Successful application of PPM - an analysis of the German-speaking banking industry

Process Performance Management (PPM), whose importance has increased as a result of the recent financial and economic crisis, is one of the major management concepts regarding business processes. Especially its ability to continuously supervise process efficiency and to discover potential for process optimization strengthens its importance. Although PPM application in the banking industry is widespread, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Only a few PPM applications are based on a consistent methodology and many different individual concepts are being used. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors for PPM success. Therefore, we distinguish between factors that are implemented by banks whose PPM application can be identified as successful vs. those banks whose PPM application is less successful. The analysis is conducted using different research methods – exploratory and confirmatory ones. Confirmatory analysis is used to prove that three indicator variables (‘net benefits’, ‘user satisfaction’, and ‘acceptance’) define ‘successful application of PPM’. Exploratory analysis is applied to identify linear correlations between given variables (e.g. ’integration of PPM in corporate strategy’, or ‘complete and reasonable selection of key performance indicators’) and ‘successful application of PPM’.