In this section, the setup of the experiment is formally introduced by defining subject, the object of study, factor and factors level, and threats to validity.
The explanation of each aspect is provided as follows:
1. Subject: The purpose of this experiment is to understand the BPM and CM methodological differences while dealing with an unstructured business process. Consid- ering the purpose of this experiment, the subject of this experiment is only one researcher who is also responsible for experiment setup as well as for experiment execution.
2. Object of Study: The object of study is an unstructured business process of insurance claim. The reason to consider the insurance claim process as the object of this experiment is due to the fact that an insurance claim process is quoted as an example of structured process [4] as well as an unstructured process[39].
In the insurance claim process, each claim request is usually different than the other one. As in case of auto claim, the claim request can vary from the crack in the side
mirrors, to an accident involving police, medical reports, witness reports and may be another insurance company as well. Since, the combinations and permutations of such real-time events are hard to predict, it is difficult to define the process model completely at design-time.
Following is the descriptions of insurance claim process [8].
Description of Insurance Claim Process: The insurance claim request starts when the insurance holder submits the claim request to the insurance company. Once the request is received, theclaim handler checks whether the claimer is a current policy holder of the company or not. If the claimer is not a current policy holder of the company, the claim request is rejected. If, in case, the claimer claims to own a policy type for which he is not paying premiums, the claimer is requested to make necessary changes in provided data. If the claimer is the policy holder of a company the claim request is registered and handed over to investigation manager. Investigation manager investigate the provided data for its accuracy and completeness. Moreover, he is also responsible to collect further relevant data. Depending on claim request, the data collection activity can require the decisions and data from many stakeholders e.g. police, hospital, traffic controller, auto repair, and witnesses. Once the data is collected, theinvestigation manager
needs to make a decision on whether the collected data is enough to make the final claim decision. In case, the collected data is not enough, more data will be requested. Otherwise, the claim process is handed-over todecision maker. Further analysis of claim request is performed based on the collected data. Considering the nature of the claim, a single person can make a decision or a panel need to collaborate to reach to the final decision. The claim settlement is made only if the claim is accepted otherwise the claimer is informed about the rejection of claim and the claim process is closed.
3. Factors and Factor levels: The factor or independent variable of this experiment is process support paradigm with two factor level which are BPM and CM. Bizagi modeller and Bizagi Studio [40] is selected as BPMS to analyse the BPM capabilities. According to Gartner magic quadrant[41], Bizagi is one of a visionary vendor of BPMS. As a CMS, Cognoscenti software tool is used. Cognoscenti [42] is one of few CMS that is available free of cost for research purpose [39].
4. Response Variable: The response or dependant variable of this experiment is ‘effort of implementing an unstructured process’. The usage effort will be measured by implementing an insurance claim process on BPM based tool Bizagi and then on CM based tool Cognoscenti.
5. Analysis: Analysis procedure provides the design of the analysis process of experi- ment. Based on the goals and response variable of experiment, the analysis design can be a mathematical model, a statistical measurement or a simple checklist of tasks. In this experiment, it is difficult to quantitatively gauge the effort of implementing unstruc- tured business process as well as to assess the differences between BPM and CM process management methodology. Hence, certain aspect of process management is proposed for analyses purpose. These process management aspects include (a) process/case mod- elling, (b) data management (c) business rules specification (d) user roles specification (e) process/case progress view (f) process/ case control (g) activities execution and (h) process/case setup effort.
6. Threats to Validity: For any experiment, there are some aspects that can influence the final outcome of the experiment. Few threats to validity for this experiment are as follows:
1. In this experiment, it is planned to access the difference in methodology of BPM and CM based on their software suites. However, the features provided by certain software platform can influence the results of this experiment.
2. The experiment has very limited subjects, i.e. only one researcher. The knowledge of researcher about BPM and CM can influence the final results.
3. The object of this study i.e. insurance claim process can have possible biases for one process support paradigm over the other.
To mitigate the effect of these threats, some additional steps are performed. For example, Bizagi provide the functionality of process modelling while Cognoscenti lack this feature. To bring balance of functionality between both platforms, Microsoft Visio stencil was created and used for modelling the case using CMMN. The second threat of validity is mitigated by presenting the results of experiment to two experienced BPM practitioners as well as to three experienced researchers. The third and final threat of validity is
mitigated by carefully selecting a business process, which is mentioned as an example of structured and unstructured business process in [4] and [39] respectively.