Customer process-centric artefacts: a literature review

Companies that strive to provide customers with value in their processes benefit from artefacts that allow them to better understand customer processes (CPs) and to influence CPs in ways that are valuable for customers. Such CP-centric artefacts (CPCAs) carry various labels across research fields, which inhibit their application or utilization for developing further artefacts. This study provides a structured overview of existing CPCAs and investigates which research foundations promote their development.

Twenty-five CP-related keyword combinations are applied in several iterations using multiple (meta) search engines to identify papers on CPCAs across different research streams. Introduced research frameworks organize the identified artefacts and indicate research gaps and reasons why some approaches are more successful in developing CPCAs than others.

Existing CPCAs cover different aspects of CPs and utilize contextual factors of CPs to varying degrees to analyse or influence CPs. Research gaps are identified that indicate opportunities to develop further CPCAs. Taking instantiated methods in combination with CP-related descriptive knowledge as a foundation yields the highest potential for generating beneficial CPCAs.

This paper contributes to CP management literature by offering a foundation for the generation of CPCAs suitable for analysing and influencing CPs of end-consumers. This supports the establishment of a CP management aiming at optimizing both, interlinked business processes and CPs.