Visibility of Business Processes - An Information Processing Perspective in the Financial Services Industry

Business Process Management (BPM) has been an important research field for decades. Latest technological advances have increased the transparency that can be created over processes. Although associated to various advantages, organizations struggle to identify processes for which investments in visibility-creating technologies are profitable. Existing research has largely investigated the outcomes of IT investments in general. However, it remains vague how promising investments in visibility-creating technologies can be identified – especially in a process environment. To close this research gap the paper adopts the Information Processing View and applies a framework that determines the appropriate level of process visibility. We illustrate the applicability of the framework with two positivist, variancetheoretic case studies in the financial services industry. The results contribute to a better understanding how organizations can determine where and how to establish appropriate process visibility.