Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

From Full-fledged ERP Systems Towards

Process-centric Business Process Platforms
Completed Research Full Paper

Lukas Böhme Tobias Wuttke

HPI, University of Potsdam HPI, University of Potsdam
[email protected] [email protected]

Benedict Bender Ralf Teusner

LSWI, University of Potsdam HPI, University of Potsdam
[email protected] [email protected]

Sebastian Baltes Christoph Matthies

SAP SE HPI, University of Potsdam
[email protected] [email protected]

Michael Perscheid
HPI, University of Potsdam
[email protected]
Abstract
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are critical to the success of enterprises, facilitating business
operations through standardized digital processes. However, existing ERP systems are unsuitable for
startups and small and medium-sized enterprises that grow quickly and require adaptable solutions with
low barriers to entry. Drawing upon 15 explorative interviews with industry experts, we examine the
challenges of current ERP systems using the task technology fit theory across companies of varying sizes.
We describe high entry barriers, high costs of implementing implicit processes, and insufficient
interoperability of already employed tools. We present a vision of a future business process platform based
on three enablers: Business processes as first-class entities, semantic data and processes, and cloud-native
elasticity and high availability. We discuss how these enablers address current ERP systems’ challenges and
how they may be used for research on the next generation of business software for tomorrow’s enterprises.

Keywords

ERP system, enterprise system, business process platform.

Introduction
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems play a vital role in the application landscape in most of today's
enterprises. They offer comprehensive standard solutions and facilitate value-adding business processes
for enterprises worldwide (Asprion et al., 2018). However, in practice, we observe several unsolved
challenges of ERP systems, such as limited process adaptability and tedious upgrade projects (Abd
Elmonem et al., 2016; Bender et al., 2021; Sancar Gozukara et al., 2022). Especially startups and small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) defer implementing ERP systems, according to a survey by the German
Federal Statistical Office (Destatis, 2021). But even if ERP systems are implemented, it is not guaranteed
that the system will operate unchanged for an extended period. Changing market requirements force
companies to adapt their ERP system implementations, resulting in migration projects and complex
process adjustments (Bender et al., 2021; Yusuf et al., 1999).

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

The identification and understanding of challenges related to ERP systems are the focus of current ERP
research (Abd Elmonem et al., 2016; Bender et al., 2021; Sancar Gozukara et al., 2022). However,
companies' requirements are constantly changing (Hvolby & Trienekens, 2010) and, thus, the business
processes they support. Therefore, we gathered first-hand insights into the challenges of state-of-the-art
ERP systems by conducting 15 semi-structured interviews with industry experts working in a diverse set of
companies ranging from startups to international corporations and covering various domains, including
manufacturing, software development, and e-learning.
Through the theoretical lens of task-technology fit (TTF) and the use of a Gioia Matrix, we identified three
main challenges of current ERP systems for growing companies. First, ERP processes are implicit and offer
insufficient transparency allowing only a small group to understand the underlying business logic. Second,
ERP systems have a high entry barrier due to their complexity and costly implementation. Especially for
startups, ERP systems offer vast components that some perceive as irrelevant to their current needs or
hinder the company's development due to their non-transparent and inter-dependent procedures. Finally,
ERP systems pose integration challenges since business processes span multiple IT systems and might even
cross company boundaries.
To address the identified challenges, this paper presents a vision for future enterprise systems to overcome
these challenges: process-centric business process platforms (BPPs). Our focus lies on examining the high-
level concepts that enable such platforms. Hence, we pose the following research question: What are
enabling technologies a business process platform requires to seamlessly support companies’ business
processes while growing? We suggest that BPPs employ adaptable, executable business process models,
semantically-enriched data, and cloud-native development techniques. Based on our findings, we present
our vision of a BPP founded on core services, visually modeled, executable business processes, and a
semantic domain model.

