# Business Process Digitalization Tracking and Monitoring: An Heuristic Software-Based Approach

Selver Softic, Daniel Resanovic, Egon Lüftenegger

► To cite this version:

Selver Softic, Daniel Resanovic, Egon Lüftenegger. Business Process Digitalization Tracking and Monitoring: An Heuristic Software-Based Approach. IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS), Sep 2022, Gyeongju, South Korea. pp.165-170, 10.1007/978-3-031-16411-8_21. hal-04768965

HAL Id: hal-04768965

https://inria.hal.science/hal-04768965v1

Submitted on 6 Nov 2024

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

ifip

International Federation for Information Processing

This document is the original author manuscript of a paper submitted to an IFIP
conference proceedings or other IFIP publication by Springer Nature. As such, there
may be some differences in the official published version of the paper. Such
differences, if any, are usually due to reformatting during preparation for publication or
minor corrections made by the author(s) during final proofreading of the publication
manuscript.
# Business Process Digitalization Tracking and Monitoring: An Heuristic Software-Based Approach

Selver Softic¹[0000-0003-2949-8239], Daniel Resanovic¹, and Egon Lüftenegger²[0000-0003-0998-58144]

¹ CAMPUS 02 University of Applied Sciences, Austria
selver.softic@campus02.at, daniel.resanovic@campus02.at

² Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria
egon.lueftenegger@fh-salzburg.ac.at

**Abstract.** In this paper, we introduce a software-based heuristic approach for scoring the grade of digitalization for business processes modeled in BPMN: The DigiTrack tool. Our tool enables the measurement of the digitalization maturity of a business process by calculating scores for each task. This new method is shown though a case study with a simplified check in process at airport.

**Keywords:** Heuristic Model · Digitalization · BPMN.

## 1 Motivation and Introduction

The importance of digitization has just become apparent in the current COVID crisis. Conventional business models of companies were suddenly difficult or even impossible to implement in many industries - the internal organization also had to react flexibly. Companies that successfully master the digital transformation of business processes are twice as successful as laggards. This shows that companies without digital business models have lost customers and were hit harder by the crisis [1].

The world we live in is changing faster than ever. Some technologies and trends are already outdated before they can establish themselves on the market. Digitization in particular has further strengthened this trend - the circulation speed in our economy and in social coexistence has increased dramatically. With all the adjustment needs associated with the digital transformation, the opportunities and potential of new technologies are enormous. At the same time, customers are putting more pressure on companies to push ahead with digitalization. Customers already expect mature digital offers from companies.

Therefore there is a gap for approaches to track and monitor the digitalization level of companies down to the business process level.
## 2 Related Work

In this section we will elaborate some important definition, standards, aspects and works that help us address the problem of tracking the level of digitalization in the approach we are proposing in this paper.

### 2.1 Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation

Digitization involves converting information from a physical format (analogue) to a digital one. This very often leads to digitization being perceived as digitalization, which results in a false perception of one's own degree of digitalization.

In digitalization, digitization is used to improve business processes. In its simplest form, this is a digital image of the analog processes. However, that should not be the ultimate goal.

Finally, the digital transformation is the transformation of business activities, processes, products and models in order to fully exploit the opportunities of digital technologies (change management). Digital transformation is more about people than digital technology.

### 2.2 Business Process Modeling

The overall goal of Business Process Modeling is to establish a common perspective and understanding for a business process within an enterprise between the relevant stakeholders involved. Hereby, the most common graphical representation such as flowchart [2] or similar serves as base to show the process steps and workflows. This approach is widely used to recognize and prevent potential weaknesses and implement improvements in companies processes as well as to offer a good base for comprehensive understanding of a process in general.

### 2.3 BPMN

The BPMN 2.0³ is a new standard for business process specification developed by a variety of Business Process Modeling (BPM) tool vendors. This standard is one of the most important forms of representing business process models, offering clear and simple semantics to describe the business process of a business [3, 4]. This language was developed with the intention of modeling typical business modeling activities [5, 6].

### 2.4 BPM Lifecycle

BPM lifecycle described in [7] represents different phases of the process beginning by analysis and ending by process monitoring and controlling and process discovery. Our usage scenario in this lifecycle is placed in process monitoring part.

<footnote n="3">³ https://www.omg.org/bpmn/</footnote>
# 3 Tracking Digitalization Level in a Business Process

Tracking and measuring business processes have been implemented in [8, 9]. However, these approaches do not cover digitalization maturity approaches.

As possible heuristic approach to track the digitalization in business processes we defined a set of metrics and maturity levels that will be assigned to the BPMN models of these processes.

