Vuvu Nqampoyi

Lisa F Seymour
email: lisa.seymour@uct.ac.za

David Sanka Laar

Effective Business Process Management Centres of Excellence

Keywords: BPM, BPM Governance, Centre of Excellence, Team Effectiveness

This paper explains and describes how Business process management (BPM) Centre's of Excellence (CoEs) can be effective. Thematic analysis of data collected from two large South African financial services corporations with operational CoEs produced a model based on the Integrated Team Effectiveness Model that shows the factors influencing effectiveness of a CoE. The services the CoE provides as well as the industry standards it chooses to align with were found to have the largest impact. This research provides practical value by highlighting factors organisations can include in their planning and be mindful of when establishing or improving the services of a CoE. The BPM CoE Effectiveness Model presented in this work is a theoretical contribution in this field and an extension to the ITEM model previously used in healthcare.

Introduction

Due to economic changes and pressures, organisations have become interested in how to enhance their business processes in order to improve business performance [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. Business Process Management (BPM) is used to address this challenge. BPM refers to all efforts made by an organisation to analyse, define and continuously improve its fundamental activities [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. Through BPM, an organisation can gain as well as sustain a competitive advantage [START_REF] Niehaves | BPM Capability Development-a Matter of Contingencies[END_REF].

In order to succeed in the implementation of BPM, six core elements or success factors have been suggested [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF]. One of these elements is BPM governance. BPM governance allows the organisation to establish clear roles and responsibilities to ensure accountability in the implementation of BPM. The governance mechanism must provide guidance on process design and decision making for all processes in the organisation [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF]. BPM governance is essential to ensure that BPM is embedded throughout an organisation [START_REF] Doebeli | Using BPM Governance to Align Systems and Practice[END_REF].

Although organisations have invested significantly in BPM initiatives, there have been challenges in the implementation of BPM. One of these challenges has been how to ensure that the delivery and sustainability of implementing BPM initiatives are consistent throughout the organisation [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. This challenge is one that can be solved by establishing a BPM Centre of Excellence [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF] which we will refer to as a CoE.

The definition of a CoE is a central organisational team that is required to market and embed BPM initiatives, perpetuating the benefits of BPM throughout an organisation. A CoE has been identified as indispensable when attempting to implement BPM governance in an organisation [START_REF] Paim | Process Governance, Part II[END_REF]. It is also described as an important tool for the implementation of BPM within an organisation and it is a critical success factor [START_REF] Levina | Reusable Decision Models Supporting Organizational Design in Business Process Management[END_REF].

Yet, in a global survey [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Centers of Excellence Survey -2012[END_REF], it was found that while organisations had established CoEs the majority of the centres were only beginning to exert some valuable influence. For example in a case study where a CoE had been established in the South African IT service sector, the CoE had not added significant value [START_REF] Siriram | A Soft and Hard Systems Approach to Business Process Management[END_REF]. Researchers have described the recommended setup of a CoE, including the required services [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF][START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Jesus | BPM Center of Excellence: the Case of a Brazilian Company[END_REF]. BPM methods, tools and techniques have also been covered extensively in academic as well as in the practitioner literature. However a gap exists in determining how to ensure that a BPM team provides the value that it is expected to deliver [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF].

Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine the factors that can contribute to the effectiveness of a CoE within an organisation and provide organisations with relevant suggestions to help them realise the full benefits of a CoE. Therefore the following research questions are proposed:

• What are the characteristics of an effective CoE?

• What factors support the effectiveness of a CoE?

To answer these questions, a literature review on related works is presented followed by research methodology and then the data analysis and findings.

Literature Review

The purpose of BPM governance is to ensure that the strategy of the organisation is aligned with its business processes [START_REF] Paim | Process Governance, Part II[END_REF]. BPM governance ensures that transparent and appropriate accountability is established with regard to the roles and responsibilities of BPM [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF] ensuring that initial improvement and design efforts are coordinated and that business processes continue to operate optimally through continuous improvement efforts [START_REF] Markus | Business Process Governance[END_REF]. BPM Governance is also concerned with regulatory compliance and managing risk, increasing an organisation's efficiency and accountability as well as providing measurement for decision makers [START_REF] Jeston | Management by Process[END_REF]. BPM governance in an organisation cannot be easily separated from managing the people, the technology and the functions that perform the business processes [START_REF] Paim | Process Governance, Part II[END_REF]. Therefore BPM governance is challenging to implement but is crucial for the success of business processes [START_REF] Jeston | Management by Process[END_REF][START_REF] Spanyi | Business Process Management Governance[END_REF].

In order to ensure business processes are customer focused and efficient, business process success does not depend only on improving the business processes, but also on structural changes [START_REF] Markus | Business Process Governance[END_REF]. Thus the greatest challenge for organisations is to align the existing functional structure of the organisation to a process governance structure [START_REF] Jeston | Management by Process[END_REF]. This can be achieved using different kinds of mechanisms and the way in which the organisation is structured affects the method of process governance [START_REF] Markus | Business Process Governance[END_REF]. One such mechanism is the establishment of a CoE [START_REF] Paim | Process Governance, Part II[END_REF].

The Effectiveness of a CoE

A CoE is a central organisational team [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. Teams can be multidimensional and consist of processes and structures that depend on the composition of the team, the type of work expected of it, the scope of work as well as the interactions of the team [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. The effectiveness of a team refers to the extent to which the team successfully meets its objectives [START_REF] Eccles | The Impact of Collocation on the Effectiveness of Agile IS Development Teams[END_REF]. In order to measure effectiveness, high level measures such as organisational effectiveness can be used. However, these measures may not take into account the specific goals set by the team. Research has not provided a clear direction on how effective teams are created and maintained [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. The head of a BPM team is tasked with ensuring that business performance of the organisation is improved by establishing efficient processes [START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF]. However, at present there are also no clear suggestions on how increased performance is measured. The organisational context directly influences the effectiveness of the team and also determines under which initial conditions the team will be effective. The resources, incentives and rewards as well as the policy and social context are also influences [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF].