Theoretical Background
This section provides a brief overview of business process management (BPM), the adaptability of
enterprise systems, and the task-technology fit theory. Thus, we lay the foundation to understand the
identified challenges of ERP systems.
BPM is a management discipline structuring business processes to improve organizations' performance
(Vukšić et al., 2017). The foundation of BPM is the recognition that the production of each product offered
by a company to the market results from a series of different activities. These activities are organized and
improved using business processes. Enterprise systems, such as ERP systems, play a crucial role in BPM,
as they support many of the tasks performed by a company. These tasks can be enacted manually by
employees or through information systems (Weske, 2012).
The ability to adapt to changing conditions is considered a key success factor for organizations (Da Xu,
2011). Environmental (external) changes or internal changes such as rapid growth require companies to
adopt. Given the wide implementation of enterprise systems, the adaptability of companies is determined
by the adaptability of its enterprise systems. Prior studies consider adaptable enterprise systems as a critical
requirement of companies' survival (Almutairi et al., 2022). The need to adopt enterprise systems to
individual circumstances is widely acknowledged (Davenport, 1998). In this regard, different possibilities
to conduct changes in enterprise systems evolved (Haines, 2009). With the increased importance of process
organization, ERP system flexibility is determined by their possibility to adapt implemented processes.
Current challenges and potential drivers for tomorrow's enterprises are suggested to support process
adoption and company growth.
The modularity of systems to enact business processes was already the subject of research. Pauker et al.
(2018), for instance, introduce centurio.work, a modular manufacturing execution system based on a
service-oriented oriented approach and Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). Another approach
is presented by Künzle and Reichert (2011), who describe a framework called PHILharmonicFlows that
operates on an object-based approach to integrate data, processes, and users. While these existing
approaches focus on rigorously following an object-aware paradigm or industry-specific use cases, we aim
to provide first steps toward Gartner’s vision of the “composable enterprise” (Gartner, 2020).

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

Task-technology fit (TTF) is a theory that examines the compatibility between a technology and a particular
task. Developed initially by Goodhue and Thompson (1995), TTF was intended to be applied at the
individual level. However, Zigurs and Buckland (1998) modified the theory to apply to groups as well. The
TTF theory is widely accepted in the Information Systems research community, and it is frequently used to
analyze various contexts (e.g., (Lim and Benbasat, 2000) or (Ferratt and Vlahos, 1998)).
In this study, we evaluate the utilization of ERP systems by growing companies using TTF. As companies
expand, their organizational structure and tasks become more complex, and they may require new
technological solutions to manage their business processes effectively. ERP systems are designed to
integrate all aspects of a company's operations into a single software system. However, the success of ERP
implementation depends on various factors, including the match of the technology with the company's tasks
and requirements. Thus, by utilizing the TTF theory, we analyze how well ERP systems meet the specific
needs of growing companies. We examine whether the ERP systems used by these companies are suitable
for their tasks and organizational structure and identify areas where improvements can be made.

Methodology
The development and usage of business applications is practice-oriented and rapidly evolving. Given this
inherent nature, we conducted an exploratory qualitative research study by interviewing practitioners to
gain an up-to-date perspective on the prevailing problems of today's ERP and business systems. We decided
for purposeful sampling due to the limited number of available interviewees (Palinkas et al., 2015). Overall,
we conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with industry experts from companies operating in technology,
manufacturing, e-commerce, and logistics located in German-speaking countries in the timespan between
December 2021 and the end of April 2022. The interviewees worked in companies ranging from recently
founded startups to established SMEs with up to 200 employees to large multinational enterprises. The
interviewees either had the position of a founder or a leading role in the technical implementation of the
company’s business or ERP systems. They were selected from the authors' network based on their ERP and
business software expertise. Furthermore, we validated our findings with six ERP system experts from an
established ERP system vendor.
Each interview was structured by first identifying general information about the interviewee and the
company they represent, e.g., number of employees or year of establishment. Following, we asked selected
questions from a prepared interview guide for each interview based on the expertise of the interviewee and
the course of the interview. Our interview guide is designed around questions that focus on exploring the
alignment between a company's business processes and its ERP system. The complete interview guide is
available online1. If appropriate, we asked individual follow-up questions to clarify the responses based on
the interviewees' answers. The individual responses were collected, interpreted, and categorized by their
meaning to identify the interviewees' needs using the Gioia Matrix (Gioia et al., 2013). Hence, we first
identified 1st order concepts, deducted 2nd order themes, and finally identified aggregated dimensions that
represent our presented challenges of current ERP systems.

