Delivering sustained performance through a structured business process approach to management

This paper aims to demonstrate the performance benefits of adopting a business process perspective to managing a business and, through grounded research, propose a revised business process architecture which builds upon recent advances in business process thinking.

A brief review of business process terminology and architecture is presented. A set of perspectives is developed which is used to structure summary field notes from grounded research conducted in a UK manufacturing plant of a Fortune 500 corporation. A management system model of the case study company is proposed, which in turn is used to modify the existing business process architecture.

Business management processes are modelled and analysed as observed in the field and compared to recent models of “Manage Processes”. It is discovered that Manage Processes have an architecture which is core to their ability to sustain competitive advantage. It is also shown that adopting a business process architecture perspective when direction‐setting and controlling the business can deliver superior business performance and sustained delivery of value.

The model is developed from grounded research in one organisation only and therefore requires further testing by means of further case studies (although steps are taken to ensure the initial validity of the model). Also, the model is still relatively high level and further case studies should be used to create more detailed practice models for the processes.

The model developed is sufficiently generic to be tested with other organisations, and with the addition of further case studies a useful maturity model workbook could be created. This could aid practitioners in the analysis and improvement of the performance management process from a business process architecture perspective.

This is the first analysis of recent “Manage Process” models from an in‐depth, grounded approach and a new “Manage Process” architecture is proposed.