Organisational Context

Establishing a CoE requires a number of organisational changes, including the structure of the organisation [START_REF] Levina | Reusable Decision Models Supporting Organizational Design in Business Process Management[END_REF]. The structure is changed to align with the business environment and the subsystems are aligned with the organisation's strategy to ensure the organisation performs effectively [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. The CoE is an independent department with responsibility spanning across the organisation [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. If the CoE reports to the IT department a misalignment with the strategic objectives of the organisation may be caused [START_REF] Levina | Reusable Decision Models Supporting Organizational Design in Business Process Management[END_REF]. The CoE should have all the expert knowledge in a centralised place, and provide and disseminates information as well as manages requests from different areas of the organisation [START_REF] Levina | Reusable Decision Models Supporting Organizational Design in Business Process Management[END_REF]. BPM maturity models have been developed to assist organisations achieve business process excellence [START_REF] Looy | A Conceptual Framework and Classification of Capability Areas for Business Process Maturity[END_REF]. BPM maturity models suggests that the level of BPM maturity of the organisation influences how the CoE is structured [START_REF] Niehaves | Business Process Governance: A Comparative Study of Germany and Japan[END_REF]. In organisations with high BPM maturity level, the CoE is proactive [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. However, some researchers recommend that organisations which operate in low dynamic environments, should only aim for low BPM maturity, as the costs to setup and maintain additional BPM capabilities may not be worth the effort. Achieving the highest level of maturity may not necessarily be suitable for the environment of every organisation [START_REF] Niehaves | Business Process Governance: A Comparative Study of Germany and Japan[END_REF].

Another effect of implementing BPM initiatives is change in the culture of the organisation in that the attitude and behaviour towards business process improvements changes [START_REF] Niehaves | BPM Capability Development-a Matter of Contingencies[END_REF]. Culture is comprised of invisible values with which an organisation identifies [START_REF] Vom Brocke | Culture in Business Process Management: A Literature review[END_REF]. A process oriented culture implies that the organisation values BPM initiatives and promotes business process effectiveness [START_REF] Looy | A Conceptual Framework and Classification of Capability Areas for Business Process Maturity[END_REF]. Organisations that value customer orientation ensure that the customer is considered the ultimate goal of business processes [START_REF] Vom Brocke | Culture in Business Process Management: A Literature review[END_REF]. To ensure their BPM success organisations strive to maintain values like customer focus, empowerment and innovation [START_REF] Looy | A Conceptual Framework and Classification of Capability Areas for Business Process Maturity[END_REF]. This is in contrast to organisations where business units function in silos, resulting in customer processes that the organisation does not understand well [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. Excellence as a value in the organisation promotes the culture of a workforce dedicated to eliminating shortcomings as well as maintaining optimum performance and quality in all business processes [START_REF] Vom Brocke | Culture in Business Process Management: A Literature review[END_REF]. The organisation adapts and fosters a culture that is willing to change [START_REF] Rosemann | The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management[END_REF].

Services of a CoE

Task design depends on the task type (service) and features of the task provided by the CoE. One of the services of the CoE is Strategic alignment which ensures that all processes are aligned to the organisational strategy. A vision and methods of achieving the vision are drawn up with milestones [START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF]. Strategic alignment also ensures that business processes work together [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. The CoE needs to be well equipped to provide the strategy committee with performance information on organisational processes as well as advise the committee on different strategic opportunities [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF].

With the implementation of BPM, organisations begin to view themselves from the value chain perspective and realise their performance is linked to the performance of their core processes [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. The CoE has the ability to provide a wide variety of process measures and/or process analytics making them valuable [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. Appropriate and cost effective methods need to be selected for collecting and analysing process performance data [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. Process performance, as a service provided by the CoE, includes defining how the business processes will be measured as well as measuring, reporting and monitoring the process performance [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. The CoE can then assist the organisation in determining why certain business processes are not performing well and is therefore in a position to suggest improvement solutions [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

Process maturity assessment is another important service in which the CoE assesses the BPM maturity of the organisation on an ongoing basis [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. This helps in defining accurate BPM vision, strategy and a roadmap [START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF]. Currently, there is a wide variety of maturity models which differ in their supporting methodology, foundation in theory, depth and designs, although they are all based on critical success factors and assist with designing a BPM roadmap [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

In order to succeed in monitoring, controlling and improving processes, an organisation first needs to understand their processes. This can be achieved via the process architecture service by defining the value chain and all the processes that are linked to the organisation's value chain and how they interact with each other, or it may be more in-depth, including performance measures, process managers and links to the organisational mission, vision and strategies [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF][START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. It is advisable to have a repository to maintain links between the process artefacts and allow for easy updates [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. Some of these artefacts may be maintained by other units requiring a close link with management and modification of the enterprise architecture [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

Another important task is Process Improvements and Change. These focus on designing the best version of a business process, taking into account compliance, financial impact, risk assessments [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF] and improvement opportunities [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. The CoE then manages all process change initiatives in the organisation [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. This ensures a smooth transition in the procedures and reporting lines in the organisation [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

There is also the project support service which ensures that process thinking, methodology and frameworks are applied at all times during the course of projects [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

The CoE is also tasked with providing training and education service to all employees, particularly process managers, equipping them to manage processes daily [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. This task is positively related to the demand and success of BPM [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. The CoE is the marketer of BPM within the organisation and provides information about policy guidelines, procedures, benefits realised from implementations, and how far in the BPM strategy roadmap the organisation has travelled [START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF].

Organisations are increasingly required to comply with process legislation depending on the industry and the country, Sarbanes Oxley being one such legislation for financial institutions [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. Process Compliance involves ensuring that legislation is built into the process architecture and that process models are maintained and updated regularly [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. The CoE needs to have an in-depth understanding of the legislation which the organisation needs to comply with, and customise BPM techniques, methods and tools to take different standards into account [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF].

CoE Roles

The work performed by the CoE has been described in great depth by researchers [START_REF] Jesus | A Framework for a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF][START_REF] Jesus | BPM Center of Excellence: the Case of a Brazilian Company[END_REF][START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. However, research also cautions that the labels given to these services may differ from organisation to organisation and many of the services specified could also be offered by other teams in the organisation [START_REF] Rosemann | The Service Portfolio of a BPM Center of Excellence[END_REF]. Various roles in a CoE have been identified and discussed by researchers, and include BPM Executive [START_REF] Jeston | Management by Process[END_REF], Process Owner, Process Architect, Process Analyst [START_REF] Doebeli | Using BPM Governance to Align Systems and Practice[END_REF]; Head of BPM, Process Expert, Process Coordinator, Process Modeller, Enterprise Architect and Change Management Advisor [START_REF] Scheer | The Process of Business Process Management[END_REF]. However some roles are not adequately supported, and the literature is still full of contradictions [START_REF] Niehaves | BPM Capability Development-a Matter of Contingencies[END_REF]. Further research should focus on the team composition in relation to the processes and outcomes to assist in understanding what expertise is required in a team and how it can be organised [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. The team needs to be able to function well together interpersonally as well as technically [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF].