Observed Challenges of ERP Systems

By creating the Gioia Matrix (see Figure 1), we identified three primary challenges of current ERP systems.
The following sections describe the captured challenges and their causes.

Insufficient Transparency in Business Processes

The first challenge expresses that business processes involving ERP systems often lack sufficient
transparency for end-users. We identified hard-coded, implicit business processes in ERP systems and lack
of (up-to-date) process documentation in our interviews as reasons.
Implicit business processes. We learned that ERP transactions' control and data flow is implicitly
represented by the successively generated documents required in business processes, e.g., sales orders,
delivery notes, and invoices. In SAP S/4HANA, this sequence of documents is described as the document

1 Interview guide: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7853035

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

flow (SAP SE, 2021). However, none of our interviewees mentioned that implemented control and data
flows of processes are graphically represented in ERP systems. Instead, the underlying business process is
hidden in the respective implementation, limiting the comprehensibility of the ERP business processes,
especially for non-technical users.

Figure 1. Gioia Matrix: From interview observations to challenges

Lack of process documentation. We observed that textual documentation of business processes often
becomes outdated since they are only created during initial implementation or migration projects. When
processes change, usually, the documentation is not adapted. Our interviewees cited the high manual effort
as the reason, supporting existing literature (Ungan, 2006).

High Entry Barrier for Startups

The introduction of an ERP system comes with a high entry barrier. According to the Federal Office of
Statistics of Germany, only 31% of companies with 10 to 49 employees use ERP software, compared to 81%
of larger companies with 250 and more employees (Destatis, 2021). We identified three main reasons
contributing to a high entry barrier: limited modularity, the lack of tailored processes, and costly
implementation projects.
Limited modularity. Each software component of an ERP system introduces further internal
dependencies. State-of-the-art ERP systems, such as SAP S/4HANA, offer software components that
represent sets of functions for different lines of business, like asset management or finance. The software

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

components have dependencies, resulting in an increased configuration effort if new features are added. In
addition, the components often include excessive functionality exceeding the requirements of the
company's current state. For startups, a high degree of redundant functionality hinders the company from
focusing on its value-adding business. The component dependencies also affect ERP systems' usability.
Lack of tailored processes. Another reason for the high entry barrier of ERP systems is the adoption of
standard processes (Quiescenti et al., 2006). Most ERP systems impose a concrete process the company
must comply with. Even if standard processes imply advantages such as cost minimization and improved
process coordination, they provide only a limited opportunity to achieve competitive differentiation
(Seddon, 2005). While this is sufficient for supporting processes, for example, human resources or finance,
key processes that serve the company's unique goal usually need to be highly individual. Especially startups
require tailored processes to emphasize their respective unique selling points.
Costly implementation projects. Introducing an ERP system has a reputation for being expensive and
time-consuming (Schwenk, 2012). Most ERP systems implementations require a large upfront project to
identify required configurations and data that must be migrated (Khanna & Arneja, 2012). While this phase
allows the company to streamline its existing processes, it is costly since the required competence often
comes from external consultancy (Dunaway, 2012) and poses the risk of disrupting daily business (Ahmad
& Cuenca, 2013). The fear of disruption of the business and the costly upfront project were the top two
reasons mentioned in the interviews that delayed the implementation or migration to a new ERP system.

Lack of Interoperability
Another challenge of ERP systems is the lack of interoperability with systems within the same IT application
landscape and external systems owned by business partners.
Interoperability with internal systems. Startups introduce different SaaS products to meet their
business needs. This often happens in response to currently occurring problems. But even established,
larger enterprises follow a best-of-breed IT strategy by implementing function-specific SaaS systems from
selected strategic partners. However, an increasingly heterogeneous IT landscape consisting of systems in
multiple cloud environments from multiple vendors often comes with integration challenges and redundant
data storage. In our interviews, we observed that current business systems often do not support efficient
interoperability with external applications, leading to high effort for data migration and integration of
processes. One interviewee shared that one reason for excluding ERP systems in the selection phase of an
implementation project was the inability to integrate with other existing systems in the company. That
highlights the importance of integration capabilities for business applications in accordance with literature
researching the selection of ERP systems (Wei et al., 2005).
Interoperability with external systems. Today's end-to-end processes span entire value chains and
go beyond company boundaries, making integration possibilities with external systems increasingly
important. The fact that current ERP systems only focus on one enterprise instead of supporting the
complete value chain of the business increases this problem. The interoperability between systems of other
enterprises is rarely supported by the ERP system (Lyytinen & Damsgaard, 2011). The development of
interfaces between these ERP systems is often associated with considerable communication overhead.

