International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 3 (2023) 100162

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Information Management Data

Insights
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jjimei

A blockchain-based data-driven trustworthy approval process system

Sanil Gandhi∗, Arvind Kiwelekar, Laxman Netak, Shashank Shahare
Department of Computer Engineering, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonere 402104 MS, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Approval processes are intra-organizational business processes designed to sanction the execution of specific ad-
Blockchain technology ministrative tasks. Purchasing essential stationery products, filing bills for acquired items, approving attendance
Approval process at conferences, processing insurance claims, approving loans, and similar tasks are examples for which employ-
Decentralized apps
ees require approvals from multiple authorities within an organization. Common concerns mentioned by both
Data-driven decision making
the approving authority and the proposal submitter are the genuineness of the proposer and the time required
Reputation system
for approving the proposal. This paper presents a novel Blockchain-based Approval Process System (BAPS) to
establish mutual trust between the submitter and the approving authorities. The proposed system’s design, im-
plementation, and evaluation are included in this paper. The suggested approach can shorten the time needed to
obtain the permissions and increase transparency between the users and the authority. In addition, it eliminates
issues such as the misplacement of papers. It stores the information in a secure and tamper-proof platform which
is some of the most significant drawbacks of traditional paper-based systems.

1. Introduction by the Industry 4.0 revolution (Ahsan & Siddique, 2022), aligning
approval processes with emerging technologies is one of the preferred
Approval processes are one of the critical aspects in the governance ways to overcome these issues. Blockchain technologies (Amponsah,
of any organization (Markus & Jacobson, 2015). These specialized work- Adekoya, & Weyori, 2022; Mittal, Gupta, Chaturvedi, Chansarkar, &
flow processes sanction business operations, such as the approval of con- Gupta, 2021), cloud technologies (Amponsah et al., 2022), natural
sumer loans, insurance claims, and other business procedures. Tradition- language processing (Garg, Kiwelekar, Netak, & Ghodake, 2021)
ally, many public and commercial organizations adopt human-centric have been some of the proposed technologies used to modernize the
approval processes. In such a system, individuals perform diverse re- business processes such as employee engagement (Garg et al., 2021),
sponsibilities, including generating requests, submitting them for exami- supply chain management (Deepu & Ravi, 2021) and other similar
nation, and approving or rejecting the proposal. In such a human-centric business processes. We leverage earlier business process re-engineering
realization, the information flows from bottom to top, and final approval approaches and apply them to approval processes.
decisions are vested in a single central authority, the highest authority One of the primary goals of this paper is to present a novel way
in an organizational hierarchy. of designing and implementing approval processes. By incorporating
Such conventional human-centric processes have several draw- two emerging technologies, namely blockchain and data analytics, the
backs, including a lack of automation (Heeks, 2001), delayed approval approach presented in this paper realigns the execution of traditional
(Horan, Marich, & Schooley, 2006), reliance on human experience and approval processes. Blockchain technology turns the approval hierar-
judgment (Jarrahi, 2018), lack of transparency, and risk of corruption, chy into a flat network of communicating authorities, and data an-
particularly in public organizations (Alam, Ashfiqur Rahman, Tasnim, & alytics establish confidence among the approval process participants
Akther, 2022). In general, a lack of trust between the person submitting (Ghasemaghaei, Ebrahimi, & Hassanein, 2018; Monino, 2021).
the proposal and the authority approving was one of the major critiques The paper contributes to the current research on information man-
of such systems. Some of these shortcomings directly result from the agement for business process automation and improvement in the fol-
cutting-edge technology that was available at the time. These disadvan- lowing ways:
tages can be eliminated by implementing new advanced technologies as
information technology evolves. a. The paper suggests a blockchain as a platform for implementing the
Many organizations are undergoing digital transformations approval processes. Using this, most of the shortcomings of business
(Kraus et al., 2022) to meet the challenges and opportunities posed process automation and workflow management systems relying on
centralized systems using blockchain technology can be overcome.