Team Processes and Traits

While some researchers confirm that a positive team influences the effectiveness of the team only a few studies explain how to create the enabling conditions [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. A framework for understanding the multi-dimensional relationships within health care teams, named an Integrated Team Effectiveness Model (ITEM) has been developed [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF].The groupings and relationships in ITEM are shown in Fig. 1. Yet a gap exists with regards to beneficial BPM team-processes and traits, although it is agreed that the people available to support BPM affect the structure and processes of the CoE [START_REF] Levina | Reusable Decision Models Supporting Organizational Design in Business Process Management[END_REF].

Team Effectiveness Objective Outcomes Subjective Outcomes

Team Processes

Team

Psycho-Social Traits

Task Design Task Type Task Features Team Composition

Organisational Context

Fig. 1. ITEM categories adapted from [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF] 3

Research Methodology

The research employed a descriptive and explanatory approach to describe CoE effectiveness and explain the factors influencing effectiveness. A case study was performed of 2 large South African banks with CoEs. These banks operate across the continent and the sector operates in a very competitive environment with a constant requirement to improve business performance [START_REF] Trkman | The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management[END_REF]. The sector is well developed as the 2015-2016 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Survey ranks South Africa 12th globally in terms of Financial Market Development [START_REF]The Global Competitiveness Report[END_REF]. The researchers applied judgement sampling, particularly the key informant sampling technique [START_REF] Marshall | Sampling for Qualitative Research[END_REF]. Table 1 lists the roles of the participants in each organisation. The codename P1-P7 is used to identify the 7 participants but retain their anonymity. Semi-structured interviews [START_REF] Myers | The Qualitative Interview in IS Research: Examining the Craft[END_REF] were recorded and later transcribed. The researchers made use of notes during the interviews to document points that might not be heard in the recording, for example, body language. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes [START_REF] Fereday | Demonstrating Rigor using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development[END_REF]. The first iteration of coding yielded a total of 183 themes. The third round of coding reduced the themes to 35 basic themes which were then categorised the themes using ITEM [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF].

Results and Discussion

This section discusses the findings of this research supported by quotes from the participants and from the documentation that was used. In the data analysis it emerged that some themes were more prevalent than others. Figure 2 shows the resultant BPM CoE effectiveness model. Included in the model are the basic themes with the number of quotes or empirical observations for each theme across all data sources. The model and themes will now be discussed.

Fig. 2. BPM Centre of Excellence Effectiveness Model

Team Effectiveness

The literature on team effectiveness has failed to clearly specify what teams are expected to be effective at and has not taken into account the specific goals that a team sets for itself [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. However in the findings of this research the objective outcomes as well as the subjective outcomes of the CoE are very clear.

Objective Outcomes. With regards to the objective outcomes the most prevalent theme is Customer Experience where the better the Customer Experience the more effective the CoE. Thus the CoE is required to engineer the best customer experience for the client: "One of the key things we are always trying to drive is customer experience" (P1), "We're trying to get to a point where we deliver consistent customer experiences obviously consistently great" (P2).

Another prevalent theme that emerged is financial impact. This means if the CoE is effective it should translate into cost savings or revenue generation to the organisation, as the processes of the organisation are more efficient:

"People in corporate really want to hear that's how you're going to make money.

And we were able to link having a process Centre of Excellence to this money" (P1). "So the performance is measured based on the targets that have been set which is primarily cost reduction and what are the savings to the bank" (P2).

A large part of the work of the CoE is to ensure that there are efficient processes to support the business of the organisation. Thus, efficient processes are used as a subjective outcome to measure effectiveness of the CoE:

"By making it more efficient, by increasing the levels of automation, by giving our dealers and our salespeople more capacity" (P5), "We as a team will drive efficiencies across all the operations" (P7). Enabling business was found to be a measure of effectiveness of the CoE. This refers to enabling the business team to attract more customers with the same number of staff. This objective works hand in hand with efficient processes.

"We are sort of the enablers to the business" (P5),

The last objective outcome for the Effectiveness of a CoE is delivering value. A CoE cannot be seen as effective if it is not seen to be delivering value to the organisation.

"

you're kind of dead if you start thinking about capability without delivery" (P1), "because in business what happens is once they see especially if they start to see delivery then they get excited and then they give you more" (P2)

Subjective Outcomes. The CoE can also evaluate its performance based on subjective outcomes. Measuring performance of an internal process is done and is used as an outcome of the CoE.

"So the simple measurement for process Centre of Excellence really it's the effectiveness and the efficiency of the processes that we design" (P4). "Whether the process performance is improved so where we have dashboards we can say okay productivity was at x and the baseline and now it's at y" (P5).

Managing the value chain across the organisation is another subjective outcome that emerged from the research. It is noted in the literature that with the implementation of BPM, organisations begin to view themselves from the value chain and realise that their performance is linked to the performance of their core processes [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. The CoE designs and manages the interactions and processes along the value chain.

"So our role is really to look at all the initiatives we are trying to drive across the value chain" (P4). "thing is that we actually need them to use the stuff to actually help us to manage the whole value chain (Training)" (P1).

Managing change that occurs as a result of the CoE is another theme that emerged as a subjective outcome. Managing change can also refer to the culture change that may be occurring in terms of the enhancements the CoE is trying to achieve.

"the change management that's what we are actually driving as well" (P4). "other departments in the organisation focus on running the bank initiative, the CoE takes care of change in the bank" (P6). "it's the mind sets of people so we have to start with the DNA or the culture change" (P5). "We also look at measuring people on the success of Lean for managers, so that's the culture change how many change managers actually identifying and implementing initiatives" (P5).

Task Types

It emerged that the task types of the CoE team greatly depends on the kind of services delivered. Literature states that the governance mechanism must provide guidance on process design and decision making for all processes in the organisation (3). The services that emerged included process modelling, process design, process improvement and increasing the process maturity level of the organisation. Some of these services are as a result of aligning to industry standards.

"we then design processes to say this is how you could provide the service that you want to provide to the customers" (P4). "so that's basically part of our continuous improvement function" (P2).

"check if there are any as-is processes currently on the system if there's no processes then get those mapped" (P3). "We said we would move from where we think we are Bank 1 level 1.5 to level 4 where you get standardised processes consistent in 36 months" (P1).

The Task Type also depends on the Scope of Work. The importance and challenges of BPM governance increases with increasing scope of the business processes and the greater the number of functional units that are impacted by a business process the greater the challenges [START_REF] Markus | Business Process Governance[END_REF].

"your big projects which are your transform projects...technically span more than 6 months"(P2), The type of work was found to depend on how the work is broken down and varies depending on the service.

"So where you are introducing incremental change you do a CI project" (P2). Also, the Task Type is affected by the CoE outputs, in terms of the documents such as business cases that are produced. It depends on how the work is broken down in order to deliver those services.

"we will prepare documents, which are required with all the findings" (P7).

