Analysing Collaborative Workflows with a Data Warehouse — A Case Study in the Insurance Sector

Zusammenfassung

The Industrial Revolution had turned its back on processes, deconstructing them into specialised tasks and then focusing on improving the performance of these tasks (Hammer 1996). Tasks-orientation formed the basic building blocks of twentieth century organisations: the functional, mostly hierarchical structure. In the face of intense competition and other business pressures on large organisations in the 1980s and 1990s, a revolutionary approach to business performance improvement was required. Business process reengineering or process innovation was considered as the solution to the problem and all major players had immediately started comprehensive reengineering initiatives. Ten years later, after Hammer’s and Davenport’s fundamental work on corporate thinking, reengineering is not solely a buzzword or hype anymore. Leading companies formed process enterprises in order to create and sustain high-performance process designs. These achievements helped to emerge the fundamental principle of reengineering that has proven success: the customer-oriented process approach, a new organisational structure coexisting with the traditional functional structure. However, for gaining long-term advantage, it is not sufficient to reengineer the business processes. It is essential that the newly designed business processes are continuously improved. This concern was stated more clearly by Harrington: “Measurements are the key. If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it. If you cannot control it, you cannot manage it. If you cannot manage it, you cannot improve it.” (Harrington 1991)