Business Process Cube

Together, the three perspectives (BPM, business process models and simulation) allow the extremely complex interactions and interdependencies within organizations to be better understood by managers, so that they can better direct their organizations. All three views are associated with traditional analyses methods that are at best, only partially integrated. Due to lack of integration, and the current cumbersome, highly technical, analysis techniques available, many critical questions cannot be easily answered or they cannot be answered at all.

A new approach is proposed that extends the functionality and value of BPM, process modeling, simulation and data cube analysis techniques, by combining, transforming and integrating all relevant data into a data cube structure that can be easily created and queried. In the context of business process modeling, a multidimensional model for analyzing the data generated by business process model simulations is developed. A process model, along with the simulation meta model, is used to define the dimensions and the facts for a multidimensional model. The multidimensional model developed is a generic one and is therefore not constrained to a specific kind of a business process model.

When using the this approach, non-technical users are able to analyze a specific business process model and answer critical questions about their organization. The business process model is used to fill the dimensions with data, and data from simulations of the model are used to fill the facts.

The business process cube makes it possible to answer a wide range of mission critical questions regarding the performance of the organization. Questions that can now be answered range from simple ones like “What is the time required to perform Activities per Process?”, or to more complex questions which could not be easily answered before, such as “What is the average throughput time and costs for processing a specific piece of Information for a specific type of customer for each product type between a specific Input and a specific Output?”.