Business Information Systems Workshops

We stipulate that for researchers interested in the computational and organizational aspects of research in compliance and risk management, there are two key aspects to be considered. Firstly, research should aim towards a sustainable methodology for compliance management. Secondly, research in this highly multi-disciplinary area must be aligned with industry demands in order to maximize potential for impact and relevance. We have presented a snapshot recommendation for the two aspects, namely a compliance by design methodology that has a fundamentally preventative focus, and an industry driven research agenda that is derived through expert opinion and practitioner feedback. We hope that this will assist researchers to better position their future research endeavors in the area of risk and compliance management.

The outcome of a business process (e.g., duration, cost, success rate) depends significantly on how well the assigned resources perform at their respective tasks. Currently, this assignment is typically based on a static resource query that specifies the minimum requirements (e.g., role) a resource has to meet. This approach has the major downside that any resource whatsoever that meets the requirements can be retrieved, possibly selecting resources that do not perform well on the task. To address this challenge, we present and evaluate in this paper a model-based approach that uses data integration and mining techniques for selecting resources based on their likely performance for the task or sub-process at hand.

Separation of Duties (SoD) is the concept that conflicting activities cannot be assigned to the same individual. A goal of SoD is to separate roles and responsibilities to reduce the risk of fraud or error. We consider the problem of verifying SoD constraints in the presence of uncertain information. We demonsrate the feasibility of implementing probabilistic model checking in a business process design with a case study. Modeling and verification is done with the probabilistic model checker PRISM.

This paper presents an idea and prototype of the semantic-based autocompletion mechanism supporting development of business process models. Currently available process modelling tools support business analysts by suggesting elements that may be incorporated in the process, validating modelled processes, providing additional descriptions easing automation, etc. However, these solutions based mainly on syntactic data, disregard proper identification and usage of previously modelled process fragments. The mechanism described in this paper analyses context and annotations of process tasks (also on the semantic level) in order to deliver a list of suggestions for possible successor tasks: process fragments that may complete the model being developed.

We argue that the proposed autocompletion mechanism has an ability to improve the efficiency of the modelling process by among others reducing modelling errors and shortening the duration of the modelling process.

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is an emerging standard for modeling business processes. In its 2.0 version it defined formal semantics to its elements which allows a process execution engine to understand how processes should be integrated and executed. However, BPMN2.0 elements use shallow String datatypes for their identification (e.g., process participants, process resources) which does not explicitly identify entities that a given element pertains to. In this paper, we propose to extend BPMN 2.0 in order to allow for linking its elements to external entities following the Linked Data principle. Our proposal leverage the extension mechanism provided by BPMN 2.0 which does not result in the alteration of the language specification. Our extensions consider the ARIS views to support better integration and collaboration from different perspectives of the enterprise systems.

A service oriented architecture (SOA) combined with business process management (BPM) puts enterprises in a position to build applications in a very flexible and agile way. The SOA makes services available and BPM suites (BPMS) combine these services with user tasks to complex business processes. Integration of data and application services is supported by common technical standards and a wide range of products that are applicable out of the box. In contrast, the number of standardized user interface (UI) components that can be composed in SOA based BPM applications in a straightforward way is quite low. This is because the demands on such components are much higher. They must be embeddable into graphical front ends and interact with end users as well as the underlying business models. Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted approach and BPM tools provide their own proprietary mechanisms. The main drawback is the lack of re-usability resulting in higher cost and longer development phases. This paper derives basic requirements for UI components in order to make them generally applicable for SOA based BPM applications. It defines UI services meeting these demands in a platform-independent manner and presents one possible implementation based on JSR-286 Portlets and WSRP 2.0. This solution allows the development and embedding of system-independent and re-usable UI services by slightly extending existing BPM suites and enterprise portals.

In recent years, performance measurement has become an important element of efficiency improvement projects in many organizations. Thereby, process-based measures are used to evaluate the process efficiency and quality. In health care, such measures are often neither commonly defined nor standardized. Therefore we present a novel approach for standardized clinical quality metrics measurement by means of a newly developed clinical reference process model and generic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We use both for a comprehensive description of the complete clinical patient-centered process in hospital. Our approach fulfils performance measurement requirements particularly in the field of time-critical diseases like heart attack and stroke.