A Vision for Process-centric Business Process Platforms

Current ERP systems face several challenges of both technical and organizational nature. We believe that
many of the current technical issues of ERP systems occur due to ERP systems’ architecture. Hence, we
propose a novel class of enterprise systems called Business Process Platforms (BPP). This section illustrates
a vision for process-centric BPPs. We present three enablers BPPs should utilize to achieve a better TTF for
their implementing organizations. Figure 2 shows how the enablers, based on available supporting
technologies, relate to the challenges.

Business Processes as First-class Entities

We argue that it is time to consider business processes - besides data - as first-class entities to design BPPs
that address the challenges of insufficient transparency and costly process changes. To achieve process

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

centricity, we believe that a BPP should be built on modular, adaptable, and graphically represented
executable business processes.
Executable business processes. A BPP should utilize executable business processes comparable to
existing workflow engines such as Camunda Platform or Netflix Conductor. Hence, it must support the core
capabilities of workflow engines like persistence, scheduling, and versioning. (Rücker, 2021).

Figure 2. Challenges of ERP systems and how BPPs address them

Modularity and adaptability of business processes. Based on insights from our interviews, we argue
that companies search for lightweight solutions to fulfill their business goals. In this regard, we infer that
encapsulated business processes are superior to traditional ERP modules built for different departments,
such as finance. While these modules provide extensive functionality, they usually depict only a subset of
an end-to-end business process. To increase the modularity of future business applications, they must
support extensions via independently executable business processes instead of traditional ERP
components. Having modular business processes instead of ERP components enables a company to add
and remove processes without the burden of exceeding functionality. In addition, the platform must provide
pre-defined processes with varying characteristics via templates to cope with changing requirements of
business processes. Each business process should exist in multiple versions to reflect stages of growth and
industries to enable users to upgrade individual processes. Additionally, each process must enable
adjustments to customize pre-defined templates to a company's requirements. Three user groups create
such process customizations based on a template. First, logical changes, such as adjustments to the control
flow of a process, can be implemented by business users. Second, adjustments requiring additional, not yet
supported functionality should be implemented by developers via an abstract interface and integrated as a
process task according to the semantic data schema. Finally, compliance-related changes, such as
temporary tax subsidies, are reflected in the semantic data model and updated by the BPP's vendor. A
company is thus able to upgrade distinct processes by using an equivalent process template designed for
larger company sizes when the enterprise outgrows the existing process. If a company requires adaptations
not covered by the provided process templates, each process must be adjustable to enable the end-user to
customize the processes based on their needs. The end-user can adjust the control flow of the process using
a visual editor, whereas more extensive adjustments requiring new process tasks are individually
programmed. Such tasks are designed using abstract interfaces of the BPP instead of concrete solutions so
that external software can be integrated as a process task. The BPP's provider must specify these abstract
interfaces. Process adjustments by the company can be captured and moved forward in case of a process
upgrade without requiring a large migration project because underlying services remain stable, and only

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

processes that call these services are adapted. Adapted business processes could be offered as new templates
for other companies.
Graphical business process representations. End-users of ERP systems need process transparency.
Therefore, we argue that the User Interface of future ERP systems should be based on business process
models. The process models should represent the implemented business processes in a human-
understandable notation such as BPMN. The process models should enable all process stakeholders to
better understand the business process, the available functionality, and the respective data model. The
visual representation can be extended through process-based KPIs, such as time per task and cycle time,
directly embedded into the process model to give relevant feedback on the process performance to the user.
Currently, process mining is used to derive the actually executed process models based on historical data
(van der Aalst et al., 2012). With a BPP, we envision that business software is fundamentally based on such
process models, making them executable and graphical from the beginning.

