On the Alignment of Business Models and Process Models

Abstract: Enterprises, with their own specialties, products, and services, are often required to operate as a value web to fulfil jointly ever changing, complex customer needs. Business models and process models are two types of model in the chain of models used by enterprises to describe different aspects of a business in a value web. A business model identifies who are the actors involved in a value web, resources, value exchanges among actors, and how the value is created and marketed. A process model depicts the behaviour of actors, in particular the order of exchanging resources, data flows, and message exchanges. It is recognized that business models are using not only to explore new business networks but also for the design and redesign of operational business processes. In this thesis, we discuss the problem of deriving a process model from a business model in a systematic way. We have identified three issues in process management and modelling; business orientation, traceability, and flexibility. It is shown how these issues can be addressed by basing process models on business models. In our approach, we have analyzed the internal structure of a value exchange. A value exchange is seen as an aggregation of right, resource, custody, and evidence document. When someone buys a resource what they are actually receiving is some right on the resource. To enjoy this right a supplier must transfer the custody of the resource to the buyer. In addition, to prove what right a buyer has in the resource some document should be given to the buyer. To bridge the gap between business models and process models, the notion of activity dependency model is introduced. The purpose of an activity dependency model is to identify and classify activities necessary for the exchange and production of resources. We discuss some relationships among those activities that could be useful to order activities in process models. These relations have different and clear business motivations. We propose a set of mapping rules to derive an activity dependency model from the business model and a process model from the activity dependency model.