IT has turned out to be a key factor for the purposes of gaining maturity in Business Process Management (BPM). This book presents a worldwide investigation that was conducted among companies from the 'Forbes Global 2000' list to explore the current usage of software throughout the BPM life cycle and to identify the companies' requirements concerning process modelling. The responses from 130 companies indicate that, at the present time, it is mainly software for process description and analysis that is required, while process execution is supported by general software such as databases, ERP systems and office tools. The resulting complex system landscapes give rise to distinct requirements for BPM software, while the process modelling requirements can be equally satisfied by the most common languages (BPMN, UML, EPC).

Susanne Patig works at the Institute of Information Systems of the University of Bern, Switzerland. She holds a diploma in business administration from the University of Leipzig, Germany, a PhD in computer science and the permission for lecturing (Venia Legendi), both from the Otto-von-Guericke-University at Magdeburg, Germany.