scholarly journals An Agent-Mediated Platform for Business Processes

Author(s):  
Hoa Khanh Dam ◽  
Aditya Ghose ◽  
Mohammad Qasim

Business processes have been widely becoming crucial assets of organisations across various industries and domains. The flexibility in dealing with changes when business processes are executed has significant impact on the success of an organisation's business operations, especially in the current ever-changing business environment. In this context, agent-based systems offer a promisingly powerful platform for business process execution. In this paper, the authors propose an agent-mediated platform for business processes with the aim to contribute to bridge the gap between business process management and agent-oriented development. They present a conceptual mapping method for a seamless transition from business process models in Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) to agent-oriented models in the Prometheus methodology, which is implemented using the ATLAS Transformation Language. The authors also developed an Eclipse-based plug-in which allows the designer to import BPMN models into the Eclipse-based Prometheus Design Tool.

Author(s):  
José A. Rodrigues Nt ◽  
Jano Moreira de Souza ◽  
Geraldo Zimbrão ◽  
Geraldo Xexéo ◽  
Mutaleci Miranda

Business Process Management (BPM) brings together the idea of effectively managing organizations and properly using Information Technology to fulfill organizations’ needs. For this purpose, BPM systems are largely used nowadays. However, most process models are started from scratch, not having reuse promoted. Sometimes, large enterprises have the same business process implemented in a variety of ways due to differences in their departmental cultures or environments, even when using a unique integrated system. Additionally, although technology plays an important role in actually improving organizations, the human factor is still fundamental, since any improvement attempt goes through cultural changes. In this chapter, a peer-to-peer (P2P) tool is proposed as a way to cooperatively develop business processes models, minimizing the time needed to develop such models, reducing the differences among similar processes conducted in distinct organizational units, enhancing the quality of models, promoting reuse, and distributing knowledge.


Author(s):  
Olga Korzachenko ◽  
Vadim Getman

Improvement of Business-Activities in Telecommunication Enterprises by the eTOM Business-Process Structural Model Implementation For now, in front of telecommunication branch enterprises of Ukraine, there is a problem of activity improvement with the purpose of granting high-quality services and maintenance of competitive position, both on internal, and on a foreign market. To solve this problem, telecommunication companies appropriate to use the mechanisms of business-oriented process management and improvement of end-to-end business-processes. The purpose of this article is a choice of effective business-process model that will allow telecommunications companies to provide modern, high quality and cost competitive services. During research, conditions of the telecommunication branch enterprises of Ukraine were investigated and key problems of their activity were revealed. Existing business-process models have been considered and analyzed and the optimal model was chosen, according to the put criteria. By results of the analysis a conclusion was drawn, that to the enterprises for business-process modeling is expedient for using eTOM - high-level system business-oriented model aimed for providing of any technological services, including IT. As advantages from introduction eTOM at the Ukrainian enterprises were analyzed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wil M. P. van der Aalst

Business Process Management (BPM) research resulted in a plethora of methods, techniques, and tools to support the design, enactment, management, and analysis of operational business processes. This survey aims to structure these results and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in BPM. In BPM the concept of a process model is fundamental. Process models may be used to configure information systems, but may also be used to analyze, understand, and improve the processes they describe. Hence, the introduction of BPM technology has both managerial and technical ramifications and may enable significant productivity improvements, cost savings, and flow-time reductions. The practical relevance of BPM and rapid developments over the last decade justify a comprehensive survey.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Ashwini Sarvepalli ◽  
Joy Godin

Organizations are increasingly adopting Business Process Management (BPM) approaches growing the need for BPM expertise in the industry (Bandara et al., 2010). This has resulted in growing demand for college graduates who have a thorough knowledge of business processes (Lee, 2008). Hadidi (2014) pointed out that development of courses and programs in BPM area has received huge consideration in academia during recent times. This paper presents a classroom activities for teaching Business Process Management using a paper-based simulation game conducted as part of an undergraduate IS course. The paper discusses various class activities involved such as execution of the simulation game, creation of graphical representations of processes followed in the game, and creation of Business Process models using Microsoft Visio software. A post-test survey was conducted to evaluate the understanding of BPM concepts learned and analyze the effectiveness of the simulation game. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.


Author(s):  
Maria Estrela Ferreira da Cruz ◽  
Ricardo J. Machado ◽  
Maribel Yasmina Santos

The constant change and rising complexity of organizations, mainly due to the transforming nature of their business processes, has driven the increase of interest in business process management by organizations. It is recognized that knowing business processes can help to ensure that the software under development will meet the business needs. Some of software development processes (like unified process) already refer to business process modeling as a first effort in the software development process. A business process model usually is created under the supervision, clarification, approval, and validation of the business stakeholders. Thus, a business process model is a proper representation of the reality (as is or to be), having lots of useful information that can be used in the development of the software system that will support the business. The chapter uses the information existing in business process models to derive software models specially focused in generating a data model.


