Analysis of business process models in procurement

Models are just images of the reality. They are reduced to the essentials and neglect unnecessary factors. Business process models in turn depict the processes in companies. They are used to show the target state when introducing new application systems or illustrate the actual state in order to identify problems as well as waste in the processes. There are constant changes in companies that are driven by new strategies such as digitalization and automation. These changes must also be reflected in the business process models. Numerous areas in science and in practice come back on established business and process models to map the interfaces between departments, the IT architecture, role distribution, process flows and access rights. Procurement processes, often perceived as a back‐office function, rarely come into focus. This paper summarizes existing process and reference model approaches with a reference to the procurement function and discusses these approaches. The aim of the critical discussion is to check whether the existing models from the literature meet the requirements of digitized procurement. At the same time, requirements have to be formulated to a modern process map, which can illustrate the current developments (digitization, automation, RPA, etc.).