Process-oriented Administration of Enterprise Systems

[Print-friendly version]

Overview

This project aims to increase the efficiency of administering complex system landscapes through a process-oriented approach. Though Enterprise Systems are becoming the core business operating system, their current administration is still focussing on technical issues and does not take process engineering approaches into account. Application Hosting Centres, Application Service Provision and Business Service Provision offer a range of alternative solutions for the delivery of ES-related services. The expected outcomes of this project are reference solutions for a Balanced Scorecard and selected reference process models for ES Service Delivery. This research is influenced by existing IT Service Delivery Frameworks such as ITIL. Further input will be consolidated through regular focus group meetings, a Delphi Study and selected case studies. These results will enable companies to reuse knowledge about system administration and serve as a starting point for the identification of possible workflows within th is domain.

The project is funded as an ARC SPIRT project from 1 January 2002 – 31 December 2003. The industry partner is Realtech Australasia.

Project details

Motivation

Enterprise Systems (ES) can be defined as customizable, standard application software which includes integrated business solutions for the core processes and the main administrative functions of an enterprise. In order to configure and use ES efficiently, components like implementation tools (procedure models, reference information models, customizing guidelines, project management software), workflow functionality, tools for the development of add-on modules and system administration, and office suites are usually embedded.

Due to the important role of Enterprise Systems an efficient administration of these systems becomes a necessity not only from an IT viewpoint, but for the entire business performance. However, due to their comprehensive approach, the administration of Enterprise Systems is problematic in terms of being costly and complex. This project seeks to apply concepts that are successfully used for the application areas to system administration. It provides trough a collaboration between Realtech and the Centre for Information Technology Innovation a solution to a common problem. The project can be classified as applied research which uses existing modelling frameworks and techniques in order to develop a specific application as the major outcome, a process oriented system for Enterprise Systems administration.

Significance and Innovation

This project aims to increase the efficiency of administering Enterprise Systems through a process-oriented approach. In contrast to the process-oriented management of the business areas, the current administration of Enterprise Systems is still focused on technical issues. This is contradictory to the general approach of Enterprise Systems, which are aiming to stress an efficient process orientation. Consequently, so far the concepts for the management of business processes are not adapted for the system administration processes. This will be the core innovation of this project.

Progress in the area of administering Enterprise Systems is of potential interest for all companies using or planning to use Enterprise Systems. As investments in Enterprise Systems consumed the biggest part of the IT budget in most companies, significant monetary benefits can be expected. The implementation of further modules and the current management of the already implemented Enterprise Systems’ components can be streamlined. Moreover, the expected outcomes of this project will be of benefit for the implementation and the use of system administration software. It is planned to design a reference procedure model for the implementation of a selected administration tool and to develop reference process models for typical processes of Enterprise System administration. The expected outcomes of this project in detail are:

A)  Process-oriented System Implementation (Buildtime)

• Accelerated implementation of administration tools for Enterprise Systems
  The availability of a clearly described and easy to understand procedure model will guide the implementation team through the necessary configuration tasks. The procedure model will be depicted as a process model, which specifies the sequence of mandatory and optional activities, responsibilities, related documents and further forms of knowledge, required input and output data. The procedure model will refer to the other outcome of this project, models describing typical administration processes. Thus, the implementation team will be able to analyse the system functionality from a process oriented point of view. Configuration decisions can be made based on these process models.
• Improved project management during the system implementation
  Process models specifying the implementation tasks can be easily adapted for the purposes of project management. Existing interfaces between modelling and project management tools allow the efficient and consistent management of the implementation project. Milestones and resources can be added. Open tasks and decisions as well as unsolved problems can be documented in a transparent way. Transparency and the cost-effective opportunity for project management will increase the overall quality of the implementation process measured in performance indicators like accordance to users’ requirements, implementation time and costs.

B)  Process-oriented System Use (Runtime)

• Increased process transparency and simplified user management
  One outcome of this project will be various process models describing administration processes like escalation procedures or helpdesk functionality. These process models will be extended with an reference model of the organisation that includes the typical roles in system administration like database expert, reporting expert, backup expert, printing expert, etc. These roles will be added to the process models showing predefined organisational solutions for the administration processes. This will also allow to define responsibilities independent from specific people (which is currently not possible in administration tools).

• Workflow-based administration processes
  Selected processes within system administration will be suited to be established as workflows, i.e. they will be executed automatically including the identification of the employee in charge for specified activities. This will further accelerate the administration processes and streamline escalation procedures.

• Knowledge database and improvements regarding assessing administration staff
  Over time, a monitoring and controlling facility can consolidate typical process paths. This will allow building up a knowledge database including information like the average processing time or typical bottlenecks. Furthermore, the knowledge profiles of the involved employees in system administration can be maintained. This will support the identification of staff members who are best suited for a certain task (as they performed this type of tasks most often and/or in the shortest time).

