DOI: 10.4018/IJWP.2017070104 International Journal of Web Portals Volume 9 • Issue 2 • July-December 2017 Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. A Web-based Tool for Business Process Improvement Paula Ventura Martins, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal Marielba Zacarias, Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal ABSTRACT Current business process modeling methodologies offer little guidance regarding how to discover and maintain business process models aligned with their actual execution. The authors argue that business processes should emerge and evolve collaboratively within an organization. Considering this limitation, this paper presents an overview of some Web-based tools and explores their main functionalities. This study highlights the need of a bi-directional form of communication, between operational and process actors. The paper contributes with a new business process and practice authoring tool based on authors’ vision for business process improvement. KeyWoRdS Business Process Improvement, Business Process Modelling, Methodologies, Web Application, Work Practices 1. INTRodUCTIoN Business Process Modelling (BPM) specializes on describing how activities interact and relate with each other, and how activities interact with other business concepts such as goals and resources, where resources may be material and informational entities, as well as human or automated actors (Rittgen, 2008). Current BPM methodologies are supported by data collection techniques including interviews, surveys, text/document analysis, among others. BPM emphasizes process notions (workflow, decision, information, activities) as the dominant dimension (Hollingaworth, 2004). However, BPM would benefit from a better understanding of other elements that contribute to process execution such as people and human interactions, products or tools used, specific vocabularies, preferences, habits and rules. Moreover, it has been argued that existing BPM methodologies offer little guidance in keeping up-to-date the continuously evolving knowledge coming from business process execution (Castela, Dias, Zacarias, & Tribolet, 2012b). Business processes are executed through human and automated activities. Whereas many business processes are fairly static only at a high level, at finer-grained levels such as activities, are more agile and unpredictable. Indeed, many organizations do not know their end-to-end processes accurately or in detail, since the knowledge required for its execution is tacit and decentralized (Verner, 2004). Recent research in BPM is aiming to address the unpredictability of business processes (Mutschler, Weber, & Reichert, 2008; Reichert, Dadam, Jurisch, Kreher, & Goser, 2008), but there is yet little help in addressing the problem of tacit knowledge and business process model maintenance. From the author’s point of view, what appears to be unpredictable behaviour does not mean chaos. Indeed, it follows certain rules. The rules followed in the execution of activities and tasks can 68