Author(s):  
Matthias Kloppmann ◽  
Dieter Koenig ◽  
Simon Moser

This chapter introduces a set of languages intended to model and run business processes. The Business Process Modeling Notation 1.1 (BPMN) is a notation used to graphically depict business processes. BPMN is able to express choreographies, i.e. the cooperation of separate, autonomous business processes to jointly achieve a larger scenario. Since BPMN is only a notation, there is no specification for a meta-model that allows rendering BPMN choreographies into an executable form. This chapter describes how the Service Component Architecture (SCA) and the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) help to close that gap. BPMN, SCA and WS-BPEL can jointly be used and combined to model, deploy and execute business process choreographies. We will also integrate the related BPEL4People specification, since BPMN allows human ‘user tasks’, but WS-BPEL focuses only on automated business process. The authors argue that, based on these specifications, the dichotomy between modeling and execution can be addressed efficiently. In this chapter, we will show that a key aspect of the future of Business Process Management is to combine graphical modeling (via BPMN) with a precise specification of an executable business process (via WS-BPEL and related standards).


2010 ◽  
pp. 518-531
Author(s):  
José A. Rodrigues Nt ◽  
Jano Moreira de Souza ◽  
Geraldo Zimbrão ◽  
Geraldo Xexéo ◽  
Mutaleci Miranda

Business Process Management (BPM) brings together the idea of effectively managing organizations and properly using Information Technology to fulfill organizations’ needs. For this purpose, BPM systems are largely used nowadays. However, most process models are started from scratch, not having reuse promoted. Sometimes, large enterprises have the same business process implemented in a variety of ways due to differences in their departmental cultures or environments, even when using a unique integrated system. Additionally, although technology plays an important role in actually improving organizations, the human factor is still fundamental, since any improvement attempt goes through cultural changes. In this chapter, a peer-to-peer (P2P) tool is proposed as a way to cooperatively develop business processes models, minimizing the time needed to develop such models, reducing the differences among similar processes conducted in distinct organizational units, enhancing the quality of models, promoting reuse, and distributing knowledge.


Author(s):  
Jan Mendling

This chapter provides an overview of business process management and business process modeling. We approach business process management by giving a historical classification of seminal work, and define it by the help of the business process management life cycle. Business process models play an important role in this life cycle, in particular, if information systems are used for executing processes. We deduct a definition for business process modeling based on a discussion of modeling from a general information systems point of view. In the following, we detail business process modeling techniques, in particular, modeling languages and modeling procedures for business process modeling. Finally, we discuss some future trends with a focus on the business process execution language for Web services (BPEL), and conclude the chapter with a summary. The chapter aims to cover business process modeling in a comprehensive way such that academics and practitioners can use it as a reference for identifying more specialized works.


Author(s):  
Gábor Kovács

This chapter gives an overview of modeling languages used for modeling business environment, abstract workflows, executable business processes, and business data. The languages are either abstract that primarily serve the purposes of business modeling or executable that can be run in a business process engine. The business process modeling languages BPMN (Business Process Modeling Language) and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) are in the center of the discussion; however, the core concepts and application area of other languages are given as well. An important part of business modeling is the description of business collaboration and the format of business information exchanged. XML based data modeling languages are used for describing such contracts. Throughout the chapter the focus is on the underlying concepts of these languages rather than the syntax.


As the business competition gets increasingly intensified, a competitive business becomes increasingly dependent upon effective and reliable computing services empowered by integrated IT systems. Effective IT systems in an organization are remarkably delineated with the same characteristics: the right data and information can be delivered to the right user at the right place on time; the underlying IT supports can be easily adapted to the ever-changing business setting so that the first characteristic can be consistently maintained; business intelligence can be incrementally developed to facilitate business operations with the support of effective decision-making at a variety of organizational levels across the organization. IT systems can be effectively integrated through implementing business process management (BPM) – a newly emerging corporate IT concept, philosophy, and technology that help align business operations and IT supports in a competitive manner. This chapter first explores the concept of aligning business processes with IT systems. Surely, computing service processes are derived from the correlated business activities within a business unit or across business units, reflecting corporate best practices. How BPM can be well defined, modeled, and managed while integrating enterprise systems is then discussed. As the best practices evolves along with the changes in business operations for a competitive advantage, approaches to building the necessary agility in support of managing the changes of IT-driven business processes is finally discussed.


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