Lastly, Innovation has an influence on the type of work that the CoE produces. The CoE personnel are required to be innovative in how they think of the processes of the organisation and this informs the type of work that they produce.

"Will be competition within the bank so all the process improvements will be approved over there and the best project will win" (P7). "those guys are innovating across process lines not across product lines" (P1).

Task Features

Task features refer to the characteristics of the work being carried out and many studies have overlooked how these affect team functioning [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. In this research, a number of factors have been discovered that contribute to the task features. One of these is aligning to industry standards; the use of industry standards seems to ensure that everyone on the team has a clear understanding of what needs to be done. Good practice recommends defining process standards and linking business processes to information technology [START_REF] Doebeli | Using BPM Governance to Align Systems and Practice[END_REF]. There is great emphasis on the use of well-known methodologies to perform the work of the CoE.

"we have pretty much had to align if you think about the generic standards" (P1), "defined methodologies that we apply like lean and lean six sigma" (P5), The use of tools within the CoE ensures that the work is guided and uniformly performed. Tools also help with aligning to industry standards "We're currently using ARIS," (P3), "primarily the modelling systems are used so one would be System Architect" (P6), "we had to get a whole lot on the tools side, get proper process mapping tools" (P1).

Another important characteristic of the work of the CoE is providing accessible information. This refers to availability of information that is required for the work of the CoE, "a SharePoint kind of system where the guys share information" (P1), "Intranet has got in terms of information on how to do some stuff so one could always go in there and look at information" (P2), Autonomy of roles is another feature of their tasks. It refers to the ability of each role within the CoE to make own decisions and work independently of the team.

"Each individual works on his project, you can take your decision because you're the right person on the project" (P6), "where we are right now the guys are quite comfortable to really make decisions without consultation" (P4),

Team Composition

The Team Composition is one of the factors that influence the effectiveness of the CoE. This refers to the capabilities of the team and the capabilities the team requires.

The literature referred to roles rather than capabilities within the CoE, however from what has emerged in this research it seems to be the capabilities within the team that are required and not the roles. "We kind of sourced a lot of these guys from manufacturing companies" (P1), "I am not a permanent employee of bank 2, so I am a contractor" (P6), "it's got different kinds of people with different kinds of experiences, different backgrounds" (P3), "to have process thinking people, people with logical thinking, people who can really build relationship by doing the right things and flexible people" (P4).

Team Structure

Team Structure emerged as one of the characteristics not accounted for in ITEM although reference is made to the fact that a team is made up of structures. In a 2015 survey clear responsibilities was a top 5 ranked success factor [START_REF] Höhne | Business Process Management Study[END_REF]. This assertion is supported in this study in that the team structure has an influence on everyone understanding their role and responsibilities and is an important influence on the effectiveness of the CoE. The team structure consists of the way the team is structured, allocated and their reporting lines.

"We currently report to the head of enablement basically an operations executive that sits on the management board" (P5) "We have structured them by value chain horizontal rather than by products" (P1), "People are allocated across different spaces, in different domains" (P7).

Team Processes

Team processes are positively associated with perceived team effectiveness [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. The most prevalent theme that emerged is that of training for the team, although in the literature training is only suggested as a service that the CoE provides. Aligning to Industry standards results in required training for the team on those industry standards.

"basically we trained everyone on Lean six sigma black belt" (P5) Avenues for collaboration is another prevalent theme, where the team has frequent meetings and forums to discuss issues, get support and share what each member of the team is working on. Social media tools have created alternative ways of collaboration.

"We have a WhatsApp group where we collaborate..." (P2), "we have a working session on a Thursday, which is like for 3 to four hours" (P3), "through our weekly forums ... they present their stuff" (P4). Stakeholder involvement in the work of the CoE is an important team process that impacted CoE effectiveness. This is supported by a 2015 survey identifying integration of important stakeholders as one of the top 5 success factors [START_REF] Höhne | Business Process Management Study[END_REF].

"key part of our role is to make sure that we manage expectations" (P2), "we work with the operations people… the heads of business units" (P5), "We like to think of these internal people as really stakeholders you need to manage" (P1).

The style of management affects the way in which the team works together and how decisions are made within the team, and generally how issues are resolved.

"As and when there is something we need to talk about we just gather at each other's desk and then we pick up the conversation and then we deal with that" (P4), "You can address them with your manager especially if its availability of stakeholders where you would then have to escalate" (P3), "we've got open door policy like all the way up to the Head" (P2). Communication, project prioritisation as well as conflict resolution were also themes that emerged from the data. Positive communication patterns and low conflict levels are characteristics of effective teams [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. The data revealed that there were many channels for communication and that communication in the team can be done at many levels.

Team Traits

Team traits are practices that have been internalised by the CoE and that have stabilised over time. Team Traits that emerged included accountability, team culture and team understanding. A clear understanding of the responsibilities of the CoE and what each role in the centre is accountable for is required.

"The process steward basically runs the task so to speak and they hold the business relationship" (P2), "process engineer for each of the departments is responsible for that whole process" (P5),

The team culture was referred to as process driven and delivery focused: "So we are delivery focused" (P2), "I mean we are more a process driven department and we try to really entrench the culture of process thinking within the organisation" (P4).

The team understanding refers to unspoken rules and procedures that the team knows. These form part of the team traits. The team had a tacit understanding of when approval and formal methods were not needed.

"your value chain lead will give you the project so you don't necessarily need approval in that sense because they have already discussed it with business" (P3), "depending on the complexity of each initiative we can follow the full methodology or in some cases we just do a rapid assessment and you get to the solution you implement it" (P4).

Organisational Context

While organisational structure and culture affect the team's outcomes, few studies have focused on context [START_REF] Lemieux-Charles | What do we Know about Health Care Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature[END_REF]. Firstly factors within the organisation that drive the need for a CoE were classified as CoE drivers.

"the only way you get a predictable, consistent, standardised customer experience is if you actually engineer the processes to deliver it" (P1), "that team basically looks after the target states where you want to take the organisation" (P4).

The second factor was clear goals set by the organisation for the team and then cascaded down to each individual within the team.

"Main target or goal for us is to get the bank self-driven in running these efficiencies" (P7), "so we said we would move from where we think we are Bank level 1.5 to level 4 where you get standardised processes consistent in 36 months. (Five stages of BPM Capability)" (P1). Support from management at ExCo level is a reinforcement of the two factors above, as it highlights the importance of achieving these goals. Top management support was identified as the key enabler of success in BPM in a 2015 survey [START_REF] Höhne | Business Process Management Study[END_REF].

