DMR: Best in class process management requires a consistent performance measurement along the processes. How well do you believe the necessary performance KPIs in IT can be operationalized? What added value do business service management approaches offer in this context? 

L. Brecht: Business service management is a possible ­solution so that indicators can be measured at all. There are many companies which have defined indicators, but have not managed to take the step to operationalization, perhaps because the underlying IT systems are not flexible enough to collect process-oriented indicators. But in this case, a common error is to measure much too much. KPIs are measured because they can be measured, but not in terms of the question of whether they ­characterize the specific process or are strategically relevant. In the middle term, business service management can offer a solution here which collects exactly the right process-oriented measurement values. But I think that many companies still lack clean ­implementation and operationalization. Strategic goals change and must be broken down into strategic performance indicators and process performance indicators, all of which can be measured out of systems. There is certainly still a gap here. 

DMR: Modern IT systems have the ability to process intelligently gigantic quantities of process data within short periods of time. If it now becomes possible to actually link process management and IT via business service management, then it is already possible today, in theory, to model and monitor precisely all of the activities of a company. Do you see any major road blockers here? 

L. Brecht: I don’t see any road blockers from the technological point of view. But I believe there are two points which can become road blockers.  First of all, a company must ask itself whether it has the capability of conducting intelligent analyses with these data and of evaluating them with respect to possible process improvements. Providing analytical functionality in a company is an extreme shortcoming in companies. Second, there are factors which are dependent on the specific country. You can measure a lot, but not always draw all of the possible conclusions. You are embedded – I’ll say quite frankly – in labor unions which perhaps do not permit everything. That is a certain limitation, but it is specific to the country. This is a large road blocker in my view. If you go all the way as described in your question, you can ­monitor every single employee. You can measure how many transactions a worker conducts every day. How many ­transactions, for example, have been carried out when and how during the processing of an order. That is certainly walking a thin line.