Semantic Data and Processes

Current business software does not support detailed descriptions of the stored data, which would allow
machines or humans an in-depth understanding of its underlying meaning. We argue that a BPP should
use semantically enriched data and processes to address the interoperability challenge of current ERP
systems. Following the example of the semantic web, we envision the data schemas used in business
processes to be enriched with standardized descriptions that simplify data integration. This involves an
additional semantic layer and executable ontology-based process models on top of the data layer.
Semantic layer. Usually, ERP systems store their data in relational databases. However, their data is
often not expressive enough to meet the high interoperability demands of today's heterogeneous supply
chains and IT system landscapes. Since end-to-end processes can go beyond the borders of single systems
and even companies (Bender et al., 2021), it must also be possible to execute cross-system processes. Using
ontologies, for instance, enables true semantic integration of different systems' data across businesses
(Gardner, 2005). Hence, introducing an additional semantic layer on top of the data model improves data
integration capabilities and thus reduces the manual effort for end-users. Furthermore, the semantic
integration of data offers the advantage of making data discoverable with established semantic web
technologies, such as the Resource Description Framework and the SPARQL language.
Ontology-based process models. Semantically enriched data can build the foundation to enable the
execution of process models because they provide understandable information for both humans and
machines (Corea et al., 2021). The mapping of business entities from ontologies to traditional process
models, resulting in ontology-based process models, bridges the gap between processes' data and control
flow. Also, ontology-based process models provide BPPs with advanced ontology-based analytics, such as
the capability to query process information using SPARQL, leading to reduced risks and costs of process
changes (Corea et al., 2021). Possible use cases include the detection of compliance issues in process models
(Corea & Delfmann, 2017), the creation of various process views that hold information, such as
organizational hierarchies, or how process resources interact (Adams et al., 2021).

Cloud-native Elasticity and High Availability

To use the full potential of cloud infrastructure, we argue that a future BPP has to embrace cloud-native
technology. Cloud-native infrastructure offers elasticity and fault tolerance for BPPs, building the technical
foundation for the other enablers. Furthermore, it addresses the challenges of a high entry barrier for
startups and the lack of interoperability by leveraging the adoption of respective workloads for a given
situation through horizontal scaling and high availability offered by the cloud.
Horizontal scaling. A company's IT infrastructure must scale with the requirements and load an IT
system is experiencing while a company grows. Companies might experience a massive increase in
transactions in a short period or a steady increase in workload due to the business' growth. In both cases,
the systems have to deal with the higher throughput without impacting the current business, independent
of the time frame in which the demand rises. At the same time, the system should be able to scale down if
required to save costs. Horizontal scaling capabilities are a well-known way to address the scalability
demands of business applications. Most of today's ERP systems are built as monolithic applications, not
allowing selective scaling of individual functions of the system. Monolithic systems do not leverage the

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 Towards Process-centric Business Process Platforms

potential of the cloud due to missing architectural adjustments of the application to the cloud environment
(Balalaie et al., 2016).
High availability. Companies cannot tolerate downtimes from planned maintenance or system failures.
Whereas resilience and fault tolerance are favorable future-proof qualities for SMEs, it is crucial for large
enterprises to have their system available all the time. One interviewee said that it is challenging to keep
the upgrade process of the existing ERP system within the boundaries of one weekend. They also mentioned
that relocating critical parts of their infrastructure to other data centers without impacting the ongoing
business reduces business interruptions. Infrastructural resilience and fault tolerance are impossible
without the proper systems architecture.