"I also form part of the strategy ExCo which is very important so that this is seen as very strategic and you part of shaping the strategy" (P1), "so the top management we'll discuss the challenges we'll discuss the objectives and approach the management once we'll get a buy in from them"(P7).

It is common for organisations to provide training to all members that work with processes, including managers at the operational level, in order to equip them to manage processes daily [START_REF] Harmon | Business Process Change: a Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals[END_REF]. Although training for the organisation is only described as a service that the CoE provides, it affects the effectiveness of the team. Training creates awareness and provides a conducive environment for the CoE to operate in.

"what the Process Centre of Excellence does is to conscientise people around doing things better" (P2), "so the leadership programmes, there's programs for middle managers, there's programs for newly appointed managers, you've got programmes for staff as well, that's just internal programme" (P4), "going forward we will be training each and every team or each and every individual within the bank so that they can run their own efficiencies" (P7).

Resultant Model

The research identified that the effectiveness of the CoE is determined by a number of interrelated factors. This is shown in Fig. 2. The Organisational Context lays the foundation for the CoE and provides the reasons for its existence. It sets the goals that need to be achieved by the CoE and ensures that the Centre has the necessary support required from senior management in order for it to be effective. The Organisational Context influences the task design as well as the team structure.

The Team Structure influences the work that is done in the team such as the task Design. This is not in ITEM but describes the reporting line of the CoE and how the resources are allocated.

The Task Design includes the type of work that the CoE performs, how the tasks differ from other tasks, what capabilities that the CoE has and how the team works together. The services provided by the CoE and the alignment with industry standards are the dominant elements in task design. This research suggests that capabilities of the team are more important than their roles due to the fact that different roles can be used for the same capabilities. The Task design in turn affects the team processes, traits and effectiveness.

The Team Processes are processes that are unique to the team. They directly affect the effectiveness of the team. Collaboration, training and stakeholder involvement are the most important processes of the team. The team processes also affect the team traits and team effectiveness.

The Team Traits are unspoken rules in the team. The accountability, culture and team understanding are all embedded in the team and are part of the makeup of the team. The team traits affect the team processes and the perceived team effectiveness.

The Team Effectiveness is measured and identified by how the CoE views itself and how the team is viewed by the organisation. The organisation has certain expectations of the CoE `that convince the organisation of the effectiveness of this team, the dominant factor being customer experience. The members of the CoE also have their own measures that ensure that the team is working optimally and is effective such as measures of process performance.

Generalisability and Limitations.

The model presented in this paper focuses on the effectiveness of the CoE team and is limited in that it does not extend to other potential factors such as business strategy and IT infrastructure which would also impact the CoE team. This is a limitation. In this study factors were identified from 7 partici-pant interviews and theoretical saturation was not reached. Hence these themes are not necessarily complete. Clearly the sector the organisation operates in would have a strong impact and that was the contextual factor that appeared to have the strongest impact. It seems reasonable considering financial sector maturity in South Africa that this model can be extended to other organisations in developed financial sectors.

Conclusion

This paper has investigated the factors that influence the effectiveness of a BPM CoE.

The results indicate that the effectiveness of a CoE depends on a number of interrelated factors including the organisational context, team structure, task design, team processes, team traits, and challenges. Together, these factors produce a model which explains factors influencing effectiveness of a CoE. For practitioners, this will be particularly useful when establishing a CoE. From a theoretical perspective the ITEM categories and relationships which were developed to explain the effectiveness of health care teams were found to be valid for CoEs within the financial sector with all the relevant themes presented. The model was extended to include the Structure category and all basic themes relevant for a CoE were derived from the case. This presents a new theoretical contribution. The context of this study was the financial sector in South Africa, further quantitative studies could validate this model and confirm whether these factors are applicable in other contexts. This research also highlighted the key role of process owners in BPM effectiveness and further studies are recommended that explain the organisational models that enable stronger collaboration between process owners and COEs.

Table 1 .

 1 List of selected participants

Interviewees in Bank 1 Interviewees in Bank 2

	Head of Process CoE	Head of Process CoE
	Value Chain Lead	Process Engineer 1
	Process Steward	Process Engineer 2
	Value Chain Lead


Alexia Pacheco
email: alexia.pacheco@ucr.ac.cr

Gustavo López
email: gustavo.lopez_h@ucr.ac.cr

Gabriela Marín-Raventós
email: gabriela.marin@ucr.ac.cr

Visualizing IT Budget to Improve Stakeholder Communication in the Decision Making Process

Keywords: Enterprise systems, IT budget, Data visualization, Process modeling, Data-driven decision-making

Traditionally in large enterprises, budget cuts are a treat for IT departments. One way to guard IT budget is visualizing the impacts in IT services of such cuts. Data visualization tools are capable of bridging the gap between increased data availability and human cognitive capabilities. In this paper, we present a budget visualization tool that allows enterprise wide data-driven decision-making. Our proposal was developed in the context of a large multiindustry state-owned company, with rigid control structures and external pressures for cost reduction and investment optimization. Our tool promotes visualization as the main mechanism to justify IT budget requests and to defend from budget amendments and cuts. We propose a generic tool that might manage different perceptions from many parts of an organization. However, to evaluate our tool's effectiveness we incorporated four stakeholder's perspectives: financial, technical, business' clients and supply chain. In our efforts, we developed a data model that encapsulates these four perspectives and improves communication capabilities between stakeholders.

Introduction

Budget creation and allocation are an integral part of running any organization efficiently and effectively. Budgets not only serve as planning mechanisms but also as a starting point for controlling programs within organizations.

The traditional approach to understand budgets is: given a certain amount of money, how much will be allocated to each of the required expenses? Budgets serve both to determine how much to spend and to judge spending performances [START_REF] Bragg | Budgeting: A Comprehensive Guide[END_REF]. "A budget is a set of interlinked plans that quantitatively describe an entity's projected future operations" [START_REF] Bowen | Management of business challenges among small and micro enterprises in Nairobi-Kenya[END_REF]. Budgeting typically begins with strategic planning at senior management level, and lower level managers in the organization are asked to defend their budgets assessing execution and possible budget cut impacts.

Most of the organizations are software and data driven nowadays. The amount of information available is increasing rapidly, and data visualization tools are capable of bridging the gap between the data daily increment and the organizational human cognitive capabilities.

IT budget needs to be documented, so that its management becomes explicit and visible to involved stakeholders. If IT budget is not properly documented, external pressures could result in budget cuts that could consciously or unconsciously compromise IT business services.

