Patterns for IoT-based Business Process Improvements: Developing a Metamodel

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is constantly growing across all areas of private and professional life. Especially industrial organizations are increasingly recognizing the IoT's disruptive capabilities and potential benefits for business processes along all value chain activities. In this regard, the integration of IoT technology into existing business processes enables valuable Business Process Improvements (BPI). However, it often remains unclear which BPIs can be expected by organizations and how the anticipated BPIs are realized in detail. Furthermore, the integration of IoT technology into existing business processes constitutes a major challenge caused by a lack of supporting methods, models, or guidelines. The paper at hand addresses this research gap by providing a metamodel that enables the illustration of generic IoT-based BPI patterns. It contains all relevant elements that are comprised by IoT applications with BPI propositions and can be used by industrial organizations as blueprints for conducting IoT projects. The metamodel development follows fundamental principles of design science research (DSR) and is extensively evaluated by deriving a first set of patterns from real-life IoT applications of three marketleading corporations. In addition, an expert survey is conducted to assess the metamodel's usefulness.