Process Mining Techniques in Internal Auditing: A Stepwise Case Study

A business process is a sequence of activities organized in a logical way in order to produce a service or a product that is valued for a particular group of customers. Process auditing in corporate environment aims to assess the degree of compliance of processes and their controls. Due to the volume of information that needs to be analyzed in an audit job, auditing´s cost can be very high. We argue that process mining techniques have the potential to improve this activity, allowing the auditor to meet the short deadlines, as well as bringing greater value to the senior management and reliability in the service provided by the audit. The goal of this paper is to discuss, through a case study, how process mining techniques can optimize and bring agility to the verification of process model compliance against the process actually performed. With this approach, it will be possible to detect errors and/or failures in activities or controls of a running process. The main contribution of this paper is to describe a simple set of steps that could be applied by auditors and experts in order to get introduced and to obtain the first insights in the process mining area

MELHORIA DE PROCESSOS DE NEGÓCIO: SISTEMATIZANDO A SELEÇÃO DE PADRÕES DE REDESENHO

Business Process Management is increasingly present in organizations, and process improvement is one of its focuses. Patterns for process redesign have gathered the attention of some studies, which seek to provide solutions to recurring problems of business process improvement. However, the choice of these patterns is not an easy task, especially when performed in scenarios with large models and complex processes, which make the manual analysis a very costly task. This paper presents a method to assist in the analysis of these patterns by automating the choice of patterns to be applied, using information present in the process models.Gestão de Processos de Negócio está cada vez mais presente nas organizações e a melhoria de processos é um de seus focos. Padrões para redesenho de processos têm motivado alguns trabalhos, os quais buscam apresentar soluções para problemas recorrentes de melhoria de processos de negócio. Contudo, a escolha destes padrões não é uma tarefa simples, principalmente em cenários em que os modelos de processos são grandes e complexos, o que torna a análise manual uma tarefa muito custosa. Este artigo apresenta um método para auxiliar na análise destes padrões, por meio da automatização da escolha dos padrões a serem aplicados, utilizando informações presentes nos modelos de processos

Valuing Prior Learning: Designing an ICT Artifact to Assess Professional Competences Through Text Mining

Purpose: This paper introduces an ICT artifact that uses text mining to support the innovative and standardized assessment of professional competences within the validation of prior learning. By assessing, we mean comparing identified and documented professional competences against a standard or reference point. We evaluate the designed artifact by matching a set of curriculum vitae (CV) scraped from LinkedIn against a comprehensive model of professional competence. Design/Methodology/Approach: A design science approach informed the development and evaluation of the ICT artifact presented in this paper. Findings: A proof of concept shows that the ICT artifact can support assessors within the validation of prior learning procedure. Rather the output of such an ICT artifact can be used to structure documentation in the validation process. Research limitations/implications: Evaluating the artifact shows that ICT support to assess documented learning outcomes is a promising endeavor but remains a challenge. Further research should work on standardized ways to document professional competences, ICT artifacts that capture the semantic content of documents, and refine ontologies of theoretical models of professional competences. Practical implications: Text mining methods to assess professional competences rely on large bodies of textual data - thus a thoroughly built and large portfolio is necessary as input for this ICT artifact. Originality/value: Following the recent call of European policy makers to develop standardized and ICT-based approaches for the assessment of professional competences, we designed and evaluated an ICT artifact that supports the automatized assessment of professional competences within the validation of prior learning

Implementation of Aspect-oriented Business Process Models with Web Services

In software development, crosscutting concerns, such as security, audit, access control, authentication, logging, persistence, transaction, error handling etc. can be modularized using the aspect-oriented paradigm. In busi- ness process modeling, aspects have been used to reduce visualization complexity, increase reuse and improve model maintainability. There are techniques which address aspects in modeling and implementation phases of business process; however, these techniques adopt different semantic representations, hindering the integration of these phases into the BPM lifecycle. This work proposes an architecture for service discovery capable of selecting web services that implement crosscutting concerns and meet the goals established in the aspect modeling phase, executing them accordingly with a prioritization. A proof of concept to analyze the proposed architecture and generated artifacts was performed. Afterwards, the proposal was evaluated by means of an experiment. The results suggest that the def- inition of an operational goal enables the business spe- cialists to concentrate on the modeling of the aspect without necessarily concerning its implementation, since a proper option for implementation is discovered during the execution of the process