In this paper, we present a budget visualization tool, which can be used to support and improve budget negotiation, and to analyze the possible impacts on IT services, caused by budget cuts. Moreover, the proposal allows parameterization of visualization techniques to create an enterprise system that allows a more comprehensive view for each stakeholder involved in the budgeting process.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2, describes the theoretical background for our research including IT budget definition and stakeholder's perspectives, technical regulations, standards and frameworks that affect IT budgeting in context like the one we are working in. Finally, technical components used for our system implementation are described. Section 3 describes the context in which our system was developed and evaluated. Section 4 presents an overview of our budget visualization tool, its components and architecture. Finally, in Section 5, we discuss the results gathered from our system implementations and evaluation, present some final remarks and describe future work.

Background

This section introduces the main concepts used in our research, including: IT budget, regulations that somehow affect budgeting, and different stakeholder perspectives about IT budgets. Moreover, we briefly describe the graph databases and visualization techniques used to implement and evaluate our budget visualization system.

Information Technology Budget

IT budget is the amount of money spent on an organization's IT professionals, systems and services. Furthermore, IT budget includes the costs of maintaining and constructing enterprise systems and supporting IT services [START_REF] Weill | Generating Premium Returns on your IT Investments[END_REF]. An important difference between IT budget and other traditional budgets is that not all IT spending fall within the IT department (i.e., it is controlled by business divisions instead of IT). IT budget contains compensations for IT professionals, both employees and external consultants. Other common expenses are related to building and maintaining back office systems (i.e., systems dedicated to running the company itself). For instance, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), accounting, finance, human resources, and in some cases even, Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

IT budget does not only encompass systems, but also the hardware in which those systems run. Typically, an IT budget includes all sort of hardware that is required for the company (e.g., laptops, servers, networking equipment, cloud services).

Usually, IT budgets are prepared by a centralized IT office. However, it is common to find parallel IT related costs in business budgets or other departments such as sales and marketing, research and development, operations, among others. This leads organizations to consider several points of view while preparing and assessing IT budgets. The next section describes the points of view considered for this research. However, other perspectives exist and should be addressed to provide an all-embracing view of IT budget [START_REF]Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development: OECD Best Practices for Budget Transparency[END_REF].

IT Budget Perspectives

To develop this proposal, we considered different points of view [START_REF] Gartner | Manage four views of the IT Budget[END_REF]. To define the perspectives related with IT budget, we identified a number of stakeholders that are involved in the budgeting process and we collected their main concerns. The main findings include:

 Customers of IT Business Services. These stakeholders are concerned with the impact of budget cuts in IT business services. IT supports the execution of internal business processes, and these stakeholders do not want negative effects on cost, utility or even service warranties.  Financial Managers. These stakeholders are concerned with the financial aspect of IT services and their components. The main sub-processes concerning these stakeholders are: budgeting (i.e., plan future IT expenditures), IT accounting (i.e., capital and operational cost management) and charging (i.e., assign costs of an IT Service proportionally and fairly to the users of that service).  IT Leaders. These stakeholders are primarily concerned on technical aspects of IT business services, and how budget changes will affect their ability to support IT services.  Project Managers. They are concerned on the IT budget required for their projects, and the possible impacts on their accomplishment if budget cuts are required.

As it can be seen, several of the concerns are shared between stakeholders. However, they have different ways to observe data in order to make decisions (i.e., they can see the same data but derive different conclusions).

Technical Regulations, Standards and Frameworks

Government comptroller entities around the world recognize that information technologies have become an essential tool used to provide services [START_REF] Estep | State-Owned Enterprises in the European Union: ensuring level playing field[END_REF]. However, in some cases, state-owned companies question their own IT investments. Technical regulations from government comptroller have been published to optimize and monitor financial resources invested in IT, to control effectively these resources, and to observe standards and frameworks. These technical regulations integrate practices of several reference models including ITIL [START_REF] Long | ITIL® 2011 At a Glance[END_REF], COBIT [START_REF]ISACA: What is COBIT 5?[END_REF], TOGAF [START_REF]The Open Group: TOGAF 9.1 Chapter 34. Content Metamodel[END_REF][START_REF]The Open Group: TOGAF®[END_REF], and ISO 27000 [11].

All these set of practices for IT management, are used for regulatory purposes, since they are supposed to optimize IT services. In order to standardize our enterprise 4visualization IT budget system, we used terminology from these models.

IT Business Services are services that allow customers to achieve goals without the ownership of specific costs and risks [START_REF] Long | ITIL® 2011 At a Glance[END_REF]. To support the provisioning of services to end users, people (insourcing and outsourcing), process and technology (hardware, software and infrastructure) are needed. In this paper, we present a system or tool to visualize the impact of IT budget changes on IT Business services. This system is considered to be critical for a big enterprise since business continuity is vital and business change need to be considered.

Business continuity ensures that the firm can continue to obtain value from its products and services through such action as process automation, product or service development, service provisioning, among others. Business change delivers value when some change in the business model, process or product/service is enable or driven through IT [START_REF] Curley | Introducing an IT capability maturity framework[END_REF].

We used terminology from the TOGAF® framework metamodel. TOGAF metamodel provides a set of entities that can be captured, stored, filtered, queried and represented. These characteristics allow consistency, completeness and traceability [START_REF]The Open Group: TOGAF 9.1 Chapter 34. Content Metamodel[END_REF]. When properly applied, TOGAF metamodel allows companies to find the answer to questions such as: Which functionalities support which applications? Which processes will be impacted by which projects? and other important questions to estimate budgeting impact on the company's IT services. Furthermore, entities have associated relations and metadata that allow queries [START_REF]The Open Group: TOGAF 9.1 Chapter 34. Content Metamodel[END_REF].

Up until now, we have been addressing entities, relations, core data and metadata. All this information is normally stored in different sources along organizations. However, a natural way to think of this information is a graph. Even though data sources could be relational databases, digital documents, among others; the information within an organization is so coupled, and usually there are so many missing bits, that a graph is a reasonable solution to store it. The next subsection introduces Neo4j, a graph oriented database management system (DBMS). We describe Neo4j since it was used to implement our visualization system.

Neo4j: A Graph Oriented DBMS

Neo4j is a scalable graph database designed to support not only data storage but also relations [START_REF]Neo4J: Neo4j: The World's Leading Graph Database[END_REF]. Neo4j stores and process information in real-time [START_REF] Holzschuher | Performance of Graph Query Languages Comparison of Cypher[END_REF]. We decided to implement with Neo4j due to the amount of connections (i.e., large amount of join operations) required for our application. The volume and variety of data were also considered [START_REF] Hunger | The Definitive Guide to Graph Databases for the RDBMS Developer[END_REF]. It is not enough to store data and relations, it is also necessary to access it in an efficient and effective way. Cypher is one of Neo4j's query languages. This language provides access to data stored in the DBMS through non complex queries, very similar to Structured Query Language (SQL).

