Business process models have been adopted by enterprises for more than a decade. Especially for domain experts, the comprehension of process models constitutes a challenging task that needs to be mastered when creating or reading these models. This paper presents the results we obtained from an eye tracking experiment on process model comprehension. In detail, individuals with either no or advanced expertise in process modeling were confronted with models expressed in terms of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs), reflecting different levels of difficulty. The first results of this experiment confirm recent findings from one of our previous experiments on the reading and comprehension of process models. On one hand, independent from their level of expertise, all individuals face similar patterns, when being confronted with process models exceeding a certain level of difficulty. On the other, it appears that process models expressed in terms of EPCs are perceived differently compared to process models specified in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). In the end, their generalization needs to be confirmed by additional empirical experiments. The presented experiment continues a series of experiments that aim to unravel the factors fostering the comprehension of business process models by using methods and theories stemming from the field of cognitive neuroscience and psychology.

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The use of process management technology constitutes a salient factor for a multitude of business domains as it particularly addresses the flexibility demands of the digital enterprise. Still, spreadsheet applications are more likely to be used in many scenarios in which process management technology appears to be a more appropriate solution. Especially in the context of human-centric and knowledge-intensive processes, spreadsheets are widely used, even if more business-tailored applications exist. For example, financial service providers, like banks or insurers, prefer spreadsheet applications for accomplishing their daily business. However, this kind of usage reveals drawbacks when working collaboratively based on the same spreadsheet document. To remedy these drawbacks, we suggest the use of spreadsheet-driven processes, which shall combine the advantages of traditional process management technology with the ones of spreadsheets. Using a sophisticated scenario from the financial domain, this paper shows how spreadsheet-driven processes improve collaborative work, as required in the context of business processes, significantly. Moreover, a proof-of-concept prototype is presented to evaluate the approach in practice. Altogether, first results indicate that spreadsheet-driven processes may be a promising technical solution for everyday business involving human resources.