Discussion
Effective use of technology depends on its alignment with the specific tasks that users need to perform, as
described by the TTF theory (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). Goodhue and Thompson describe eight main
factors contributing to task-technology fit: quality, locatability, authorization, compatibility, ease of use,
production timeliness, systems reliability, and the relationship with users. Our study revealed several
challenges connected to these factors that growing companies face when employing ERP systems, pointing
to a mismatch between tasks and technology in this domain.
We identified that the studied companies lacked a consolidated, transparent view of their business
processes. This finding is closely related to the TTF factors of quality and locatability, describing the ability
to clearly identify relevant data sources and to understand the meaning of data points on a technical and
business level in adequate detail. Without comprehensive insights into the executed process, locating the
set of relevant data of sufficient quality needed as process inputs is challenging. Our vision addresses these
challenges by visually representing executable business processes enriched with semantic data. While visual
representations benefit understandability, attention must be paid to ensure human comprehension of the
created models (Figl, 2017), which is affected by their size (Dikici et al., 2018). Therefore, business processes
must be hierarchically decomposed and represented on different abstraction layers to limit their size and
complexity. The envisioned modularity through processes lowers the barrier for startups to introduce ERP
systems, as only the currently required processes need to be analyzed and implemented. We envision
process templates provided by third parties with deep domain knowledge that help with this initial
adoption. By enabling every process to be individually upgradable using a template of a larger company in
the same industry, we address the TTF factor of ease of use. Dynamically adapting the amount and
complexity of offered ERP-supported processes over time prevents harsh breaks in usability and enables
continuous user training. Making use of modern cloud services allows a focus on application design (as
opposed to IT infrastructure management) and provides for the TTF factor of systems reliability (i.e., the
system “uptime”) at an industry-standard level. However, security, privacy, and connectivity risks of the
employed cloud platforms must be considered (Avram, 2014). Additionally, the TTF factor of compatibility
is addressed as part of our vision. It refers to the ability to effectively combine data from disparate sources,
which requires a thorough understanding and overview of the available data within organizations. We
propose using a semantic data model to improve interoperability and system compatibility, which requires
different applications to agree on shared data definitions (Wegner, 1996).
While our explorative study design with industry experts allowed first-hand insights into the prevailing
problems in practice, it also comes with limitations. First, our findings are limited to the 15 interviews we
conducted and the questions we asked. However, we reached a saturation point of insights by getting
repeating answers in multiple subsequent interviews. The selection of interviewees was mainly based on
existing industry contacts. Other interviewees with different backgrounds could have provided different
insights, affecting current ERP systems' highlighted challenges. Second, this paper only focuses on the
challenges the interviewees explicitly and repeatedly mentioned. Topics such as data security, safety, or IT
governance, which are also very important in an enterprise, still need to be considered. Although the
challenges of current ERP systems inspire our vision, we acknowledge that our solution may not be equally
suitable for companies of all sizes. Its modularity and flexibility make it particularly well-suited for startups
and growing businesses that need to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. However, larger enterprises
that have already established stable operations may not benefit as much from our solution, as they are less
likely to require frequent system modifications. Furthermore, our vision is based on our interpretation of
how to solve the derived challenges. Other researchers and practitioners might come to different

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conclusions. Finally, there are still many open technical questions regarding the concrete implementation
of our vision. These are subjects of future research and other conceptual questions, such as how adjustments
to the process model are reflected in task implementations and how process development environments
should be designed.

Conclusion
The history of enterprise systems has resulted in an accumulation of different architectural decisions.
However, some of these decisions no longer align with today's highly decoupled software service landscape
and the need for flexible processes, leading to technical challenges. In this paper, we shared first-hand
insights into the challenges of ERP systems based on 15 interviews using purposeful sampling. We applied
the Gioia Matrix methodology to identify practitioners' challenges in growing companies. Based on the
interviews, the main challenges are a high entry barrier for startups, insufficient transparency in business
processes, and a lack of interoperability. We propose a vision of future ERP systems called BPP to address
the challenges. A BPP defines itself through well-defined, adjustable business processes which can grow
with the company. To overcome the identified challenges of current ERP systems, the foundation of the
envisioned BPP are three technical enablers: business processes as first-class entities, semantic data and
processes and cloud-native elasticity, and high availability. Our vision for a new generation of ERP systems
addresses the practical challenges of current ERP systems. Future research might investigate how BPPs are
used and how they impact companies' operations. In a design science research paradigm, a BPP prototype
could be implemented and evaluated in real-life settings.

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