Process-decision-information link: When
human expertise could be reduced to a set of
rules, then a fully automated decision
environment is highly appropriate. While this is
already made possible by workflow technology,
the added value of combining it with BI, enables
creation of a much more comprehensive
customer profile, to the extent that is not
currently possible by BPM systems alone.
However, when human expertise is required than
the structured human-decision approach is best
suited to support the data gathering and analysis
phases of decision making (i.e. preparatory
phases) while the fully automated decision
approach is then suitable for decision execution.
- Non-technical challenges of BI and BPM
integration: One of the key challenges is
certainly a decision-centered BP improvement
methodology. This is very important, having in
mind that currently available methodologies
predominantly focus on control flows and
models rather than decisions made. For
organisations using the rule-based engines to
automate decision making, ongoing management
of decision rules including consistency and
completeness of the rule-base also involve nontechnical challenges such as a systematic
approach to rule modeling and verification as
well as its governance. Lessons from KM
confirm that these processes require involvement
of people with domain knowledge. In addition to
giving tools to domain experts so they could
model their own exceptions, as with any
knowledge management system it is also
important provide initiatives for continuous
development of new rules.

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

Case-handing BPs
- Decision types: By definition, these
processes involve semi-structured decisions and
situational decision making. While in some
cases, decisions involve predefined and
deterministic outcomes, the challenge lies with
the atypical cases where outcomes or even the
processes to reach them, may not be known. This
is why they are considered on the case-to-case
basis with a decision maker having to interpret a
particular situation and determine situationspecific information requirements to make a
decision accordingly. While in the case of
procedural processes, these atypical cases are
treated as exceptions, in the case of casehandling BPs, situational decision make these
processes knowledge-intensive.
Process-decision-information
link:
Irrespectively of the type of the case (typical or
atypical), the structured human-decision
approach is best suited to support the data
gathering and analysis phases of decision making
(i.e. preparatory phases). After a decision is
made by the human expert, then typical cases
will require fully automated decision approach,
while atypical cases may require both structured
human-decision approach and/or fully automated
approach. On the other hand, loosely-coupled
information environments, while providing a
customer-facing employees with more flexibility
to explore information resources in an ad-hoc
way, are very likely to impact on process
performance and prolong a decision making time
(i.e. data latency).
- Non-technical challenges of BI and BPM
integration: Again, as in the case of procedural
processes, design and implementation of an
ongoing BP improvement methodology is
probably the biggest challenge here. We argue
that such a methodology should consists of a set
of human-centered knowledge processes that
need to be enabled and facilitated to ensure
knowledge co-creation and sharing among
employees and ultimately, co-evolution of
practices for handling new cases with technical
solutions designed to support these practices.
Practice-oriented BPs
- Decision types: By definition, these
processes involve unstructured decisions and
situational decision making processes where the
decision parameters as well as its outcomes are
not known in advance. This type of decisions is
typically found within emergent BPs, such as for
example, various design processes.
- Process-decision-information link: While a
loosely-coupled
information
environment

appears to be most suitable for this type of

decisions, it is important to point out that these
processes are often highly collaborative in
nature. Consequently, the loosely coupled
environment should be extended to support
collaborative decision processes.
- Non-technical challenges of BI and BPM
integration: If these processes are supported by
loosely coupled BI solutions, any methodology
for improvement of these processes needs to
ensure that practices co-evolve with technical
solutions. Even more, the chosen methodology
also needs to evolve with the accumulated
experiential knowledge. Thus, the methodology
itself becomes a knowledge-intensive, practiceoriented BP at the meta level. As already
pointed out, BP improvement methodologies for
knowledge-intensive processes are one of many
unexplored challenges of BPM [17].
The above identified types of processdecision-information links enable us to assess
suitability of different BI solutions and
determine requirements for different type of
information environments.
This is very
important as loosely-coupled information
environments are still the most widely used type
of BI [15].