This paper describes the role of business phase models with regards to modern IT-service design. Hence, the usability of two models incorporated for IT-service design in modern business environments will be evaluated. The two examined models are namely the classic four-step model also referred to as PDCA-Circle of Deming on the one hand and the lean Six Sigma model on the other hand.

The approach includes qualitative interviews with six different specialists of German companies in disjoint practices. This practice-diversity is needed to profile the current process of IT-service design over cross-sectional areas. Based on the standardized interviews, seven drivers of the research framework have been identified as quantification guidelines for the performance of phase models in current IT-service design. Thereafter, a case study of a large German insurance IT-department was analyzed. The results are showing differences in the explanatory power. Thereby, the lean Six Sigma model offers a wide set of tools for customer orientation, whereas the classic four-step model scores lower on average. Based on these insights, this paper analyzes if the findings can be generalized for other practices and how future IT-services can be supported by a modification of the theoretical frameworks.

Predicting changes of stock price long term trend is an important problem for validating strategies of investment to the financial instruments. In this article we applied the approach of analysis of information efficiency and long term correlation memory in order to distinguish short term changes in trend, which can be evaluated as informational ‘nervousness’, from the reversal point of long term trend of the financial time series. By integrating two econometrical measures of information efficiency - Shannon’s entropy (SH) and local Hurst exponent (HE) - we designed aggregated entropy-based (EB) indicator and explored its ability to forecast the turning point of trend of the financial time series and to calibrate the stock market trading strategy.

The paper proposes a semantic view on the notion of ,,learning object” and an application model based on RDF-based learning objects and learning processes. Direct feedback is individualized for test subjects and learning tasks, according to requirements defined for corporate training. The knowledge model allows contextualization and subjectivity, which, in turn, are used to dynamically generate temporary belief sets, compare them to the (theoretically) objective belief set underlying the learning content and adapt learning recommendations to each particular user. The semantic models also determine learning prerequisites and the screen flow adapted to each individual learner, thus influencing usability.

In the recent debates over the informational efficiency of the stock markets, particular attention has been paid to the momentum violating the traditional finance theory which is being taught at business schools. Although many empirical findings support the existence of price momentum, there are still many angles to be researched for the sake of complete understanding of the momentum phenomenon. This paper will emphasize the importance of country selection for the profitability of momentum strategies since academic literature lacks the comparison of the momentum profitability across Emerging and Developed stock markets. Therefore, the main objective of the paper is to investigate the profitability difference of momentum effect between Emerging and Developed stock markets. The study will embrace back-testing stock markets across pre-crisis (year 2005 to 2007) and crisis (year 2008 to mid-2010) periods.

The paper presents analysis of the possibilities to use voice technologies for the partial integration of people with disabilities. The particular interest has been expressed to the motor-handicapped people. The special wheelchair with the voice command recognition capabilities has been designed. Evaluation of command’s recognition accuracy shows high dependency on the proper detection of the utterance boundaries. The acoustic boundaries detection algorithm has been proposed. This algorithm allowed achieve high accuracy of the detection of acoustic events boundaries such as words or phrases even in the presense of high noise. The proper detection leads to the increased accuracy of voice commands recognition and the overall satisfaction of users.

We discuss a semantic platform that matches a customer’s purchase intent against vendor offers. The customers’ perception on particular products, including evolving needs and preferences, were captured in a request and product ontology, in turn used to annotate vendor offers. During the project, however, we observed an important gap between the intent descriptions of users and the available data in product descriptions. We argue that through the inclusion of peripheral data, vendors are able to innovate according to customer preference, and users receive increasingly relevant results. We present a method that is essentially a customer-driven innovation system using product innovation ontologies.

This paper presents concept of the strategic knowledge resource network for SMEs. A strategic-knowledge resource in a company represents the knowledge, skills and capabilities of the individuals who make up the workforce of that company. In the paper we present a network for the transfer as well as storage of knowledge in enterprises in order to make sure every post is covered by an employee (seen as a strategic knowledge resource) who efficiently completes the respective tasks of an organisation. This is especially important in a network of SMEs easing the exchange and transfer of employees. The structure of the SknowNet consists of (1) sets of business processes in SME, (2) sets of values of personnel usefulness function (strategic knowledge resource), (3) a games theory approach, especially natural games, is used, which facilitates decision taking in hesitant situations.

