ProcessLab

ProcessLab was founded in 2005. It is a research cluster of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management located in Frankfurt a.M.. Their field of work is business process management of financial service providers, i.e. banks, insurance companies, and related. Within this field ProcessLab works on different research areas in close cooperation with experts from leading companies and universities. The aim of ProcessLab is the transfer of know-how from theory to practice and vice versa. This is mainly accomplished by projects as a part of PhD theses.
Organization
Head of ProcessLab is Prof Dr Juergen Moormann who is a professor of banking with Frankfurt School since 1995. Furthermore, Prof Dr Matthias Goeken, junior professor of business informatics, is an associated member of the Lab. The team of ProcessLab currently consists of three postgraduate students, one research fellow (postdoc) and two student research assistants.
Activities
To foster the exchange between academia and practice ProcessLab provides a platform for information and discussion in business process management in the financial services industry. As a part of its activities a number of events are offered:
ProcessLab Colloquia
Practitioners as well as academics are invited by ProcessLab to give a lecture about topics related to business process management. Subsequent to the presentation a discussion with the participants of the colloquium provides further insights into the presented topics. ProcessLab Colloquia are conducted four times a year.
ProcessLab Conference
The conference is the main event of the Lab and takes place once a year. Within the scope of this full-day event high profile practitioners and academics report and discuss new findings in the area of business process management for financial service providers.
ProcessLab meets Students
The target audience of this event are the students of Frankfurt School. Once a year the presenter imparts his/her knowledge on the basis of current examples. This gives the students an understanding the importance of process management in real life and shows them the relevance of the research efforts and cooperations of ProcessLab.
Six Sigma Workshops
The participants of these workshops deal with selected topics in the area of the process improvement methodology Six Sigma. During these workshops experts can share and discuss their projects, achievements and experiences in this field. To ensure a high level debate the workshops are limited to Black Belts and Master Black Belts. Six Sigma Workshops are performed quarterly.
Research Projects
The research projects of ProcessLab are:
* Process oriented service identification from a business point of view: The aim of the project is to develop a method which facilitates the identification of services in the context of service oriented architectures. Especially, the composition of methods depending on certain context variables (situation specific) is focused in this project. In particular, the aspects of standardization and reusability are under observation.
* Process laboratory to improve operational control of service processes : This project aims at the development of a process laboratory to analyze service processes with respect to improvements in operational control. A process laboratory is an artificial environment which allows for an experimental analysis of processes. The process under analysis can be transferred into the simulation environment of the process laboratory. Here, options for operational control can be simulated using different production scenarios. The comparison is based on typical indicators for process performance like cost, time and quality.
* Identification of inefficiency drivers in business processes: The objective of this project is the development of a methodology that allows a systematic and objective identification of drivers of inefficiency in banking business processes. Starting point is the measurement of process efficiency by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Based on this, existing DEA-approaches for identifying determinants of inefficiency are examined for their application to a banking business processes.
* Localization of company boundaries in the context of outsourcing decisions: The aim of the project is to develop a decision support model concerning business process outsourcing. This type of outsourcing affects the placement of interorganizational process interfaces. If business processes are outsourced, the boundaries of the company will change. Following the decision support model, developed in this project, allows the identification of the optimal process interfaces in terms of costs before the actual outsourcing contract is closed.
Further research areas are the application of Six Sigma in the financial services sector and Customer Centricity in Banks (C2B):
* Six Sigma in the Financial Services Industry: This research area comprises a number of activities, including the following. The largest survey regarding the application of Six Sigma in the financial services industry was conducted by ProcessLab in 2008. In addition, the role-play KreditSim was developed by the Lab. Furthermore, a book on Six Sigma in the financial services industry was published in its third edition in 2009.
* Customer Centricity in Banks (C²B): Customer orientation is an essential element of a best-practice bank. The research area C²B deals with customer centricity in banks which substantially exceeds simple customer orientation. In particular, it is focused on new approaches to delight banking customers in order to ensure a long-lasting relationship between him and the bank. The starting point for customer centricity is to understand the concept of customer processes prevalent in retail banking, private wealth banking, and corporate banking.
C2B is composed of the following modules:
*The identification of customer processes and approaches how to support these by a bank
*The integration of customer processes with the business processes and structures of banks
*Developing approaches for the creation of value adding services based on customer processes
*The analysis and support of customer processes at contact channels of a bank (branches, call centers, internet, mobile phone)
Role-play KreditSim
KreditSim is a role-play which simulates the loan administration process. Using KreditSim the participants analyze and improve the specific process sequences by means of the Six Sigma methodology. In trainings and further education programs on process improvement and particularly the application of Six Sigma usually examples from logistics or manufacturing are used. KreditSim allows the transfer of process improvement opportunities and Six Sigma to practitioners from banks and insurance companies. Pursued in a training or seminar, KreditSim helps to establish a “thinking in processes” in a company. Because of the application to their own working area KreditSim helps to sensitize the employees for problems in process design and execution and the need to solve these problems. KreditSim is available in different languages. For insurance companies the adjusted version InsuranceSim is offered.
Best Process Award
In cooperation with the banking journal “geldinstitute” ProcessLab confers the Best Process Award. In this competition banks and insurance companies with excellent business processes will be awarded. The competition starts in spring 2010 and will be conducted every two years.
Partner
ProcessLab is sponsored by Commerzbank AG, Cirquent GmbH, and Siemens AG. In addition, the Lab cooperates with iGrafx as a software partner. In addition, ProcessLab collaborates with academic partners in Germany and abroad, particularly with the universities of Leipzig, Regensburg, and Saarbrücken as well as with the Queensland University of Technology (BPM Research Group) in Brisbane and the University of Hong Kong (KM & EL LAB).

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