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Gandhi), [email protected] (A. Kiwelekar), [email protected] (L. Netak).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjimei.2023.100162
Received 20 June 2022; Received in revised form 31 January 2023; Accepted 31 January 2023
2667-0968/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
S. Gandhi, A. Kiwelekar, L. Netak et al. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 3 (2023) 100162

b. A detailed design and implementation of an approval process in a consensus algorithms. Cryptographic hash functions help in keeping the
completely decentralized environment is proposed. The system’s de- data immutable. The immutable property allows no one to alter or delete
sign includes a set of functional and non-functional requirements the data from a shared database.
and their mapping to the architectural elements in the blockchain. Blockchain implementation is based on four standard fundamental
Further, a technology stack to implement a decentralized approval concepts (Dinh et al., 2018): Distributed Ledger, Cryptography, Consen-
process is suggested. The technology stack includes Ethereum, Inter- sus Protocol, and Smart Contracts.
Planetary File system (IPFS), Solidity, and ReactJS.
c. Using IPFS in conjunction with blockchain achieves design scalabil- (i) Distributed Ledgers (DL) are shared databases across all the Peer-to-
ity in addition to information privacy and security for the approval Peer (P2P) network nodes. Every node in the network saves a copy
process workflow. of the database. When any node in the network updates a copy of
d. The approach further proposes and demonstrates the effectiveness the database, other nodes will synchronize with the updated one
of data analytics and blockchain integration to manage the approval (Nakamoto, 2008). Data such as cryptocurrency transactions, stu-
process workflows. Through this integration, concerns are raised by dents’ degree verification, land records, patient health record, and
approving authorities, and proposal submitters can be eliminated. other similar transnational data are stored in distributed ledgers.
Further, it builds trust among the approving authorities, proposal (ii) Cryptographic functions (Cryptography) assure trust among the users
initiators, and information auditors. by encrypting the transactions in the blockchain network. These
functions consist of mathematical operations to ensure transaction
The rest of this paper’s organization is as follows. We briefly sum- security from malicious users in the network. The end-user uses the
marise the overview of approval processes and blockchain technology in public and private key pair to perform the transactions. Public keys
Section 2. Section 3 elaborately discusses design methodology in terms are used as an end-user identity, while private keys remain secret
of functional requirements and its mapping with essential blockchain and perform transaction validation.
elements and technologies used to implement this system. In Section 4, (iii) Consensus Protocols (CP): As a decentralized network characterizes
we propose the integration of blockchain and data analytics to make blockchain, each node in the network consists of a copy of the
business decisions. In Section 5, we present the evaluation and discuss database, which must be identical to all the nodes currently in the
the implications of the proposed approach to current research and in- network. In order to assure this, various consensus algorithms pre-
dustrial practices. Finally, we conclude the paper and discuss the future fer to reach a standard agreement about the current state of the
possibility of adding extended functionality to the method developed in distributed ledger. The developer chooses one of the consensus al-
Section 6. gorithms to satisfy the application’s needs. For example, Bitcoin
(Nakamoto, 2008) works on Proof-of-Work (PoW), which eliminates
2. Background the double-spending attacks. In contrast, Ethereum (Buterin) uses
Proof-of-Stake (PoS), removing the possibility of centralization of
This section describes the primary elements of approval processes the mining centers.
and blockchain technology. As approval processes are a specialized form (iv) Smart Contracts (SC) behave the same as a legal contract or agree-
of workflow management system (Agarwal, Bruno, & Torchiano, 2000), ment signed between the two parties. A smart contract is a script
earlier approaches that employ blockchain technology and data analyt- written in the programming language that executes when a particu-
ics techniques in workflow management systems are also described. lar event occurs in the system. Simple and less expressive program-
ming language is preferred in Bitcoin, whereas Turing completed
2.1. Approval processes programming languages (e.g., Solidity in Ethereum and Golang in
Hyperledger) are used to write the smart contracts.
Approval processes form a core element in the governance of any
organization (Markus & Jacobson, 2015) as they sanction business ac- Bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008) is one of the first applications developed
tivities through various checks and balances required to achieve an or- using a blockchain platform, and it implements cryptocurrency. Re-
ganizational objective. searchers have recently proposed blockchain as a promising solution to
Conventionally, approval processes are realized using various tech- modernize existing centralized systems. The effectiveness of blockchain
niques. These are Business Process Management (BPM) (Seidel & Rose- in the different domains as a replacement for the centralized system
mann, 2008), Rule-based approach (Kumar & Liu, 2008), and work- is discussed by many researchers (Balcerzak et al., 2022; Kakarlapudi
flow management (Agarwal et al., 2000). Traditionally, Business Process & Mahmoud, 2021). Further, the potential of blockchain technology as
Management (BPM) solutions are Human-centric, System-centric, and providing a novel and disruptive solution to replace the current practices
Document-centric workflows (Wil & van der, 2013). Document-centric has been continuously recognized by various researchers (Hughes et al.,
workflows rely heavily on paperwork (Carbon et al., 2008). 2019).
Several proprietary workflow management tools are available In business process re-engineering and e-governance, researchers
for commercial usages, such as FlowLogic, FlowMan (Mondal & have started adopting blockchain technology in combination with
Misra, 2020), FloWare, FlowMark (IBM) (Leymann & Roller, 1994), etc. other technologies like the Internet of Things and Machine learning
These tools are usually based on a centralized client-server architecture (Yong et al., 2020). Some of the common use cases of blockchain
and have a repository for storing documents at a central place. Such technology include managing supply chain (Kamble, Gunasekaran, &
approval processes or workflow management systems must have prede- Sharma, 2020; Yong et al., 2020), land records management (Alam et al.,
fined rules. 2022; Thakur, Doja, Dwivedi, Ahmad, & Khadanga, 2020), education
credential verification (Han et al., 2018), authentication of smart city
applications (Esposito, Ficco, & Gupta, 2021), and code copyright man-
2.2. Blockchain technology
agement system (Jing, Liu, & Sugumaran, 2021).
Blockchain Technology is an emerging technology to infuse trust
among the participating agents in a business transaction. It does so 2.3. Integrating data analytics with blockchain
through its peculiar architectural elements. The key characteristics
of the blockchain are Decentralization, Immutability, Anonymity, and Integration of Blockchain with data analytics techniques is often
Transparency. Each participant in the blockchain network stores blocks recommended to build next-generation data-driven networks (Li et al.,
of data, thus ensuring data integrity and consistency using the various 2021). The evolution in data communication, mobile technology, and

