Requirements Framework for Batch Processing in Business Processes

Business process automation improves organizations’ efficiency. In existing systems for business process automation, process instances run independently from each other. However, synchronizing instances for particular activities in a business process can reduce process execution costs. Only a few works exist to enable the so-called batch processing in business processes, which also lack a complete understanding of requirements. This paper provides a requirements analysis based on a literature review and real-world scenarios, taken from different domains. The resulting requirements framework gives an overview of aspects which need to be considered when developing a concept to integrate batch processing into business processes. Further, it fosters the comparison of existing solutions. The application of the framework shows that current approaches could be extended in terms of flexibility, user involvement, and multi-process support.