0002/2011 - Identificação automática de serviços em uma abordagem SOA

A modelagem de processos de negócio está sendo utilizada em larga escala nas empresas atualmente. Quando bem elaborados, os modelos englobam informações detalhadas sobre as atividades realizadas no processo: fluxo de execução, sistemas de apoio, regras de negócio, requisitos de negócio, tecnologias de armazenamento, dados de entrada e saída das atividades e outras informações relevantes. Em uma abordagem SOA, essa gama de informações permite uma análise computacional automatizada, baseada em heurísticas que identificam serviços candidatos a partir dos modelos de processo de negócio. Este trabalho descreve como é realizada a identificação automatizada de serviços candidatos, as informações extraídas no processo e sua utilização no apoio aos analistas e desenvolvedores

Sistema para la Integración de procesos de Negocio basado en situaciones contextuales. Caso estudio: Admisión Universitaria

El objetivo de este documento es presentar un sistema de integración de procesos basado en información contextual, aplicado a un caso de estudio relacionado con la admisión a programas de posgrado en una universidad pública. Se propone una metodología basada en fases, que buscan principalmente la captura, análisis y agrupamiento de procesos a partir de comparación semántica y sintáctica. Los principales hallazgos al aplicar la metodología de integración validan que las situaciones contextuales presentes en el dominio de ejecución del proceso, puede afectar su rendimiento una vez se le apliquen algunas actualizaciones

Process Mining Techniques in Internal Auditing: A Stepwise Case Study

A business process is a sequence of activities organized in a logical way in order to produce a service or a product that is valued for a particular group of customers. Process auditing in corporate environment aims to assess the degree of compliance of processes and their controls. Due to the volume of information that needs to be analyzed in an audit job, auditing´s cost can be very high. We argue that process mining techniques have the potential to improve this activity, allowing the auditor to meet the short deadlines, as well as bringing greater value to the senior management and reliability in the service provided by the audit. The goal of this paper is to discuss, through a case study, how process mining techniques can optimize and bring agility to the verification of process model compliance against the process actually performed. With this approach, it will be possible to detect errors and/or failures in activities or controls of a running process. The main contribution of this paper is to describe a simple set of steps that could be applied by auditors and experts in order to get introduced and to obtain the first insights in the process mining area

Cost minimization analysis of BoNT-As in the treatment of upper limb spasticity and cervical dystonia

Botulinum toxin type A (BoNT-A) injections are recommended for the management of upper limb spasticity (ULS) and cervical dystonia (CD). The main aim of this cost minimization analysis (CMA) was to compare the annual cost per patient for three BoNT-As (Botox®, Dysport® and Xeomin®) in the treatment of ULS or CD in Italy. A budget impact analysis (BIA) was also conducted. Methods The CMA was conducted from the perspective of the Italian National Health Service. Only direct medical costs (BoNT-A and standard therapy) were considered. By using a Delphi panel of twelve Italian Experts in the treatment of ULS and CD, data was collected about BoNT-As (dose, number of administrations and acquisition price) and standard therapy (concomitant medications, visits, Day-Hospital, hospitalizations, etc.). Costs were assessed in Euros 2014. The BIA was conducted to evaluate the pharmaceutical expenditure for the three BoNT-As on a five-year time horizon. A sensitivity analysis was conducted. Results The mean annual cost per patient with ULS was €1,840.20 with Dysport®, €2,067.12 with Botox® and €2,171.05 with Xeomin®. The mean annual cost per patient with CD was €1,353.79 with Dysport®, €1,433.12 with Botox® and €1,503.60 with Xeomin®. In the time horizon considered, the substitution process of Botox® and Xeomin® by Dysport® would result in a total saving of €620,000 when treating ULS and a total saving of €481,000 in the case of CD. Sensitivity and probabilistic analyses showed the robustness of results. Conclusions From the Italian National Health Service's perspective, Dysport® appears to be the cost-saving therapeutic option compared with Botox® and Xeomin® in the treatment of ULS or CD