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Measuring the performance of business processes has become a central issue in both academia and business, since organizations are challenged to achieve effective and efficient results. Applying performance measurement models to this purpose ensures alignment with a business strategy, which implies that the choice of performance indicators is organization-dependent. Nonetheless, such measurement models generally suffer from a lack of guidance regarding the performance indicators that exist and how they can be concretized in practice. To fill this gap, we conducted a structured literature review to find patterns or trends in the research on business process performance measurement. The study also documents an extended list of 140 process-related performance indicators in a systematic manner by further categorizing them into 11 performance perspectives in order to gain a holistic view. Managers and scholars can consult the provided list to choose the indicators that are of interest to them, considering each perspective. The structured literature review concludes with avenues for further research.

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Purpose Well-founded measurements are of high value because a better connection between business process management (BPM) and maturity models (MMs) improves an organization’s performance. Although MMs are appropriate tools for organizations to manage their business processes and, therefore, enjoy popularity, most of these models suffer from their foundation, validation and/or capability coverage. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by providing metrics to measure and manage business processes. Design/methodology/approach A high-standard and multistaged procedure was followed to systematically develop and validate the measurement instrument involving international academics and practitioners across four continents. Different rounds were used for item identification, item selection, item revision, instrument preparation (pretest and pilot) and instrument application using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Findings The instrument measures 4 main capability areas, 13 subareas and 62 items. The work explains how to conduct BPM assessments in a more theoretically sound way and reports on the instrument’s development to show high levels of construct validity, content validity and reliability. Research limitations/implications The author provides a rigorous and more evidence-based instrument, facilitating the BPM discipline’s need of empirical research. Practical implications The author proposes parameters to configure the instrument. Originality/value Serving as a reference framework, the instrument strengthens BPM’s empirical and theoretical foundations. Since the instrument is free for scholars and practitioners, the author illustrates the research streams and business situations in which the instrument can be applied (in full or in part). This paper paves the way for transforming the instrument into an optimization MM with advice or improvement paths, bridging the gap between theory and practice.

We built and tested a decision tool that organisations can use to properly select one business process maturity model (BPMM) out of many maturity models. This prototype consists of a novel questionnaire with decision criteria for BPMM selection, linked to a unique data set of 69 BPMMs. 14 criteria were defined by an international Delphi study, and weighed by the Analytical Hierarchy Process. Case studies showed (non-)profit and academic applications. Our purpose was to describe criteria enabling an informed BPMM choice (conform to decision-making theories, instead of ad hoc). We also propose a design process for building BPMM decision tools.

Organizations strive to develop a variety of capabilities to improve and measure business processes. Researchers have used various maturity models to investigate the development of a business process orientation (BPO), and most have argued that such development comes in stages. Current literature underestimates the interrelationships between BPO capabilities and fails to consider multidimensional or non-linear paths to maturity. To refine the features of maturity models, we rely on configuration theory to uncover different archetypes for BPO development and quantitatively evaluate them by examining performance differences among archetypes based on a large-scale international dataset. The resulting empirical taxonomy with seven BPO archetypes establishes important performance differences between organizations at a similar maturity level. Besides strengthening the theoretical foundations of BPO and making maturity assessments more multifaceted, our results help organizations focus their managerial efforts by enabling comparison with peers in the same archetype and showing various paths for BPO improvement.

Emerging technologies have capabilities to reshape business process management (BPM) from its traditional version to a more explorative variant. However, to exploit the full benefits of new IT, it is essential to reveal BPM’s research potential and to detect recent trends in practice. Therefore, this work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) with 231 recent academic articles (from 2014 until May 2019) that integrate BPM with digital innovations (DI). We position those articles against seven future BPM-DI trends that were inductively derived from an expert panel. By complementing the expected trends in practice with a state-of-the-art literature review, we are able to derive covered and uncovered themes in order to help bridge a rigor-relevance gap. The major technological impacts within the BPM field seem to focus on value creation, customer engagement and managing human-centric and knowledge-intensive business processes. Finally, our findings are categorized into specific calls for research and for action to let scholars and organizations better prepare for future digital needs.

The business process management (BPM) discipline is starting to recognize the importance of contextawareness. In spite of this recognition, few studies investigate the effect of diverse contextual factors on BPM. To fill this gap, the study statistically analyzes the effect of organization size and sector, as specific contextual factors, on the adoption of BPM. The latter is measured by means of BPM capabilities for which data was collected from 2309 employees in 72 organizations. The study relies on the Contingency Theory by hypothesizing that, in practice, organizations adopt BPM by taking into account factors that fit an organization's context. Surprisingly, the results do not show a dependency between BPM adoption and organization size, suggesting that BPM adoption levels can equally be achieved by large or small organizations. In contrast, a dependency is found for organization sector (partly based on market velocity), suggesting different BPM adoption practices and/or speed in different sectors.