Finally, once the necessary data has been structured and stored, different ways to visualize it are necessary to provide real value for the IT budgeting process. The next section presents a brief introduction to visualization techniques.

Visualization Techniques

Data-Driven Documents (D3) is a novel representation-transparent approach to visualization. With it, designer selectively bind input data to arbitrary document elements, applying dynamic transformations [START_REF] Bostock | D3 Data-Driven Documents[END_REF]. D3 provides a decoupled solution; therefore, information can come from multiple sources and only requires a structuration process in order to be displayed. Fig. 1. Illustration of some of the available visualization techniques at D3.js [START_REF] Bostock | D3 Data-Driven Documents[END_REF] Some visualization techniques presented in Figure 1 can be used in the visualization of hierarchical data and others for relationship data. Also, they will represent different attributes of each piece of data. It is important to point out that most of this data-driven visualization techniques are dynamic (i.e., users can interact with the visualization and it will change the information displayed). All the concepts described in this section were detailed because they are used in the context in which our budget visualization tool was conceived. The next section describes such context.

Context

In this paper, a budget visualization system that emerged from a multi-industry stateowned company, with more than ten thousand employees, is presented. The company has an IT department and many local IT areas. The company's IT Department is in charge of assuring that IT activities and investment complies with regulations and standards, and of supporting all three management levels in their technological requirements. Figure 2 shows the company's structural diagram.

Treemap

Collapsible Tree Layout Circle Packing Hierarchical Bars Sankey Diagrams

Fig. 2. Company´s structural diagram

The company's IT budget is significant compared with total company budget and most of the expenses go to third parties providing services or products (e.g., outsourcing of software development and maintenance, outsourcing of solution operation, solution and infrastructure providers). Rigid control structures are used to manage and monitor incomes and expenses in the organization. Furthermore, since it is a multi-industry company, information has been managed in silos (i.e., each industry segment managed information separately). This practice is also present inside each management department.

Efforts to comply with government regulations for IT started several years ago, and IT related practices have different levels of implementation, most of them based on ITIL and COBIT. These efforts have driven budgeting practices for IT looking to create a holistic vision of IT budget.

The IT budget formulation is performed annually in a distributed way (more than fifty department managers are involved in this process). Each Local IT and the IT Department formulate the IT budget, and that information is registered in the company budget system. Mandated by government comptroller, the IT department must attach an IT plan to explain the IT budget. Given this requirement, a format and tool for collecting detailed information about IT budget was defined and implemented two years ago.

A major disruption occurred when one of the industries in which the company performs moved from a monopolistic industry to a competitive one. This leads to several strategic competitive efforts, and large investment to optimize budgeting and investment. With these context characteristics in mind, our project tries to answer the following research questions:

1. How can the IT department convince senior management and other stakeholders that IT budgets must sometimes exist? 2. How can the impacts of IT budget cuts be showed to management in order to avoid them or at least manage them wisely?

During the first assessments to answer these questions, we realized that data is the key factor. However, it is not the data itself what can change managerial decisions, but how data is shown to each stakeholder. Our visualization tool allows dynamic change of data and visualization techniques to support IT budgeting process. Moreover, the possibility to visualize budget information allows to show the comprehensiveness of IT, and provide it with visibility across the organization. In order to do it, we developed a solution to support datadriven documents as using a visualization model. The data currently used for budged decision-making was extracted and transformed to meet the requirements of a graph database, and a set of queries were established to determine the applicability of our system.

System Overview

Our budget visualization system provides a mechanism to picture corporate information through different visualizations. We took the available data sources and created an Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) process that uses a graphoriented database (Neo4j as DBMS) as repository. With data loaded into the new DBMS, users can select both the data and the visualization technique they want to use. Finally, a view assembler prepares the query results to be displayed by a dynamic data-driven document.

The visualization technique must be coherent with the data that will be shown (i.e., a hierarchical display may not be used to visualize disjoint information). The goal of this solution is to provide a way to make data-driven decision-making in the IT budgeting process. Figure 3 shows a component diagram of our proposed system. Further subsections describe in detail each one of its components.

Data Sources

To identify relevant data sources, we interviewed different stakeholders (members of the company described in the context section). The main identified data sources included: company budget system, IT service catalog, system of IT federated planning and procurement initiatives plan and their formats were relational databases, Excel sheets and Word documents. To establish the documentation of IT budget, it is necessary to consider a number of stakeholders that are involved in IT budget management, and their typical concerns. Such stakeholders include but are not limited to: customers of IT business services, financial managers, IT leaders and project managers. Since the implementation of our visualization system required an ETL process, we decided to adapt the transformed data in order to align it with ITIL concepts and TOGAF metamodel.

ETL Process

Data sources were manually identified. For each data source the information had to be analyzed in order to transform it, and load it, in the new repository. We created a data model that allows mapping of identified data sources into a new repository.

Figure 4 shows our proposed data model. It contains components derived from ITIL and TOGAF. The core concept (i.e., the one that will drive most of the queries) is IT Business Service. The data stored in this component is in business language. The proposed data model has 4 domains: business, financial, technical and supply chain. The business domain includes strategic business goals, business drivers, IT strategic lines and priorities, IT business services, organizational units, IT service categories (i.e., an index). Work packages are a generic component that encapsulates programs, projects or other type of works.

Technical contribution to business can be distinguished through service delivery. This is why the main relation between the business domain and the supply chain and technical domain is ''requires''.

Technical domain encapsulates technical services and components. These items are essential to deliver business services. The supply chain represents purchases from third parties and providers. Purchase initiatives (defined during the budget negotiation) and purchases (carried during the budget execution period). Both purchases and initiatives are modeled through technical budget components.

The financial domain includes expense categories used to classify all the technical budget components that are mapped to purchases and initiatives. Our data model establishes the roadmap that connects business strategies to financial resources and IT investments.

All the information extracted from data sources is transformed in order to align it with our data model and loaded into the Neo4j database. Using this approach allows and eases the evolution of our model. The incorporation or removal of components would not affect data integrity. Therefore, as soon as fundamental concepts related with the ones mapped in our data model are identified they can be incorporated.

Query Engine

Our system is built to allow parametric queries. Users can filter and adapt the query to retrieve data concerning a specific element in our data model or to aggregate information for more general purposes. Even though our system allows the traditional CRUD (create, retrieve, update and delete) operations, we designed 14 specific queries. The implemented queries were designed after observations of the negotiation process carried out by several stakeholders in the IT budgeting process. Table 1 shows the implemented queries, and the stakeholders that might be interested in the information results of those queries.