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wireless sensor technologies has opened up new avenues to build data- 2. Submit Approval proposal [FR2]: The initiator shall submit a proposal
driven applications. But maintaining security and privacy and build- along with the necessary documents. Documents must be uploaded
ing trustworthy applications on top of such networks is one of the in a specific file format on the portal using the user’s public key.
biggest challenges. Blockchain technologies provide a trust layer that 3. Approve Submitted proposal [FR3]: After submitting the proposal, the
can leverage to build dependable applications. Such an integrative ap- proposal shall pass through several authorities as per organizational
proach of data-driven blockchain has been used to build applications for norms for approval.
smart grid system (Zeng, Dong, Miao, Zhang, & Tang, 2021), water con- 4. View Submitted proposal [FR4]: The uploaded proposal shall be visi-
sumption management (Li et al., 2021), and supply-chain management ble to all the participants. This functionality helps to ensure trans-
(Sundarakani, Ajaykumar, & Gunasekaran, 2021). parency between the end users and the authorities.
This paper proposes a novel way to replace the conventional 5. Execute Approvals with timing constraints [FR5]: The system automat-
approval process management. It presents a model that integrates ically assigns an estimated duration in terms of the time per existing
blockchain and data analytics techniques to replace the centralized ex- load in the system and the proposal’s complexity. The proposal es-
ecution of approval processes. It builds a data-driven network in which calates to the next level of approving authority in case a lower-level
approval decisions are taken collaboratively to bring more accountabil- authority fails to approve the proposal within a specified duration.
ity to the approval process and information security. 6. Assign a reputation score to participants [FR6]: The system shall assign
a reputation score to the proposer and the approving authority based
3. Design methodology on the number of approved proposals and the time taken to approve
them.
This section explains the design methodology utilized to implement
the blockchain-based strategy for re-engineering the approval processes. 3.2. Architecture design
The design process includes all elements of the standard software devel-
opment life cycle. It involves analysis of requirements at a high level, The design of architecture is carried out in two stages. First, a
architectural design, implementation, and deployment. Consequently, problem-to-solution domain mapping has been specified. Second, a data
operational concerns such as scalability and performance in an opera- model is prepared.
tional setting are not stressed. This section presents a proof-of-concept
software solution demonstrating how to integrate blockchain and data 3.2.1. Problem to solution domain mapping
analytics to construct a dependable approval system. In general, architecture design is a mapping activity that maps ele-
ments from the problem domain to the solution domain (Kiwelekar &
Joshi, 2010; 2014). The functional requirements identified in the pre-
3.1. High-level requirement analysis
vious steps are mapped to the blockchain architectural elements in this
case. Four blockchain elements form the solution domain, namely, Dis-
This activity aims to identify various functionalities to be supported
tributed Ledger (DL), Cryptography (Crypt), Consensus Protocol (CP),
in the proposed system. The workflow analysis method is used for this
and Smart Contract (SC). Six major functional requirements in the pre-
purpose, as it captures different functionalities and how information
vious stage were identified. Table 1 shows problem domain to solution
flows in the system. Often approval of various administrative tasks needs
domain mapping. The “✓” in a 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑗 indicates that to realize the func-
to exchange documents through authorities. As paper-based documen-
tionality from a 𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑖 , a blockchain element from 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑛𝑗 is required.
tation (Akhu-Zaheya, Al-Maaitah, & Bany Hani, 2018) is preferred for
various administrative tasks, it is simpler to trace the flow of informa-
3.2.2. Data model
tion in an organizational setting when analyzing workflows. The follow-
The data model to support the functional requirements has been
ing items and workflow analysis to extract high-level requirements have
specified in the second stage. It consists of various data objects used
been considered:
to store the data in a distributed ledger, as shown in Fig. 2. These are:
(i) The organization’s hierarchy is involved in granting approvals.
1. User: Users are classified as approving authorities and proposal ini-
(ii) The organizational rules and regulations help in grant approvals.
tiators. Users perform operations like listening for notifications, ini-
(iii) Further, participants involved in the approval process are inter-
tiating, and approving the proposals.
viewed to identify practical difficulties they faced.
2. File Data: It consists of all the necessary information about the details
A sample workflow representing the approval for procurement of ma- of a proposal. It also includes metadata about the file to validate the
terials is shown in Fig. 1a. The workflow is depicted as a swim-lane uploaded file using the hash value. Later, the file containing proposal
diagram in Unified Modelling Language (UML). Further, such workflow data is uploaded to IPFS, and the hash value generated using IPFS is
analysis helps us to identify various participants in the approval pro- stored on the blockchain.
cess. Upon analysis of multiple workflows, participants are identified 3. Workflow: Several sets of rules are defined in the smart contract that
as shown in Fig. 1b. These include the Approval Process (AP) Initiator, triggers the various events as per the specific input provided by the
First Tier Approver, Second Tier Approver, and so forth, according to users. The system’s functionality is based on the workflow notifica-
the organizational hierarchy and complexities of the approval sought. tions linking to the user’s workflow data.
Such an organizational hierarchy forms the backbone of approval pro- 4. Notification: After triggering a particular event, users get alerts re-
cess systems. garding the status of the proposal file. The distributed ledger stores
The participants expressed various concerns when they were inter- all the notifications.
viewed. These concerns include loss of documents, delay in signing the
submitted proposal (documents), and fraudulent information in the doc- 3.3. Identification of tech-stack
umentation. Because of such factors, getting approvals becomes a time-
intensive task for the initiator and a challenging task for the approver. This phase identifies the platforms and programming languages
The following functional requirements are identified after workflow needed to build the proposed system.
analysis:
3.3.1. Ethereum
1. Registration of Approval Authority [FR1]: The administrative authori- Ethereum is an open-source blockchain platform supporting the de-
ties and users of the system register on the portal by filling in essen- velopment of permission-less blockchain applications. The distinct char-
tial details. acteristics of the Ethereum platform that makes it unique from other

