System and method for analyzing and managing business performance

Abstract

A system and method for analyzing and managing business performance by designing and evaluating the performance of a business process model comprising a flow of business tasks and artifact sources that generate business artifacts. Business processes may be parsed to identify transformation opportunities meeting transformation conditions specified in a transformation knowledge. One or more identified transformation opportunities may be adopted, and parts of the process may be transformed according to transformation rules specified in a transformation knowledge. Analytics and computer simulation may be employed to evaluate business performance metrics of each of said transformed business processes. Iterative changes may be made to said business processes to manage business performance, reiterating transformation and evaluation steps until a satisfactory business process model is obtained. The resulting output is finally produced as a business process model in machine-readable format and can be deployed to a business environment.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to the analysis and management of business performance and, more particularly, to a system and method for analyzing and managing business process performance. The invention identifies business process transformation opportunities of current business processes and applies business transformation patterns by referring to stored knowledge. The thus transformed business processes have superior performance in terms of key business performance indicators such as shorter process cycle time, higher process throughput, lower process cost, or combinations of the above. [0003] 2. Background Description [0004] Business process modeling and analysis has been recognized as an effective way for assessing business performance. (See, e.g., M. Laguna and J. Marklund, “Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design”, Prentice Hall, 2004.) A business process is a flow of business tasks, each requiring ce...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] The invention employs a computer or computer platform to create a model, or business process modeling and analysis environment, to create a business process model comprising a flow of business tasks and artifact sources that generate business artifacts, each of said business tasks and artifact sources being rendered in a machine-readable format which includes a machine-readable identifier and one or more attributes further characterizing each business task and artifact source. Creation of the business process model may involve the use of a model annotation tool capable of annotating business performance models with attributes related to middleware and / or hardware. The invention enables the loading of transformation knowledge, which may be digitally stored, specifying one or more types of transformation opportunities, each of which may include one or more transformation conditions, one or more transformation rules, and one or more business value attributes comprising at least one of cost and development time.

[0012] Computer-implemented data processing may be employed to manage the business performance of each of the transformed business processes by making iterative changes to the business processes and reiterating the transformation and evaluation steps until a satisfactory business process is obtained. Ultimately, the resulting output is an improved business process model with respect to the business objective, e.g., shorter process cycle time, higher throughput of business processes, lower cost for processing each instance of the business process, or the combination of the above. In a modified business process, some of the process constructs or their constituent attributes may have been altered.

[0014] Limitations of current business process modeling and simulation tools may thus be addressed by the present invention. For example, the problem of lack of methods and tools for managing business performance by managing business process performance may be solved by providing users with a business process modeling and transformation tool capable of analyzing the performance and cost of the transformed business process, as described above. In addition, the problem of not being able properly to capture experiences gained from business transformation projects, or to reuse such experiences by applying them to new projects, is solved using a knowledge store to capture the experience of business activity transformation, as described above, which makes it possible for business activity in a business process to be transformed by means of enterprise application integration or other methods.

Problems solved by technology

In addition, for applications running on a mainframe computer, the cost for performing certain types of transactions can be charged based on its usage of physical resources such as 10 milliseconds of central processing unit (CPU) time.

Current business process modeling and simulation tools have several limitations.

One such limitation is that it relies on experienced practitioners to manually construct an improved business process using the current business process modeling and simulation tools.

Another limitation is the lack of methods and tools for managing business performance, by updating the models predicting business performance, based on the state of the business.

Yet another limitation is the inability to properly capture experiences gained from business transformation projects and reuse them by applying them to new projects.

There are additional limitations, as well.

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