Blockchain is a technology that allows for the trusted exchange of digital currency. In its initial incarnation, it focused on the trusted exchange of Bitcoins. Its emerging applications will support the trusted execution of transactions between autonomous organizations. Business process management (BPM) is a subfield of operations management that focuses on the design, monitoring, automation, and optimization of business processes. To understand how they come together, a couple of examples are in order.

Let’s say that you work for Company X. You turn in a timesheet every week that is processed by the payroll department, and you get a paycheck (either paper or electronic). Your pay is recorded as an accounts payable by the accounting department that is also responsible for ensuring that there is enough cash in the payroll account to cover the check. Although different departments are involved, they are part of the same organization, so you can be confident that the check won’t bounce, and the accounting department can be confident that your buddy in payroll won’t give you a big raise. This is a business process, and ensuring that these processes work properly in an organization is the focus of BPM.

Now let’s say that your paycheck is deposited at Bank Y, and you also have money invested with Mutual Fund Company Z. If your balance at Bank Y goes over a certain amount, you transfer some money to Mutual Fund Company Z and invest it. If your balance at Bank Y goes below a certain amount, you sell off some fund shares at Mutual Fund Company Z and have the money transferred into your bank account. You can do this today, but you have to check your balances and initiate any transfers yourself. It would be nice to automate it, but Bank Y and Mutual Fund Company Z are separate companies, and each would have to have assurances of the other that they would play by agreed-upon rules. In other words, they would have to trust each other. This is where blockchain comes in. A blockchain network is a trusted network that would allow for trusted business processes between autonomous companies. In addition, these interactions can be rule-based exchanges using blockchain’s smart contracts.

Clearly, this sort of thing is coming, but there is a snag. Most blockchain people know little about BPM, and most BPM people know little about blockchain. And there is a lot of work to be done that requires a solid understanding of both. Where we currently stand is the topic of this paper.

The paper addresses, at a very conceptual level, how blockchain and BPM might come together. It surveys the current state of research, highlighting some problems to be solved. And it offers some directions for future research. There are more than 30 authors bringing expertise from a variety of related areas and numerous citations for those who wish to dig deeper. A special nod goes to the final editor of the paper--it reads as though it’s written by one person.

If you are a BPM person and you start hearing rumblings about blockchain, or if you are a blockchain person and you start hearing rumblings about BPM across autonomous entities, you might want to read this paper as a starting point. Alternatively, if you are a researcher in either area and would like to attempt to solve some of the problems, this paper would be of interest to you as well.