Visualization Techniques and View Assembler

Our proposal provides a set of visualization techniques, but it also allows anyone to add more techniques as long as the visualization fits the data structures. The ETL process modifies data in order to allow both generic and highly specific (ad-hoc) visualizations. All of these are based on the data model proposed.

To test our proposal, we used some of the available data-driven documents [START_REF] Bostock | D3 Data-Driven Documents[END_REF]. Figure 5 shows some examples of the query results from our system implementation. Functional testing showed that once the data is loaded to the data-driven document, the interaction is easy and useful to gain insight on the data being visualized. Moreover, functional testing demonstrated that the same information can be visualized with different visualization techniques. Therefore, our system can be used by different stakeholders as it adapts to their requirements. To illustrate our tool functionality, Figure 5 presents the IT budget according to general ledger. All figures presented in this section are screenshots from web browsers, displaying dynamic charts. Visualizations presented in Figure 5 allow financial experts to, in one picture, determine which industry has more expenses, and in which expense category each industry-own company is prominent. Using these visualizations in a budget negotiation session, the circle packing visualization is a tool to understand the big picture. The hierarchical bar charts can be used to answer questionings or to provide a detailed explanation of expenses and budget perspectives.

Notice that the data visualized in Figure 5 is the same in all three visualizations. They are provided since multiple ways to visualize data can allow understanding between different stakeholders. Our system allows change between visualizations with a couple of clicks.

Figure 6 shows all four perspectives of one IT business service. This figure allows understanding between all stakeholders. The left most lines represent the business perspective, classifying the industry and an IT Business Service. Center left presents (PIs purchase initiatives) represent the supply chain domain and its details (PI-L Components of purchase initiatives). The technological components (technical domain) and general expense categories (financial domain) are represented in the right most lines respectively.

In the Sankey diagram, connection thickness represents the strength of the connection (e.g., the amount of money). The dynamic aspect of this visualization uses tooltips to show further details on the connections or lines, depending on where the user places the cursor.

Figure 6 can be used to determine which services will be impacted if there is a budget cut. For instance, if senior management suggests a cut of purchase initiative 15, immediate mapping can be performed to SW Licenses that also affect SW&HW. In this way, stakeholders can determine how a budget cut will affect IT's capacity to maintain business services or other IT-related tasks.

Discussion

In this paper we presented a budget visualization system that extracts and transforms organizations distributed data, and allows multiple ways to visualize it. We implemented a general enterprise wide visualization tool (i.e., usable by many stakeholders); however, four perspectives were tested.

Our solution provides mechanisms to incorporate new visualizations and data sources (technical abilities are required to achieve it). While designing our system we realized that stakeholders are very focused on their ways to visualize information, and they do not always care about other perspectives. A design effort was conducted to assure that the same information can be accessed and understood by multiple stakeholders, either in a negotiation process or just to analyze corporative budgets. This effort allowed the creation of an integrated data model (see Figure 4) that eases communication between stakeholders.

To boost not only the use, but the acceptance and proliferation of our system in the organization, we considered multiple agents of each area represented. We explained why data should be combinable. Moreover, we presented the benefits that each of them could gain from a common understanding and shared body of information (i.e., common language).

It is crucial for the maintainability and sustainability to our system, that someone within the organization, keeps track of the big picture. This person, or group of people, does not only need to assure continuous information supply, but also they should maintain data relations and information coherence.

As it was stated, our system was developed in the context of large multi-industry state-owned company with rigid control structures and segregated information (due to silo mentality). We believe that our tool is an example of collaboration that could be used as a reference to boost collaborative practices in this kind of contexts.

Our system uses multiple layers. This provides it with the flexibility that it requires for adapting to different contexts. Moreover, it allows the incorporation of emerging visualizations and data sources. We believe that our solution is applicable in contexts other than budgeting. However, further analysis is required to assess its applicability. We tested our system with real data from a real organization, and demonstrated that our solution fits complex scenarios, and provides stakeholders with new and adaptable ways to conduct their tasks.

In the context of a public institution, our budget visualization tool allows, improves and promotes data-driven decision-making. It guarantees proper budget related decisions and enhancing transparency both within the organization and towards comptroller instances.

A natural path for this research is to include technical debt into our data model. Most of our data model components allow a direct mapping to technical debt, since they involve cost management of purchase initiatives that could also encompass outsourcing contracts or even software development. As Guo, Oliveira and Seaman [START_REF] Guo | Exploring the costs of technical debt managementa case study[END_REF] define it, technical debt can be represented as a list of delayed task that may cause maintenance problems in the future. Authors state that technical debt must be quantifiable. We believe that it does not only require being quantifiable, but also displaya-ble, contextualizable, linkable and referable with the other components of our data model.

To operationalize information's integration, several factors are required, including but not limited to:  A semantic model that unifies concepts even if stakeholders use different words for the same notion. This semantic model could match the core concepts in order to allow a holistic view of the company's information.  A standard format (syntactic) product of the ETL process, that wraps data sources and allows a decoupling from specific implementations of data repositories.  Well defined protocols, to supply and update the information contained in the new repository.

This research concluded the preliminary evaluation of a budget visualization system implemented to be deployed in a large multi-industry state-owned company. Future work includes the expansion of the visualization tool to different domains (other than IT budgeting), and assess the viability of deploying it in other companies with similar conditions.

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Budget visualization system component diagram

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Data model defined to map identified data sources into one graph oriented database

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. IT budget according to general ledger. Hierarchical bar charts demonstrate data (left: high level information, right: drill down). Bottom image represent same data using Circle Packing visualization. A hover action on any component will show a tooltip.

Fig. 6 .

 6 Fig. 6. Sankey Diagram of budgeting information for one IT business service. Zoom in top right corner shows the tooltip that describes the gray connection specific amount.

Table 1 .

 1 Stakeholder's common concerns. Stakeholders are: 1) Customers of IT Business services, 2) Financial manager, 3) IT leaders, 4) Project managers

	Concerns	Stakeholders
		1 2 3 4
	IT Business Service for a given service level	*	*
	IT Business Services impacted by a given initiative	*	*
	Budget of IT components and Technical services	*	*
	IT components and Tech. Serv. services required for a IT Business Service	*	*
	Purchase initiatives that generate CAPEX	* * *
	Purchase initiatives that generate OPEX	* * *
	CAPEX amount	* * *
	OPEX amount	* * *
	Expense categories impacted by a given initiative	*
	IT budget according to general ledger	*
	IT budget for each IT component or service associated with a given expense category	*
	IT budget for each IT component or Technical services		*
	IT budget for each work package		* *
	Work packages impacted by a given purchase initiative		* *

Acknowledgment. This work was partially supported by Research Center for Communication and Information Technologies (CITIC) at University of Costa Rica. Grant No. 834-B4-412.