Distributed information retrieval is a well-known approach for accessing heterogeneous, highly autonomous sources of unstructured information. Selecting and querying only a number of relevant sources can help improve its performance, but most resource selection algorithms are limited to syntactic comparisons.

We present a framework for applying resource selection in the context of a semantic federated product information system, and evaluate the performance of the well-known CORI resource selection algorithm in this context.

Knowledge-Based MDA is IS development approach created using core MDA components (models and transformations) as well as the basic elements of Knowledge Based IS engineering (Enterprise Model, Enterprise Meta- Model). This approach enhances basic MDA with Enterprise Model and two transformations in order to improve user requirements acquisition and enterprise modeling stages of IS development process.

This research proposes a completely automated OWL product domain ontology (PDO) evolution by enhancing an existing ontology evolution concept. Its manual activities are eliminated by formulating an adaptation strategy for the conceptual aspects of an automated PDO evolution and establishing a feedback cycle. This strategy decides when and how to evolve by evaluating the impact of the evolution in the precedent feedback cycle and is implemented in a new adaptation layer. The adaptation strategy was validated/ firstly “instantiated” by applying it to a real-world conversational content-based e-commerce recommender as use case.

Requirements from rapidly developing global markets force companies to develop new paradigms of business, such as product-service systems. Such paradigms, in turn, require new solutions from Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and modern ICT do make it possible to develop such new approaches. The paper presents an approach based on efficient management of information services in the open information environment oriented to product-service system configuration. The approach is based on the technologies of ontology and context management. The standards of Web-services are used to provide for interoperability between information services. Application of constraints for knowledge representation makes it possible to integrate with existing services.

In recent years, Enterprise Architecture has gradually emerged as the preeminent means to change and transform large organizations. By employing Architectural Principles, organizations strive to master the complexity inherent in business processes and IT system and their harmonious alignment. Unfortunately, very rarely has the coevolutionary and emergent nature of alignment been taken into consideration in IS research. Even if different approaches focus on business IT alignment, most of them have a tendency to focus on alignment as a state or an outcome. In this paper we argue that a dynamic approach is necessary in order to achieve business IT alignment in a long-term perspective. Furthermore we demonstrate that the choice of architectural principles has an impact on the ability to achieve and maintain operational as well as structural alignment. A case study is used as a basis for the analysis. The conclusion is that an Enterprise-centric architecture can create freedom of action for dynamic operational alignment, and that Business-oriented IT management can keep the IS Architecture aligned with the Business Architecture in a long term perspective.

Customer-motivated changes in network organizations lead to alignment of business and IT-infrastructure. This paper investigates the use of competence models in network organizations for more efficient alignment of IT-infrastructure to changed business demands. The paper shows that a competence model is pertinent in a process of aligning an IT-infrastructure to changed business demands. Then, a way is presented of extracting alignment needs from competence information in enterprise models. Finally, our approach for competence profile management is extended with alignment operations. These operations together with other operations on competence profiles form a lifecycle model for competence profile management. Such operationalization allows for support of aligning network organizations to changing business demands.

To be successful in business small and medium enterprises have to focus on the optimal utilization of their spare resources. IT - System are supposed to support this process, yet as shown by a survey and systematic literature analysis presented in this paper, by now the concept of KM is not widely established in SME nor are KMS fully integrated or aligned to business strategies. Within the limited resources of SME, the question of how the business value of a well integrated application suiting a SME’s objectives can be shown, has to be discussed. In this paper we present our suggestion on how this problem could be approached by using a framework based on the business values and KM dimensions to be able to determine the most effective KMS for a SME.

Information systems requirements should be rooted into the business needs. Business process models are one of the most transparent ways how to represent these needs. Knowledge about business processes in different types of industries has already been accumulated in several process frameworks, such as Supply Chain Operations Reference framework, enhanced Telecom Operations Map, Value Chain Operation Reference framework,, etc. The frameworks are mainly used in process redesign, and improvement. However, they are also the source of information systems and services requirements. While the role of the frameworks as part of enterprise architecture has been widely discussed, there is still a lack of research on the use of frameworks in information systems and services development. This paper attempts to theoretically prove the usability of business process modeling frameworks in information systems and services development by demonstrating two approaches of the use of Supply Chain Operations Reference framework in information systems and services requirements identification.