6. Research method and findings

The above described framework has been
used in a series of exploratory case studies,
designed to identify and analyse the BPM, BI
and KM related issues across all four
components of the holistic BPM model in the
context of customer-facing knowledge-intensive
BPs in service industries. The main objective is
to identify patterns of non-technical integration,
as technical patterns are already known.
In line with the exploratory nature of this
research, a case study method that involved an
interpretative approach was adopted to capture
the corresponding contextual richness and
complexity [16]. The case organisations that
have been involved so far come from financial,
insurance and telecommunication industries.
They have all reached a higher level of BI
maturity and are currently using advanced BI
applications in the context of customer analytics.
When making the decision about suitable case
organisations, we decided to focus on those with
advanced BI applications used in the context of
customer-facing BPs, rather than start from those
currently focusing on BPM, simply because
BPM support systems may or may not include BI
tools.

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

Table 1. A holistic framework for BI and BPM integration

Procedural BPs

Case-handling
BPs

Practice-oriented BPs

Decision
Type
Decision information
link
Strategy
(BI/BPM supported)

Highly structured

Semi-structured

Unstructured

Automated decision
.environment
BP efficiency
across segments

Automated and
structured decision env
Segment specific
Value services

Loosely coupled decision

environment
unique products and services

Ongoing improvement
of BI-supported BPs
Integrated
BPM/BI support
BI/BPM training
Focus

Segment-driven BP
improvement
Segment driven decision
and BP automation
traditional skilledbased

Decision-centered
knowledge processes
Situated decision
support
Knowledge sharing
strategies

Collaborative knowledge
sharing and co-creation
Agile process support

The suitable case study organisations were

initially identified and recruited through the links
established with the help of Teradata University
Network. This is the largest community of
BI/DW industry partners, including vendors and
their customers, as well as academics (faculty
staff) and their students [17].
In order to capture the accurate reflection of
the issues under investigation in this context,
semi-structured interviews have been conducted
with the stakeholders involved in the target BPs
including customer-facing employees as well as
BI managers and, where existed, people in
charge of these processes (process managers, BP
owner). The questions asked were semistructured but retrospective in nature aiming to
investigate different stages of BI/BPM
integration the case organizations went through
as they matured in terms of technology and their
approach to customer-facing services.
In addition, the current technologies used to
create
information
environments
were
investigated with the help of domain experts in
the context of different BP scenarios, both
standard and case-based. Data collected from
different sources was compared and triangulated
in order to identify the main characteristics of
information environments and analyse them
from the KM, BI and BPM perspectives, taking a
holistic approach.
It is important to point out that so far, not a
single organisation has been found that has fully
integrated operational BI and BPM across all
four components. Therefore, the framework,
depicted by Table 1 represents a synthesis of
issues and patterns that are expected to evolve
even further, helping organizations to identify
their next step.

Action learning/reflective
practice

To illustrate the approach, this paper reports on

a case study completed in a large financial
institution located in Australia. This organisation
was chosen based on their mature stage of BI
implementation in the context of their customerfacing BPs, for which they have won several BI
industry awards. The highlighted area of Table 1
represents the integration patterns observed in this
organization, with the solid arrows indicating the
progress of their BI/BPM integration journey, from
procedural to case-handling BPs as well as from
technical level to non-technical integration issues.
Table 1 also depicts that the case organization has
recognized the need for a new type of
improvement methodology for their BI-supported
BPs, but are yet to find and implement one.
Based on data collected and analysed in this
case study, this research confirmed that the
introduction of operational BI, supported by an
enterprise-wide data warehouse, has enabled this
organisation to evolve its information environment
as well as its competitive strategy, in relation to its
customer-facing processes. For example, their
initial focus was on implementation of an
automated
decision
environment.
This
environment included a very sophisticated BI
analytics tool, used for identification of different
categories of their customers. Then a rule-based
application was used to automate pre-defined
decisions and their execution. Therefore, the initial
implementation of the automated information
environment has enabled this organisation to
compete on the basis of the procedural BP, with
different process instances offered to different
types of customers. Compared to the traditional
workflow-based BPM solutions that have been
widely used by the financial industry over more
than a decade, this type of BI and BPM integration