The adoption of established process management approaches in the area of system administration is the focus and innovation of the proposed project. Currently, sound theoretical approaches for a process-oriented administration of Enterprise Systems are not available. This project wants to contribute in this area. The process of building up such a theoretical contribution will be based on a generalisation of the project outcomes across multiple organisations. Besides the contribution to the area of Enterprise Systems administration, this project will also target the area of reference modelling, i.e. general and reusable process models. It can be expected, that the project findings will also include a range of further developments of currently used reference modelling techniques in order to increase their transparency and customisability. Thus, the project also includes a focus on method engineering. Furthermore, it explores with Enterprise Systems administration a new domain for reference modelling.

Research Questions
The central research question for this project is:

How can software for the administration of Enterprise Systems be improved using process management approaches?

This project has got the following more detailed research questions in mind:

• Can the process of implementing tools for the administration of Enterprise systems be described on a generic level, i.e. is it possible to develop a reference procedure model for the system implementation?
• Can the management of implementation projects for administration systems be improved?
• How can knowledge about the implementation of administration systems be captured and reused?
• How can the design of configurable reference models improve the performance of system administration?
• How can these reference process models contribute to a better user management in this context?
• Is it possible to identify and implement workflows in the area of Enterprise Systems administration?
• How can a continuous monitoring and controlling of system administration processes be established and further increase the performance of system administration?
• How can the possible benefits of a process-oriented procedure model for the system implementation and the existence of reference process models describing the system functionality be measured?

Timetable
The project has a duration of two years and is organised in four main project phases.

Phase 1 includes a comprehensive literature review (outcome: state of the art regarding the analysed domains), two case studies with selected customers from Realtech in order to develop an understanding for the critical issues in implementing and managing administration systems, and the selection of appropriate process modelling techniques and tools, which will be used within this project.

Phase 2 focuses on the development of a procedure model for the implementation of realTech’s administration tool theGuard. A first solution (Procedure Model I) will be based on available literature, project and product documentations. This model will be documented in the selected process modelling technique and extended with organisational information. Within two case studies the quality of this procedure model will be tested. The experiences from these case studies will be input for a modified version of the procedure model (Procedure Model II).

Phase 3 deals with the development of the reference models for selected processes in the domain of Enterprise Systems administration. A first solution will be developed based on available literature and the experiences of the involved researchers and project partners. These models will be tested in two case studies with Realtech’s customers. The results out of these case studies will lead to modifications and extensions of the developed reference processes.

The final and fourth phase will include the implementation of the project results. On the one side, a wizard will be designed and implemented that guides along a model-based procedure model through all tasks involved with the implementation of the administration system. The wizard will refer to an implementation guide in XML. On the other hand, the reference process models will be implemented in a tool that supports an easy access to these models. These models will include organisational data. Pointers from the procedure model will refer to these models.

Research team

Please contact Michael Rosemann for any enquiries regarding this project.

Dr Michael Rosemann (CI)
Professor - Centre for Information Technology Innovation (CITI)
Queensland University of Technology
level 5, 126 Margaret St
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia
Phone:  +61 7 3864 9473
Fax: +61 7 3864 9390
Email: m.rosemann@qut.edu.au

Dr Glenn Stewart (CI)
Senior Lecturer
Centre for Information Technology Innovation (CITI)
Queensland University of Technology
level 5, 126 Margaret St
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia
Phone:  +61 7 3864 1961
Fax: +61 7 3864 9390

Mr Craig Huxley
Research Assistant
Centre for Information Technology Innovation (CITI)
Queensland University of Technology
level 5, 126 Margaret St
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia
Phone:  +61 7 3864 9476
Fax: +61 7 3864 9390
Email: c.huxley@qut.edu.au

Mr Chris Taylor
Research Assistant
Centre for Information Technology Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
level 5, 126 Margaret St
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia
Phone:  +61 7 3864 9476
Fax: +61 7 3864 9390
Email: ci.taylor@qut.edu.au

Mr Wayne Baker
General Manager
Realtech Australasia Pty. Ltd.
Level 6, 122 Arthur Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
Email: wayne.baker@realtech.de

Publications

Rosemann, M. (2002). Application Reference Models and Building Blocks for Management and Control (ERP Systems). In: Handbook of Enterprise Architecture. Eds.: P. Bernus, L. Nemes, G. Schmidt. Springer-Verlag: Berlin et al. 2002 (in press).

Huxley, C. & Stewart, G. (2002). A Methodology for Identifying Critical Processes in Organisations using the Balanced Scorecard. To be presented at Americas Conference on Information Systems. Dallas, Tx., 9-11 August.

Rosemann, M. (2001). Evaluating the Management of Enterprise Systems with the Balanced Scorecard. In: IT Evaluation Methods and Management. Ed. W. van Grembergen. Idea Group Publishing: Hershey et al., pp. 171-184.

Rosemann, M. (2000). Using Reference Models within the Enterprise Resource Planning Lifecycle. Australian Accounting Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 19-30.

Sedera, D., Gable, G. G (2001). A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Enterprise Systems Performance Measurement. Proceedings of the 12th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2001), eds.: G. Finnie, D. Cecez-Kecmanovic, B. Lo. Coffs Harbour, 4-7 December, pp. 573-584.

Back to BPM Past Major Projects