Business Process Improvement by Applying Reference Process Models in SOA – a Scenario-based Analysis Oliver Holschke, Philipp Gelpke, Philipp Offermann, Christian Schröpfer Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Quantitative Methoden Technische Universität Berlin Straße des 17. Juni 135 10623 Berlin oliver.holschke@sysedv.tu-berlin.de, cpgelpke@cs.tu-berlin.de, philipp.offermann@tu-berlin.de, christian.schroepfer@sysedv.tu-berlin.de Abstract: Several factors may force enterprises to modify their business processes: they are threatened by competition; they need to develop new process solutions to fulfil customer needs; they have to react to organizational change; and more. In order to efficiently change business processes, reference models as sources of to-be business processes that are to bring about economic improvements can be used. While in the past the application of reference process models would merely provide a new process model without addressing the necessary efforts of changing the technical solutions beneath it, the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) may significantly reduce these efforts by aligning services to business activities. The presumed ease of readily deployable business processes will then strongly promote the increased use of reference process models in business process optimization. In order to gain more insights into the potential of using reference processes in an SOA environment we carried out an analysis of a business process improvement scenario. We classified the modification operations of implementing reference processes in the scenario and propose an evaluation method for the implementation effort based on a cost model. 1 Introduction Over the past years, the role of business processes has been continuously growing. With an increasing speed of changes in market conditions business processes have to be adaptive and flexible to meet business demands. There are several factors why enterprises may be forced to modify their business processes: they are threatened by competition; they need to develop new process solutions to fulfill customer needs; they have to react to organizational change; and more. The sources of to-be business processes that are to bring about economic improvements once integrated can be found in reference models. These are developed either internally or outside of the enterprise, e.g. by industry standard organizations such as the TeleManagement Forum [TMF05], the Supply-Chain Council [SCO06] and others. 1589