IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 16

transparency in organizations. As Franz and Kirchmer explain, "Social BPM supports value-driven
BPM by gathering and broadcasting the stakeholder
input that drives the improvement of existing processes and the design of new ones" [2].
There are two principal ways that social BPM can
play a key role in introducing transparency in healthcare settings. One is to use social media to support the
process of process management. For example, senior
hospital managers can create a center of excellence
and use leadership to spur a process-centered culture
throughout the organization. To support this initiative they could use a knowledge portal where medical
staff document best practices that have contributed
to attaining transparency and excellence in service
provision. Or they could utilize YouTube to announce
new policies or procedures instead of printing and
distributing hundreds of memorandums. Social BPM
would then be contributing to the governance of processes through a visible and effective communications system.
The other way social BPM can play a central role
in introducing transparency is through the use of
social media tools to deliver process improvements
and transparency in operating procedures. In human
resources, for example, professional and personal networks such as LinkedIn or Xing could be employed
to find new hospital staff or specialized personnel. In
day-to-day operations, another option is Yammer, a
sort of Twitter for businesses, to facilitate communication and work activities both inside and outside the
hospital. Also highly useful are blogs where patients
can actively describe their experience as users. This
in turn would provide inputs for continuous improvement of care-flows. Finally, the use of Facebook or
whatsApp by patients can expand their support networks, a proven success factor in the holistic treatment of certain illnesses.
Thus, social BPM is all about developing the use
of social communication tools and feedback between
stakeholders. In this sense, process transparency and
improvement are also partly the result of shared and
socially distributed experience.

Transparency Must Be Goal
It has been more than 28 years since Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter first discovered
that value chains are part of a larger value system and
that the links between activities are what add value
to an organization [5]. Yet transparency has yet to be
visualized as a value of central importance.

The goal of the health sector must be to achieve
transparency as a value by exploiting its organizational
strengths and applying technologies that can uncover
processes. In this effort, health system CEOs and senior
managers will find a valuable ally in value-driven business process management, for knowledge of processes
is the key to achieving a virtuous organizational culture
that is able to execute processes of excellence.

Author Information
Mathias Kirchmer is an Affiliated Faculty Member at
the University of Pennsylvania and former Managing
Director for Business Process Management (BPM) at
Accenture and IDS Scheer.
Sigifredo Laengle is a professor in the Department
of Management Control and Information Systems at
the University of Chile, and is also the institution's
Academic Director of Executive Education Diplomas
in Business Process Management and Process Mining. Email: slaengle@fen.uchile.cl.
Víctor Masías is a consultant in organizational
development for BPM projects at the University of
Chile and the Diego Portales University. Email:
vmasias@fen.chile.cl.

Acknowledgment
This work was partially supported by the Faculty of
Economics and Business, Universidad Diego Portales,
Manuel rodríguez Sur 253, 8370057, Santiago, Chile.

References

[1] P. Franz and M. Kirchmer, Value-Driven Business Process Management: The Value-Switch for Lasting Competitive Advantage.
McGraw-Hill, 2012.
[2] P. Franz and M. Kirchmer, "Social BPM: Engaging People in
Value-Driven BPM,"Accenture, May 11, 2012; http://www.accenture.
com/us-en/Pages/insight-social-bpm-engaging-people-in-valuedriven.aspx;accessed July 20, 2013.
[3] S. Quaglini, "Information and communication technology for process management in healthcare: A contribution to change the culture
of blame,"J. Software Maintenance and Evolution: research and Practice, vol. 22, no. 6-7, pp. 435-448, 2010.
[4] r.S. Mans, M.H. Schonenberg, M. Song, w.M.P. van der Aalst,
and P.J.M. Bakker, "Application of process mining in healthcare - A
case study in a Dutch hospital," Communications in Computer and
Information Science,vol. 25 (Biomedical Engineering Systems and
Technologies), part 4, pp. 425-438, 2008.
[5] M. Porter, Competitive Advantage. Free Press, 1985.
[6] PricewaterhouseCoopers. "HealthCast 2020: Creating a sustainable future," pwc, Jan. 2005; www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.
nsf/docid/0A43A30BC3DE09B6852572C10054ø1487;accessed July
20, 2013.
[7] L. Torres ramos, "Healthcare process analysis: Validation and
improvements of a data-bases method using process mining and visual
analytics," M.S. graduation project, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2009.
[8] w.M.P. van der Aalst, Process Mining: Discovery, Conformance
and Enhancement of Business Processes. Springer-Verlag, 2011.

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