For continuous improvement and innovation in business processes, prioritizing processes is one of the top strategic decision-making tasks for chief information officers and business executives. However, most of the methods for prioritizing process improvement initiatives pay little attention to analysing the characteristics of processes. In addition, in the design process of these methods, the users (e.g. managers, process stakeholders) rarely participate. More importantly, how these methods can be adapted to managers’ decision-making process has not yet been fully explored. This paper addresses the need for a new method supporting managers’ decision making in prioritizing process improvement initiatives. We describe the design and evaluation of a prioritization and categorization method (PCM). The PCM consists of two models, the process assessment heat map (PAHM) and the process categorization map (CM), as well as five iterative activities. The evaluation results from Ericsson show that the PCM can produce a good-quality analysis of processes. It facilitates the decision-making process by eliciting the “collective intelligence” from key process stakeholders and managers. The findings also reveal the implications of improving the PCM to make it more configurable and dynamic. The paper contributes to business process management and proposes a novel method for prioritizing process improvement initiatives.

A framework is presented to deploy a smartphone-based measurement system for road vehicle traffic monitoring and usage-based insurance (UBI). Through the aid of a hierarchical model to modularize the description, the functionality is described as spanning from sensor-level functionality and technical specification to the topmost business model. The designer of a complex measurement system has to consider the full picture from low-level sensing, actuating, and wireless data transfer to the topmost level, including enticements for the individual smartphone owners, i.e., the end users who are the actual measurement probes. The measurement system provides two data streams: a primary stream to support road vehicle traffic monitoring and a secondary stream to support the UBI program. The former activity has a clear value for a society and its inhabitants, as it may reduce congestion and environmental impacts. The latter data stream drives the business model and parts of the revenue streams, which ensure the funding of the total measurement system and create value for the end users, the service provider, and the insurance company. In addition to the presented framework, outcome from a measurement campaign is presented, including road vehicle traffic monitoring (primary data stream) and a commercial pilot of UBI based on the driver profiles (secondary data stream). The measurement system is believed to be sustainable due to the incitements offered to the individual end users, in terms of favorable pricing for the insurance premium. The measurement campaign itself is believed to have an interest in its own right, as it includes smartphone probing of road traffic with a number of probes in the vicinity of the current state of the art, given by the Berkeley Mobile Millennium Project. During the ten-month run of the project, some 4500 driving h/250 000 km of road vehicle traffic data were collected.

Insurance telematics or usage-based insurance (UBI) is a potential gamechanger for the insurance industry, especially for innovating auto-insurance. In order to achieve and sustain UBI for auto insurance, insurers are called upon to innovate the marketing and sales processes of the UBI product, as well as related processes such as risk assessment and price calculation. In this chapter, we demonstrate the insurer’s process innovation with smartphone-based insurance telematics, using the example of the “If SafeDrive” campaign which was commercially conducted by the insurer If P & C in Sweden. The results show that although disruptive technology can trigger process innovation, such innovation cannot succeed and be sustained without fundamental changes in a company’s structure, business model and business strategy. We further propose a capability layer model for understanding the insurer’s process innovation behaviour. This chapter provokes the critical thinking with regard to the exploration and exploitation of disruptive technology into process innovation. Further, the chapter contributes new knowledge to the research of process innovation with disruptive digital technologies.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and evaluate the prioritization and categorization method (PCM), which facilitates the active participation of process stakeholders (managers, owners, customers) in process assessments. Stakeholders evaluate processes in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and relevance against certain contextual business and industry factors. This collective evaluation serves as a foundation for the management decision-making process regarding process improvement and redesign.

Design/methodology/approach

The PCM is examined based on a case study at Ericsson. In total, 55 stakeholders, representing different organizational levels and functions, assessed eight core processes. Follow-up interviews and feedback after the evaluation sessions were collected for triangulation purpose.

Findings

The PCM helps Ericsson evaluate its processes within business context and industry environments. The results show that, to realize seamless end-to-end processes in the eight assessed processes, Ericsson has to make a greater effort to improve its process structures, governance and culture for fulfilling the needs of future business. Ericsson Steering Group is satisfied with the insights provided and has decided to train more stakeholders to use PCM.

Research limitations/implications

This research is based on a single case within a specific organizational setting. The results may not be necessary generalizable to other business and industry settings. Organizations need to configure PCM in consideration of their own processes and business contingencies to explore and fulfil their process improvement purposes.

Originality/value

This paper presents a new context-aware, easy-to-use and holistic method for business process management (BPM), the PCM. The method requires the active engagement of stakeholders, it focusses on developing dynamic BPM capabilities and fully embeds organizational contingencies and contextual factors in the decision-making regarding BPM. This paper contributes a novel method to explorative BPM.