TomTom for Business Process Management (TomTom4BPM)

Navigation systems have proven to be quite useful for many drivers. People increasingly rely on the devices of TomTom and other vendors and find it useful to get directions to go from A to B, know the expected arrival time, learn about traffic jams on the planned route, and be able to view maps that can be customized in various ways (zoom-in/zoom-out, show fuel stations, speed limits, etc.). However, when looking at business processes, such information is typically lacking. Good and accurate “maps” of business process are often missing and, if they exist, they tend to be restrictive and provide little information. For example, very few business process management systems are able to predict when a case will complete. Therefore, we advocate more TomTom-like functionality for business process management (TomTom4BPM). Process mining will play an essential role in providing TomTom4BPM as it allows for process discovery (generating accurate maps), conformance checking (comparing the real processes with the modeled processes), and extension (augmenting process models with additional/dynamic information).