The effectiveness of workflow management systems: Predictions and lessons learned

Workflow management systems are widely used and reputable to improve organizational performance. The extent of this effect in practice, however, is not investigated in a quantitative, systematic manner. In this paper, the preliminary results are reported from a longitudinal, multi-case study into the effectiveness of workflow management technology. Business process improvement is measured in terms of lead time, service time, wait time, and resource utilization. Significant improvement of these parameters is predicted for almost all of the 16 investigated business processes from the six Dutch organizations participating in this study. In addition, this paper includes lessons learned with respect to the simulation of administrative business processes, data gathering for performance measurement, the nature of administrative business processes, and workflow management implementation projects.