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Fig. 1. Identification of functional Requirements.

Table 1
Functional Requirements of Blockchain-based Approval Process System.

Blockchain Elements

Functional Requirements DL Cryptography CP SC Remark

Registration of Approval ✓ ✓ ✓ It records a public key of authority in the SC. The PKI for each authority is generated
Authority [FR1] using cryptography.
Submit Department ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ DL is used to store the hash of submitted requirements by various departments, and
Requirement [FR2] CP is to keep the data in a consistent state.
Approve submitted ✓ ✓ ✓ Implemented using SC to approve the submitted proposals (departmental
Requirement [FR3] requirement) and again store the approved on the DL and update every DL using CP.
View Submitted Requirement ✓ ✓ View the submitted departmental requirements stored on the IPFS using a smart
[FR4] contract.
Execute approvals with ✓ Escalates to the subsequent higher authority if the current authority fails to approve
timing constraints [FR5] within the particular time limit triggered using SC.
Assign Reputation Score to ✓ A smart contract assigns a score to the proposer and HA. All the constraints to
participants [FR6] assigning a score are mentioned in the SC.

similar platforms are the support of Turing-compatible programming

languages and the putting limits on resource-intensive applications that
can prevent denial of service attacks.
Ethereum uses a notion of gas consumption to specify computational
resources required to perform a specific task. The app developer needs
to identify the necessary amount of gas and the cost to pay in terms of
gas fees for executing the task. The demand and supply in the market
drive the price of the gas needed (Tikhomirov, 2017).
With the help of these unique characteristics, a complex approval
process can be implemented through the support of Turing-compatible
programming languages, and the notion of gas consumption helps to
design resource-constrained approval processes.

