A process-oriented methodology for evaluating the impact of IT : a proposal and an application in healthcare A Process-oriented Methodology for Evaluating the Impact of IT: a Proposal and an Application in Healthcare

Abstract

Abstract In order to improve business process often Information Technologies (IT) are introduced. However, business processes are known to be complex and distributed among multiple business entities. As a result, the impact of new IT on an entire business process is typically unknown as quantitative methods for evaluation are missing. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a process-oriented methodology for evaluating the impact of IT on a business process. In our method, process mining and discrete event simulation are key ingredients. Based on automatically stored data, process mining allows for obtaining detailed knowledge on a business process, e.g., it can be discovered how a business process is actually executed. Using discrete event simulation, a model can be build which accurately mimics the discovered process and which can subsequently be used for exploring and evaluating various redesign of the same process