Business Process Redesign Heuristics for Blockchain Solutions

Blockchain has emerged as one of the most promising and revolutionary technologies in the past years. Companies are exploring use cases in the hope of reaping benefits from this technology. However, to achieve the desired impact, it is not sufficient to merely replace existing technologies. Current business processes must be redesigned to realize benefits. This paper shows how a number of best practices for Business Process Redesign can be applied to leverage blockchain technology. Specifically, we adapt these best practices for redesigning processes intended to execute on blockchain. We further explore their applicability using a case study. The major elements of process redesign for blockchain are: (1) changing the view from intra- to inter-organizational processes by using the shared data ledger of blockchain, (2) using smart contracts performers of tasks and connectors of processes, (3) using blockchain as means for data communication, and (4) using tokens to manage digitally represented assets.