Business Process Management is a boundaryspanning discipline that aligns operational capabilities and technology to design and manage business processes. The Digital Transformation has enabled human actors, information systems, and smart products to interact with each other via multiple digital channels. The emergence of this hyper-connected world greatly leverages the prospects of business processes -but also boosts their complexity to a new level. We need to discuss how the BPM discipline can find new ways for identifying, analyzing, designing, implementing, executing, and monitoring business processes. In this research note, selected transformative trends are explored and their impact on current theories and IT artifacts in the BPM discipline is discussed to stimulate transformative thinking and prospective research in this field.

No abstract

No abstract

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a fast-emerging process automation technology suited for high-volume, repetitive, and rule-based tasks. The promises of rising RPA vendors and the lack of documented track records leave researchers and practitioners with the challenge of positioning the term and assessing RPA's true potential. To objectively discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this technology, we conduct a literature review, a practical implementation of an RPA solution, and an interview with an industry expert. We reveal that the current literature primarily focuses on economic factors. This paper, therefore, adds various social and technical aspects to the discussion. Most importantly, robustness and stability pose technical challenges for successfully implementing RPA. Further research directed at error handling and maintenance of software robots is required to support the successful implementation of RPA.

No abstract