3.3.2. Inter-planetary file system (IPFS)

IPFS is a distributed and peer-to-peer file system that can share and
store data. It overcomes many issues in client-server-based file systems,
protects users’ privacy, ensures data security, and provides scalable in-
teractions. Unlike the location-addressing mechanism preferred in pro-
tocols like HTTP, IPFS uses content-addressing to find the data.
IPFS can exchange information with smart contracts and blockchain
data using Inter-Planetary Linked Data (IPLD) protocol. Distributed
Hash Tables (DHT), Merkle tree, and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) are
the main components of the IPFS. Decentralization of IPFS provides low
Fig. 2. Data Model for BAPS. latency and high throughput and makes the system secure and tamper-
resistant.

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Fig. 3. System Architecture of BAPS.

3.3.3. Solidity 3.4.1. Create user

Solidity is a programming language to develop smart contracts, and The Algorithm 1 creates users who may be an approver or proposal
JavaScript influences its design. It is an object-oriented, statically typed,
and high-level language. The solidity code executes as a command line
Algorithm 1 Create User.
or a web browser on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Solidity is
Input: 𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑒(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑖𝑑(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑓 𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑁𝑎𝑚𝑒(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑁𝑎𝑚𝑒(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑚𝑎𝑥𝐴𝑚𝑡(𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑡)
more expressive than features like modifiers, class inheritance, recursive
Output: call 𝑎𝑢𝑡ℎ𝐶𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟() that validates the address of the contract de-
calls, and dynamic data type (Owe & Fazeldehkordi, 2022). Moreover,
ployer and creates a new User
it is a Turing-compatible programming language, making it simpler to
1: if (YES) then
develop complex business processes and workflows.
2: Create User Object
In addition to these technologies, ReactJS (Aggarwal, 2018) and
3: update 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[]
MetaMask are used in the present implementation. ReactJS is used to im-
4: else
plement the system’s front end. It supports a diverse range of APIs to trig-
5: return
ger specific actions mentioned in the Smart Contract. APIs help to make
6: end if
effective communication between the front end and back end. Meta-
Mask is the wallet to manage the cryptocurrency of the user (Pramulia
& Anggorojati, 2020). It also acts as an inter-mediator between a user initiators. At the time of creation or deletion, the transaction fee in terms
interface and an Ethereum-based blockchain system as it pays the trans- of ether is debited from the account or user’s crypto wallet.
action fees.
Figure 3 shows the technical architecture depicting the interactions
among these elements involved in the tech stack of BAPS. 3.4.2. Create proposal (Transaction)
An initiator can create and upload a proposal file on the portal, as
shown in Fig. 4, by calling the function createTransaction described in
3.4. Implementation Algorithm 2. The file is uploaded on IPFS. The hash of this file is calcu-
lated and saved in the blockchain stored on IPFS. The portal automat-
This section discusses several functionalities offered by the proposed ically assigns an immutable transaction identifier for each transaction
system, which is implemented as a smart contract using Solidity. created by a user.

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Fig. 4. Uploading or Creating Transaction.

