This book is addressed at decision makers, project teams, project managers, company's IT-managers, and staff of consulting companies, who are either involved in complex standard software implementation, or release migration projects. The book stresses the shortcomings of many present standard software implementations which mainly pertain to insufficiently optimised business processes, thus standard software has caused a lot of dissatisfied companies. The authors analyse certain popular implementation approaches (life-cycle-models) of different Standard Software suppliers by the means of a specific evaluation framework to reveal life-cycle inherent weaknesses that cause the earlier mentioned problems. The book aims to eliminate these drawbacks by showing how a new semi-process oriented way of implementing modern standard software systems may contribute to a better business performance. An integrated life-cycle model which guides the project team in a goal-directed way for the software based redesign of business processes will be described on a detailed level.
The vision of business process optimisation by means of integrated commercial standard software will be complemented by an introduction into the idea of business process orientation, important interdisciplinary aspects as well as modelling and optimisation techniques.

· Prof. Dr. Heinz-Dieter Knöll is Professor of Software Engineering and Data Processing in Accounting, Dean, University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) Nordostniedersachsen, Faculty of Business, Lüneburg, Germany, and Visiting Professor of Software Quality Assurance, University of Wolverhampton, School of Computing and Information Technology, Wolverhampton, UK, and Senior Consultant at Pros Kyberneton GmbH, Reppenstedt, Germany.
· Roland W.A. Kühl is Senior Consultant at Mummert + Partner Management Consulting AG, Diplom Wirtschaftsinformatiker, MSc in Advanced Software Technology, currently PhD Researcher at the University of Wolverhampton.
· Lukas W.H. Kühl is Senior Consultant at Mummert + Partner Management Consulting AG, Diplom Wirtschaftsinformatiker, MSc in Advanced Software Technology, currently PhD Researcher at the University of Wolverhampton.
· Prof. Dr. Robert Moreton is Professor of Computer Science, Dean and Head of Research Committee, University of Wolverhampton, School of Computing and Information Technology, Wolverhampton, UK.