Title: Exploring the representation of complex processes in information-intensive services

Authors: Uday Apte; Uday Karmarkar; Cheryl Kieliszewski; Ying Tat Leung

Addresses: Naval Postgraduate School, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Monterey, CA 93943, USA. ' Anderson School of Management, University of California – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. ' IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120, USA. ' IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120, USA

Abstract: It is well known that Information-Intensive Services (IIS), such as financial services, information technology services, healthcare, telecommunications and broadcasting, and education have shown some of the highest growth rates in the service sector of the US economy. In such services, the business processes are often complex, involving a number of different parties. For example, multiple people from both the service supplier and the customer participate to co-produce a desired service outcome. Through a few case studies, we observe a set of common characteristics of such complex service processes. To obtain a systematic understanding of such processes, we explore the possibility of applying existing modelling or representation frameworks and evaluate them based on how well they address the characteristics of complex processes in IIS as well as other analysis requirements.

Keywords: service modelling; business process modelling; modelling framework; information intensive services; complex processes; process representation; complexity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2012.048815

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2012 Vol.7 No.1, pp.52 - 78

Received: 03 Nov 2011
Accepted: 10 May 2012

Published online: 27 Dec 2014 *

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