Algorithm 2 Create Transaction. approve the proposal. The approving authority signs the proposal with
Input: 𝑖𝑑 (𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑑 𝑜𝑐 𝐻𝑎𝑠ℎ(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑢𝑟𝑙(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑐 𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡(𝑠𝑡𝑟), 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠(𝑠𝑡𝑟), the authority’s public key.
𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡(𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑡)
Output: call 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑦() validates addresses in 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[] 3.4.4. User interface
1: if (YES) then The user interface is web-based and implemented using ReactJS. The
2: Create Transaction object and push onto the 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[]. Web User Interface (WebUI) offers access to several system functional-
3: Assign a Timestamp to the transaction ities, such as creating a user, uploading an approval proposal, approv-
4: Approval Object and push onto the 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑙𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[]. ing proposals, searching proposals, and ending notifications. The imple-
5: Create Notification object and push onto the 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[] mented user interface provides access to smart contracts.
6: else
7: return 4. Data-driven decisions
8: end if
The operational data logged while the system is being executed are
analyzed to assist in approving authorities. Three different functional-
3.4.3. Approve transactions ities are implemented to guarantee a time-bound response, assigning a
Using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), the user can approve or re- reputation score to participants and a recommendation system to help
ject the procurement based on the information provided in the file. The approving authorities make an approval decision.
Algorithm 3 approveTransaction() is used by the approving authority to
4.1. Time-bound window for approval process:
Algorithm 3 Approve Transaction.
The function ValidateTxDuration() described in the following
Input: Approval Object(Map) and Object(Map) using docHah
Algorithm 4 keeps track of the real-time elapsed for every submitted ap-
Output: 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑀𝑎𝑝[_ℎ𝑎𝑠ℎ].𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠 = Approved
proval request. This algorithm assigns a timestamp to every transaction
1: validates the intended authority to approve the transaction
created. The approval proposal escalates to the next level of approving
2: Check if the status of the transaction in pending state
authority in case a lower-level authority fails to approve the proposal
3: if 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑑 && 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠 == 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 then
within the pre-defined time limit.
4: create Notification object and push on 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[]
5: Update 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑙𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡[]
4.2. Calculating reputation score
6: Check if the approval authority is final authority 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡𝐴𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦
7: if lastAuthority then
Each proposal submitter and approval authority receives a score af-
8: 𝑇 𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛_𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 = 𝐴𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑
ter every approval, rejection, or escalation of approval of a submitted
9: else
proposal request. The reputation score is calculated and stored for the
10: return
initiator and the approving authority.
11: end if
12: else
13: return 4.3. Task specific recommendation system
14: end if
An approving authority can seek a recommendation from an external
service through REST API. One of the significant concerns raised during

