Business Process Performance Measurement

Conclusion

Business quotes such as "If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it" or "What is measured improves" (P. Drucker) are sometimes criticized because not all important things seem measurable. Nonetheless, given the perceived need of managers to measure their business and the wide variety of performance indicators (i.e., ranging from quantitative to qualitative and from financial to non-financial), this structured literature review has presented the status of the research on business process performance measurement. This structured approach allowed us to detect weaknesses or inadequacies in the current literature, particularly regarding the definition and concretization of possible performance indicators. We continued by taking a holistic view of the categorization of the observed performance indicators (i.e., measures or metrics) into 11 performance perspectives based on relevant performance measurement models and established process performance dimensions.

The identified performance indicators within the 11 perspectives constitute an extended list from which practitioners and researchers can select appropriate indicators depending on their needs. In total, the structured literature review resulted in 140 possible performance indicators: 87 indicators with operationalization, 48 additional indicators that need further concretization, and 5 refinements based on other Balanced Scorecard (BSC) variants. As such, the 11 performance perspectives with related indicators can be considered a conceptual framework that was derived from the current process literature and theoretically validated by established measurement approaches in organization management.

Future research can empirically validate the conceptual framework by involving subject-matter experts to assess the comprehensiveness of the extended list and refine the missing concretizations, and by undertaking case studies in which the extended list can be applied by specific organizations. Other research avenues exist to investigate the link between actual process performance and expected process performance (as measured in maturity models) or the impact of certain strategic or environmental aspects on the choice of specific performance indicators. Such findings are needed to supplement and enrich existing performance measurement systems.