Investigating Blockchain as Inter-firm Intermediary

Business process management (BPM) is concerned with the design, execution, monitoring and improvement of business processes. Companies widely use systems that support the enactment and execution of processes to streamline and automate intra-firm processes. The situation is different for the inter-firm processes due to the problems of joint design and a lack of mutual trust. This project aims to build processes models using blockchain to prove that blockchain technology can solve problems described above and shift the discourse in BPM research about how systems might enable the enactment, execution, monitoring or improvement of business process within or across business networks. The general purpose of this project is to develop management model of inter-firm process using blockchain technology. This model should demonstrate that usage of this technology is crucial for modern organizations. There are several objectives for the project to complete: • Study different approaches in creation of inter-firm business processes models • Define the problems faced by business in inter-firm process management • Study the blockchain technological aspect • Define how blockchain technology can help solve existing problems • Analyze existing models on blockchain of management of inter-organizational processes • Develop management model of inter-firm processes using blockchain technology The management model developed in this project is closely related to the traditional BPM lifecycle including the following phases: design, modeling, execution, monitoring, optimization and reengineering. Using the traditional BPM lifecycle as a framework of reference allows to discuss many incremental changes that blockchain technology might provide.