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Algorithm 4 Algorithm to Set Time Limit. 5.2. Comparison with earlier approaches
Input: Approval Object(Map) using docHah
Output: Calculate the time period of the submitted requirement In a broader sense, approval processes are a specialized form of busi-
1: Fetch instance of the transaction as 𝑡 for docHash
ness process and workflow management systems. Accordingly, this sec-
2: Assign 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑝 == 𝑡.𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑝
tion briefly reviews earlier approaches for implementing business pro-
Assign endApproval == t.endApproval cesses and workflow management systems in comparison with the pro-
Assign currentApproval == t.currentApproval posed approach.
3: call the isWindowOpen() to calculate time elapsed for the current
Architectural styles used to implement them are one of the common
transaction returns the Boolean value stored in isOpen variable ways in which implementations differ. The most commonly used archi-
4: if not isOpen then
tectural styles are centralized, distributed, and decentralized. In cen-
5: if currentApproval == endApproval then tralized architectural style (Huang & Atluri, 1999; Miller, Palaniswami,
6: change status of the transaction to “EXPIRE” Sheth, Kochut, & Singh, 1998; Vossen & Weske, 1999), the system is im-
7: increased escalation counter increase by 1 plemented with centralized resources and is accessed through request-
8: return 0; response interactions. In distributed architectural style (Wodtke, Weis-
9: else senfels, Weikum, & Dittrich, 1996; Yan, Yang, & Raikundalia, 2006),
10: Pass transaction to next higher authority the information resources are centralized, but the information is ei-
11: increased escalation counter increase by 1 ther accessed through event-driven interactions or message passing. The
12: return 2; decentralized system includes either blockchain-based systems (Alam
13: end if et al., 2022; Dai et al., 2020; Nizamuddin, Salah, Ajmal Azad, Arshad,
14: return 1; & Rehman, 2019; Shrestha, Vassileva, & Deters, 2020; Wang, Liffman,
15: end if
Karunamoorthy, & Abebe, 2018) or systems in which information re-
sources are shared through peer-to-peer interactions (Yan et al., 2006).
The storage platform used for information storage is the second most
Table 2
important factor with which earlier approaches differ. Most of the earlier
Gas Fee for various Functions and Deployment of Smart Contract.
approaches use centralized file systems or database servers. With a few
Procedure or Smart Amount of Gas Used exceptions (Nizamuddin et al., 2019), commonly used decentralized file
Sr. No. Contract Name (Wei) Execution Cost (Wei) systems such as IPFS are used.
1 Create_User ∼224,847 195,250 The third factor with which the earlier approaches differ is how busi-
2 Create_Transaction ∼534,900 450,000 ness logic is realized. Almost all blockchain-based approaches (Alam
3 Approve_Transaction ∼43,500 37,800
et al., 2022; Dai et al., 2020; Nizamuddin et al., 2019; Shrestha et al.,
4 Delete_User ∼43,488 37,955
2020; Wang et al., 2018), use smart contracts to implement business
process logic.
Some recent approaches have started integrating data analytics tech-
the requirements elicitation stage by the approving authority was the niques with business process automation. To assist users in making ap-
need for more information that helps them to decide upon approving propriate decisions is one of the objectives of integrating data analytics
a request. This issue has been addressed by creating a flexible system techniques (Dai et al., 2020).
architecture that can be integrated with an external recommendation Table 3 compares the approach presented in this paper with the ear-
system. lier approaches with reference to these factors.
A prototype recommendation system for approving travel grant re-
quests has been developed. It recommends a travel grant request based 5.3. Information management perspective
on factors such as conference rank, conference venue, indexing of pa-
per, availability of line proceedings, author’s contribution, etc. Similar A proper fit between underlying information management technolo-
recommendation systems can be developed for tasks like approving in- gies and business process automation has been emphasized by recent
surance claims, medical bills, home loan requests, etc. researchers (Plattfaut et al., 2022) as one of the critical success factors
in designing efficient business processes. Considering this guideline, two
5. Evaluation and discussion complementary decentralization technologies, i.e., IPFS and Ethereum,
are used.
5.1. Performance cost First, the IPFS is employed for decentralized information storage.
Second, the smart contracts in Ethereum automate the business process
The amount of gas, also known as transaction cost required to per- logic. Further, as IPFS uses the content-addressable mechanism to lo-
form various operations in blockchain-based implementation, has been cate information, it enables quick access to information required in au-
recognized as one of the critical parameters for evaluating the perfor- tomation tasks. In addition to efficient information discovery, IPFS and
mance (Alam et al., 2022). Table 2 gives the gas fee in terms of Ethers Ethereum assure information privacy in a decentralized environment.
for every operation written in the Smart Contract. The amount of gas
consumed depends on the environment and the state of the network. 5.4. Data analytics perspective
This cost also includes the extra gas provided by the miner to validate a
block. The execution cost of several procedures includes storing, calcu- Researchers have started integrating the advances in data analyt-
lating, and executing specific bytes and data structures. Execution costs ics and business processes with an objective of systematic monitoring,
are fixed, and it changes when there is any change in the data stored on control, and optimization of business processes. Such integration is re-
a blockchain. For example, in the case of Create_User: (LA, _𝑎𝑑 𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠, lab, ferred to as business process intelligence (Grigori et al., 2004). Fur-
assistant, 0), the execution cost will always be 195,250 Wei. ther, this kind of integration provides valuable insights in discovering
The efficiency of the proposed system is evaluated in terms of the events such as deviation from the normative or standard process model
amount of gas required and execution cost to carry out a particular op- (Reijers, 2021).
eration or to deploy a smart contract. However, a comparison with ex- Typically the data analytics techniques are combined with business
isting systems needs to be carried out. Also, the impact of such a system processes to analyze the event logs and monitor business process ex-
on the end user needs to be analyzed. ecution. This approach is called process mining (Van Der Aalst, 2012;

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S. Gandhi, A. Kiwelekar, L. Netak et al. International Journal of Information Management Data Insights 3 (2023) 100162

Table 3
Comparison with Earlier Approaches.

Features

Blockchain- IPFS based Data Smart Data-driven

Research Article Business Process Client- Server Distributed Decentralized based Management Contract Guidance

Mentor (Wodtke et al., 1996) Workflow Manage-ment System ✓

SecureFlow (Huang & Atluri, 1999) Workflow Manage-ment System ✓
WASA2 (Vossen & Weske, 1999) Workflow Manage-ment System ✓
SwineDew (Yan et al., 2006) Workflow Manage-ment System ✓ ✓
Document Control Document Version Control ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
(Nizamuddin et al., 2019)
Logistics (Wang et al., 2018) Data Flow Management ✓ ✓ ✓
Travel Booking (Shrestha et al., 2020) Sharing Documents ✓ ✓ ✓
Land Management (Alam et al., 2022) Land Record ✓ ✓ ✓
Data Trading (Dai et al., 2020) Data Trading Ecosystem ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
BAPS (Our Approach) Approval Processes ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Van Der Aalst & Weijters, 2004). Analyzing application-specific data and Table 4
extracting insights needed to make decisions is another way of integrat- Main Features of Approval System and Design Techniques.
ing data for business process management. The tasks such as estimating Quality Attribute Techniques Used
time to get approval, recommender systems, and calculating reputation
Decentralization in Process Execution Ethereum Blockchain
score are based on analyzing application-specific data. This approach is
Decentralization in Data Storage IPFS
adopted, and the data is analyzed to create trust among the participants Smart Contract Functional Modularity and Event-Driven
in this paper. Notification
Web-based User Interface ReactJS
Reputation Data-Driven Scoring
Guidance during Decision Making Recommender System
5.5. Implications to research and industrial practices

