Value‐oriented process modeling: integrating financial perspectives into business process re‐design

Purpose – Financial information about costs and return on investments are of key importance to strategic decision making but also in the context of process improvement or business engineering. The purpose of this paper is to propose a value‐oriented approach to business process modeling based on key concepts and metrics from operations and financial management, to aid decision making in process re‐design projects on the basis of process models. Design/methodology/approach – The paper suggests a theoretically founded extension to current process modeling approaches, and delineates a framework as well as methodical support to incorporate financial information into process re‐design. The paper uses two case studies to evaluate the suggested approach. Findings – Based on two case studies, the paper shows that the value‐oriented process modeling approach facilitates and improves managerial decision making in the context of process re‐design. Research limitations/implications – The paper presents design work and two case studies. More research is needed to more thoroughly evaluate the presented approach in a variety of real‐life process modeling settings. Practical implications – The paper shows how the approach enables decision makers to make investment decisions in process re‐design projects, and also how other decisions, for instance in the context of enterprise architecture design, can be facilitated. Originality/value – This paper reports on an attempt to integrate financial considerations into the act of process modeling, in order to provide more comprehensive decision‐making support in process re‐design projects.