The Reality of Research Processes: Why Email and Excel Are the True System of Record

Show notes

In this special live episode from the All About Process Management Conference in Stuttgart, Caspar and Russell welcome Sabina Kaul, Head of Integrated Process and Application Management at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. Sabina shares her twelve-year journey from administrative coordinator building processes at a startup site through standardization efforts with Excel, eventually leading to the creation of her current department spanning 3,500 employees across 20+ sites in Germany. She reveals the fundamental challenge of process management in research organizations: processes are highly informal, complex, and distributed across multiple universities and departments—yet people continuously communicate about and execute processes through email, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations rather than documented systems. The DKFZ realized that fragmented, small-scale process improvement wouldn't suffice; they needed enterprise-wide transformation, leading to her current mandate to establish systematic process and application management across the entire organization. Russell and Caspar probe deeper into the reality gap between documented processes and how work actually happens. Sabina explains that the vast majority of critical communication—roughly 70-80%—flows through email with attachments, PDFs, and redundant versions rather than through formal systems. When AI enters the conversation, they explore the provocative question: could AI mining email communications with email headers and timestamps extract process patterns and information flows that traditional process mining cannot capture? While acknowledging GDPR constraints, Sabina and Russell discuss how email represents the "black spots" that process mining typically cannot see—the coordination, decision-making, and knowledge transfer happening outside formal systems. The conversation highlights that digitalization isn't primarily a technology problem; it's a people problem where usability determines adoption, and when official tools aren't easy enough, people revert to email and Excel as workarounds. Sabina concludes by sharing DKFZ's innovative approach to process landscape design: it serves as an onboarding portal for new employees showing how the organization functions end-to-end, intentionally removing department names to force thinking in terms of processes rather than silos. Their landscape, ranked top among fifteen presented at the conference, positions HR visibility across all processes—from management and core scientific processes (like developing PhD talent) to supporting functions—demonstrating that a cross-functional view reveals true organizational interdependencies rather than isolated departmental operations. The hosts emphasize that a process landscape's greatest value is not just documentation but change management, creating awareness that "we have processes whether we admit it or not," and serving as the entry point where people understand the organization and can navigate toward both automated and manual processes. 5 Key Takeaways: 1. Email and spreadsheets are the true system of record in most organizations because official tools lack sufficient usability to compete with their simplicity. 2. Process management in complex research organizations requires enterprise-wide transformation, not isolated departmental improvements, to achieve coordination across distributed sites and universities. 3. A process landscape's primary value is as an onboarding portal and change management tool, not just documentation—it creates organizational awareness and understanding. 4. Process landscapes should show cross-functional processes (removing department names) to reveal true organizational interdependencies like HR spanning management, core, and support functions. 5. AI and process mining could unlock valuable insights from email communications if GDPR constraints were addressed, capturing the coordination and decision-making that occurs outside formal systems. If you have suggestions or questions, please reach out to us via questions@bpm360podcast.com If you enjoy our content, please like, rate, subscribe… we do appreciate that…