Business process management is an expanding research area be- 5.6. Design theory
cause of its greater relevance to modernizing and enabling digital
transformation (Parviainen, Tihinen, Kääriäinen, & Teppola, 2022). Existing software design ideas can be used to realign the implemen-
Researchers are adopting diverse emerging technologies such as ar- tation proposed in this paper. Pattern-oriented design (Seffah, 2010),
tificial intelligence (Kulkov, 2021), blockchain technology (Garcia- quality attribute-driven (Witell & Löfgren, 2007), architectural decisions
Garcia, Sánchez-Gómez, Lizcano, Escalona, & Wojdyński, 2020), cy- (Razavian, Paech, & Tang, 2019), and design rules (Hrastinski, Keller, &
ber security (Hariyanti, Djunaidy, & Siahaan, 2021), and data analy- Carlsson, 2010) are some of the theoretical frameworks with which the
sis (Kerpedzhiev, König, Röglinger, & Rosemann, 2021) to control and proposed approach might be aligned.
optimize the execution of business processes. This paper proposes a
blockchain-based workflow management system for approval processes.
Further, it adopts data analytics techniques to assist the approving au- 6. Conclusion
thority in making approval decisions. The novelty of the approach pre-
sented in this paper lies in integrating complementary technologies This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of
to infuse trust among the participants of the approval processes. The a blockchain-based system for approving business proposals. Proposals
work presented in this paper can further be extended for mining the for travel grants, procuring stationery items, and sanctioning insurance
process data generated during execution to discover deviations from claims are some examples of business proposals. The paper treats ap-
organization-specific norms. proval processes as specialized workflow management systems and busi-
Many proprietary low-code or no-code platforms, such as Sales- ness processes.
force1 , have started providing the features to design organization- Designing and implementing such a system needs to select appropri-
specific business flow and approval processes. However, they rely on ate technologies to meet the design goals. The paper proposes integrat-
centralized client-server architecture styles. It will be challenging to ing data analytics and blockchain technology to build an enterprise-wide
realize such low-code or no-code platforms for underlying blockchain trustworthy approval process. Table 4 summarizes the quality attributes
technologies from the visual diagrams (Rokis & Kirikova, 2022). Emerg- achieved by selecting different design techniques and technologies. The
ing artificial intelligence-based tools can be integrated to reduce devel- paper also evaluates the proposed approach regarding the amount of
opers’ coding efforts, such as GitHub Copilot2 (Sobania, Briesch, & Roth- gas required to complete a particular function and its execution cost. It
lauf, 2022). is found that the proposed system efficiently handles approval requests
Adopting robotic processes to minimize human involvement is an- in decentralized settings.
other research trend to automate business processes. Techniques from Some of the challenges faced while implementing the approval pro-
Robotic process automation mainly leverage the research in machine cess using blockchain technology and data analytics include the follow-
intelligence and business process management. However, to address the ing:
issues of information security and scalability, Robotic Process Automa- 1. Mapping of the traditional functionality: The first challenge is
tion (RPA) can leverage the research in blockchain-based process man- to map the conventional functionalities of the approval process into
agement (Syed et al., 2020). blockchain elements. It needs to identify which of the blockchain
elements satisfies the complete working of a particular function of
the approval process.
1
www.salesforce.com 2. Selecting a Blockchain Platform: The second challenge is to choose
2
https://github.com/features/copilot a particular blockchain platform from all the available platforms

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Declaration of Competing Interest Hrastinski, S., Keller, C., & Carlsson, S. A. (2010). Design exemplars for synchronous
e-learning: A design theory approach. Computers & Education, 55(2), 652–662.
10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.025.
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cess control (pp. 83–94). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.
critically for important intellectual content; and (c) approval of the final 10.1145/319171.319179.
version. Hughes, L., Dwivedi, Y. K., Misra, S. K., Rana, N. P., Raghavan, V., & Akella, V. (2019).
This manuscript has not been submitted to, nor is under review at, Blockchain research, practice and policy: Applications, benefits, limitations, emerging
research themes and research agenda. International Journal of Information Management,
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