An event log records business events from process-aware information systems (PAIS) such as WFM (Workflow Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain Management) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. Typically, event logs contain information about start and completion of activities, their ordering, resources which executed them and the process instance they belong to.
Published in Chapter:
Business Process Intelligence
M. Castellanos (Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, USA), A.K. Alves de Medeiros (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands), J. Mendling (Queensland University of Technology, Australia), B. Weber (University of Innsbruck, Australia), and A.J.M.M. Weijters (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 25
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-288-6.ch021
Abstract
Business Process Intelligence (BPI) is an emerging area that is getting increasingly popular for enterprises. The need to improve business process efficiency, to react quickly to changes and to meet compliance is among the main drivers for BPI. BPI refers to the application of Business Intelligence techniques to business processes and comprises a large range of application areas spanning from process monitoring and analysis to process discovery, conformance checking, prediction and optimization. This chapter provides an introductory overview of BPI and its application areas and delivers an understanding of how to apply BPI in one’s own setting. In particular, it shows how process mining techniques such as process discovery and conformance checking can be used to support process modeling and process redesign. In addition, it illustrates how processes can be improved and optimized over time using analytics for explanation, prediction, optimization and what-if-analysis. Throughout the chapter, a strong emphasis is given to describe tools that use these techniques to support BPI. Finally, major challenges for applying BPI in practice and future trends are discussed.