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

in the context of procedural BPs has created new

opportunities for competitive differentiation, not
possible if workflows are implemented alone. This
observation confirms the point made by Watson
that the importance of BI technology for
competing in the market place is greater for high
volume-operations [18].
However, as similar advanced technical
solutions are now being implemented across the
whole industry consequently, the information
environment of this company continues to evolve
from the automated decision to a structured
human-decision environment, even for the
standard processes. They are now aiming to
inject more human knowledge and expertise into
their customer-facing BPs. Employees are already
in a position to combine their own understanding
of customer-needs obtained through personal
interaction with them. Therefore, this particular
pattern of BI and BPM integration at the technical
level is already well known among the leaders in
BI, in particular those in the area of Active
enterprise intelligence and customer analytics.
In terms of Davenports information
environments, this organisation is gradually
moving from the fully automated to the structured
human-decision environment. Therefore, from
the knowledge and BPM perspectives, this
organisation is moving along the knowledge
continuum from the procedural to case-handling
processes (value-adding services). However, this
move is not driven by exceptions or efficiency but
an opportunity to add-value to their processes. This
change is very much caused by their need to create
new opportunities for competitive differentiation in
a fiercely competitive industry where they cannot
compete on the basis of their products alone.
Therefore, the increased focus on the structured
human-decision environment has enabled them to
compete on the basis of their customer-facing
processes with value-add provided by their
knowledgeable employees. However, it is also
important to point out that not all procedural BP
could be and should be turned into case-handling
BPs. This decision is largely based on the
customers current value and their future potential
to bring value. This case study also confirmed that
this organisation is interested to move even further
along the knowledge continuum, even towards
practice-oriented processes. However, they also
confirmed that possible technical solutions that
would enable flexible implementation of a loosely
coupled information environment have not reached
the required maturity.

While the need for BI and BPM integration at

the strategy level was not initially considered when
this organisation started to use their customer
analytics solutions, a possibility to add more value
to their processes has gradually extended their
initial BI strategy to take an advantage of BPMrelated value-add and process thinking, even
though they are not using the term BPM. They
are now competing on the basis of value-add
services, that are in essence processes.
The move towards strategy level integration
was also evident in very recent times when this
case organisation faced the need to integrate their,
up-to-now,
independent
functional
data
warehouses. This is typically considered to be a BI
problem, related to enterprise-level data
integration. However, this organisation is now
starting to consider cross-functional BPs, in order
to better understand a context for the enterprisewide data integration and thus, determine how the
integrated data may be used.
The elements of BPM have also been
observed in relation to the people component, in
particular training of customer-facing employees.
So far the main focus of their training has been
on BI tools. However, they have already
recognized the need to adopt the process view to
analyse their processes. But, instead of using the
control-flow-based models and the associated
methodologies as it is typically done in BPM,
they aim to focus on decisions made within these
processes. These decisions are the touch-points
where they can create value. They have also
implemented a number of human-centered
knowledge sharing strategies among customerfacing employees. They are now interested to
explore opportunities created by collaborative
technologies including wiki-based solutions to
better facilitate their knowledge sharing.
Looking from the BPM perspective, this
example confirms the point made by Davenport
[19] that BPM requires new methods for
continuous improvement of decision-centered
BPs. Thanks to BI solutions, these BPs are now
becoming more knowledge intensive rather than
highly routine, enabling companies to compete
on analytics [20] but in the context of their
processes.
Finally, this case also confirmed the previous
point that organisations do lack systematic
methodologies for BP improvement of decisionintensive processes supported by BI. However,
further data collection and analysis is required in
order to further investigate this problem.

Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010

7. Conclusions and future work

While the issue of BPM and BI integration is
becoming more and more important, especially
with the very recent raise of operational BI,
current integration efforts remain mostly at the
level of technology. In fact, the technical
integration is no longer considered to be an
issue. As technical solutions are now widely
available, the focus is shifting towards nontechnical issues as the next frontier of BI/BPM
integration.
This paper adopts a holistic BPM view to
investigate patterns of integration across
strategy, processes, people and technology
components. By combining the outcomes of
ongoing multi-site exploratory case studies, this
research aims to create an evolving map of
integration issues and patterns to guide
organisations in their integration efforts, while
making research contribution to both BPM and
operational BI fields. Our current and future
work involves more exploratory case studies in
different service organisations in the context of
their customer-facing knowledge intensive
processes, in particular practice-oriented
processes and opportunities for BI applications
in this context.

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