## 3.1 Metrics and Maturity Levels

The metrics we are using to calculate the digitalization level score (DLS) expressed in percent and reflected through maturity levels: explorer, beginner, advanced, expert; considers three main aspects:

- Digital Tool Existence (DTE) - whether the task is operated manually or with tool (either 0 or 1)

- Digital Tool Integration Level (DTIL) - how far is the digitization tool integrated for specific task regarding preceding and ascending tasks, with possible values: 1 (no integration) - 5 (full integration)

- Data Automation Grade (DAG) - telling us how far the data processing for current task is automated, as scale with possible values: 1 (no automation/manual), 5 (fully automated data processing)

All the aspects are related into following formula

$$DLS = (DTE * (DTIL + DAG)/10) * 100 \quad (1)$$

In order to distinguish the maturity level of the digitalization for a certain BPMN modeled process we also defined intervals for overall DLS.

Overall DLS of a Process in a BPMN diagram is calculated average of task-wise DLS.

- 0% - 25% - Explorer

- 26% - 50% - Beginner

- 51% - 75% - Advanced

- 76% - 100% - Expert

## 3.2 Application Use Case

As use case we introduce an experimental desktop tool called DigiTrack developed by our institution(s) which allows us to manage, search and tag the BPMN modeled processes. Application based approach has been also approved in other phases of Business-Process Lifecycle as well e.g. by analysis and redesign [10].

**Operating BPMN files** At the current state of implementation the DigiTrack tool allows import of an BPMN file (accepted format: *.bpmn) into local repository (see figure 1), search for processes using name of processes, name of tasks and wildcards and loading into main view for labeling the process steps with task-wise DLS scores.
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. BPMN process repository.</figcaption></figure>

**Entering DLS for Process Tasks** After the project is loaded from repository the tool allows entering and editing the DLS over separate user interface. Currently the calculation of DLS happens manually and only the final score is entered. In the future we will support entering the metrics over the same window. Additionally the name of the tool can be specified. This process is depicted in figure 2 where a calculated value for DLS expressed in percent is entered for the task "Check-in at Self Service Counter" in the Airport Boarding process.

**Presenting Digitalisation Level Score** Depending what is the average DLS value and to which maturity interval it belongs the value is depicted as chart in red (Explorer),yellow (Beginner),orange or green (Expert) color (see figure 3). This chart is placed in the lower left corner of the DigiTrack application.

# 4 Discussion and Outlook

Within this paper we introduced a small use case based upon an application called DigiTrack and a heuristic approach including corresponding metrics such as Digital Tool Existence (DTE), Digital Tool Integration Level (DTIL) and Data Automation Grade (DAG) for calculating the digitalization level score (DLS) task-wise in a BPMN presentation of a business process. We also presented
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2. Entering calculated DLS for a single task.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. Average DLS over all tasks in process with maturity level coloring.</figcaption></figure>
how calculated average DLS is assigned to the one of four digital maturity levels we defined. First results are showing the potential on how simple ideas can allow us to rise the awareness of digitalization at process and task level in an very universal manner. As next steps in the future we are planning to implement the selection of calculation metrics within the user interface and further analytic charts for better monitoring. We will also integrate and adapt already existing digital maturity levels to our approach to check whether they can offer better overview and tracking of digitalization. Also as one of the potential application scenarios of our heuristic approach along with DigiTrack tool would be testing different digitalization strategies with different tools.

## References

1. Holger, S.: So verändert sich die digitale wirtschaft durch corona. Handelsblatt. 15/05/2020 (2020)

2. Wynn, D.C., Clarkson, P.J.: Process models in design and development. Research in Engineering Design 29(2) (Apr 2018) 161–202

3. Allweyer, T.: BPMN 2.0: Introduction to the Standard for Business Process Modeling. Books on Demand (2009)

4. Zor, S., Schumm, D., Leymann, F.: A proposal of bpmn extensions for the manufacturing domain. In: Proceedings of the 44th CIRP International Conference on Manufacturing Systems. (2011)

5. Recker, J., Indulska, M., Rosemann, M., Green, P.: How good is bpmn really? insights from theory and practice. Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2006 (01 2006)

6. Muehlen, M.z., Recker, J.: How much language is enough? theoretical and practical use of the business process modeling notation. In Bellahsène, Z., Léonard, M., eds.: Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer Berlin Heidelberg (2008) 465–479

7. Dumas, M., Rosa, M.L., Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A.: Fundamentals of Business Process Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (2018)

8. Lüftenegger, E., Softic, S., Hatzl, S., Pergler, E.: A management tool for business process performance tracking in smart production. In Dachselt, R., Weber, G., eds.: Mensch und Computer 2018 - Workshopband, Bonn, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (2018)

9. Softic, S., Lüftenegger, E., Turcin, I. In: Tracking and Analyzing Processes in Smart Production. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2020) 37–50

10. Lüftenegger, E., Softic, S.: Sentipromo: A sentiment analysis-enabled social business process modeling tool. Business Process Management Workshops. BPM 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Springer, Cham (2020)