Towards Measuring Key Performance Indicators of Semantic Business Processes
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) enables continuous, real-time performance measurement of business processes based on key performance indicators (KPI). The performance information is employed by business users but prior support from IT engineers is requ
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Abstract. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) enables continuous, real-time performance measurement of business processes based on key performance indicators (KPI). The performance information is employed by business users but prior support from IT engineers is required for setting up the BAM solution. Semantic Business Process Management (SBPM) tries to minimize the needed support from IT staff throughout the business process lifecycle. In this paper we introduce a framework for BAM as part of SBPM. We show how performance measurement related activities can be integrated into the semantic business process lifecycle. KPIs are modeled by business analysts exploiting semantic annotations of business processes. KPI models are automatically transformed to IT-level event-based models and used for real-time monitoring using reasoning technology. Keywords: Semantic Business Process Management, Business Activity Monitoring, Key Performance Indicator.
1 Introduction Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses methods, techniques, and tools that allow organizing, executing, and measuring the processes of an organization. Recently, companies have increasingly been using Business Process Management software to manage their business processes [SF03]. Typically, the business process lifecycle begins with the business analyst analyzing business processes in the company and creating process models using a process modeling tool. When the process is to be automated, it is translated by IT engineers to a workflow model, which is run on a process engine. The process engine executes the workflow model by delegating the process tasks to human workers and automated IT applications. For controlling the achievement of business goals in business processes and measuring process performance, business activity monitoring (BAM) technology enables continuous, real-time monitoring of processes based on key business metrics, also known as key performance indicators (KPI). Business people define KPIs based on business goals at process design time. These KPIs are then translated to IT monitor models by IT engineers. At process execution time, event-based BAM technology displays information on KPIs in dashboards and alerts responsible business managers in case of severe deviations from planned values. W. Abramowicz and D. Fensel (Eds.): BIS 2008, LNBIP 7, pp. 227–238, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
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B. Wetzstein, Z. Ma, and F. Leymann
Despite of increasing software support for BPM in general and BAM as part of BPM in particular, there is still a low degree of automation in the business process lifecycle [HLD+05]. In particular, there are substantial difficulties when it comes to bridging the gap between the business and IT views of business processes. One of the major problems is the translation of the high-level business process models and corresponding KPI models, which are modeled by a business analyst, to workflow models and monitor models on the IT level. The vision of Semantic Business Process Management (SBPM) is to cl
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