‘Information Logistics’ has presented itself as an intellectual and professional domain addressing the question of timely providence of the right information. A question that emerges then is: What is Information Logistics? To answer this question, a comprehensive review of research publications was conducted, where ‘Information Logistics’ was featured in the publication title. A detailed analysis of the content of these publications identified eleven different research directions, where five are currently active, all in Europe. Among various findings, the results show that these research directions have been pursued independently of each other, addressing different kinds of research questions and contexts, utilising different research approaches, and therefore generating a variety of unrelated research results. All the reviewed research here shows that there are numerous unmet empirical needs in our human and social affairs, as well as a need for intra-disciplinary developments, which calls for a joint mobilisation of the research efforts.

A personal ID card is a certified copy of some personal data which proves the authenticity of the data in an offline setting. Majority of countries either plan or already are running projects aiming to deploy personal identity cards equipped with an electronic chip. Apart from a more reliable protection against forgery, this should give an opportunity to enable electronic services implementing the idea of e-government. In this scenario, personal identity cards have to serve as secure devices for running cryptographic protocols such as authentication, proof of presence, signing electronic documents, etc. In practice, there is a no universally accepted and clear concept of how to use electronic identity cards. Moreover, decisions are often based on myths (e.g. concerning security of smart cards) and tradition (e.g. the concept of qualified signatures) rather than on technical facts and feasibility. This lack of concept resulted so far in numerous strategic mistakes, concerning both the technical layer and business model.

In this paper we present a model-based diagnosis view on the complex social systems in which large public administration organizations operate. The purpose of diagnosis as presented in this paper is to identify agent role instances that are not conforming to expectations in a multi-agent system (MAS). To this end, we introduce model-based diagnosis of an imperfectly observable multi-agent system. We propose the model-based diagnosis problem as an explanation of major driving forces behind policy making, and requests for change to IT and business process design departments, in public administration. This makes model-based diagnosis a useful legal knowledge acquisition model for public administration.

One of the fundamental ideas of the framework of electronic signatures defined in EU Directive 1999/93/WE is “sole control” over signature creation data. For a long time “sole control” has been understood as using black-box devices for which a certain third party has issued a certificate, whereas the signer was supposed to trust blindly the authorities and certification bodies. This has been claimed as the only feasible solution.

Recent advances in technology and development of verifiable systems show that it is possible to provide systems such that the signer has much more control over the signing process and can really maintain control over the signature creation data. The main idea is that breaches in the system cannot be excluded but if they occur, then the signer can provide evidence of a fraud of a third party.

To create rules for a legal knowledge base, a knowledge from a lawyer cannot be represented in a predicate rule immediately. On the other hand, a programmer cannot create the rule to cover all of the legal knowledge base. Therefore, we need the procedure to suggest a legal expert. Indeed, the rules cannot be created only by facts or rules from legislation but also depend on the interpretation of each expert. In this paper, we proposed a procedure to create rules for legal knowledge base. First, a set of rules is created using based rules and compound rules procedure. Second, the rules are selected by abduction for the legal reasoning process. Finally, we improved a Switch of Burden of Proof (SBP) [1] which is the legal reasoning system to examine the rules obtained from abduction. Thai Civil and Commercial Code is used as a knowledge base. The result showed that using our approach can find rules for an explanation of each legal case.

An expert epistemology is a theory about knowledge in the expertise and includes knowledge representation, semantics, specifications, heuristics, reasoning, etc. Superexpert systems employ computer capabilities to extend ordinary human abilities, and are derived from expert epistemologies. A superexpert system, Negotiation Game or NeGame (NeG), is designed to support the Harvard Principled Negotiation model; it is illustrated by a Civilisation application which reframes the Israel-Palestine conflict as the task of negotiating a mutually acceptable civilisation. The negotiation epistemology of NeG evolved from the adversarial epistemology of eGanges (eG); both handle tasks in a user-friendly and transparent way. NeG manages hierarchical complexity of the conflict issues and differences in their subjective values, advises on cumulative scoring of Wins and Losses, and, through mathematical techniques, maximises Win-Win options. Adversarial epistemology requires four-valued logic, whereas negotiation epistemology requires six-valued logic; they share a common knowledge hierarchy, called a River.