Business Intelligence Core Subject – 15 Unit Credits

Business Process Model Lecture 1

Business Process : “A business process consists of a set of activities that are performed in ________________ in an organizational and technical environment. These activities jointly realize a business goal” A business goal is the target that an organization aims to achieve by performing correctly the related business process.

Currently, business processes are the core of most information systems: – production line of a car manufacturer, procedures for buying tickets online. This requires that organizations specify their flows of work for the _________________ of participants, information and technology for the realization of products and services.

Business processes categories Depending on the organization, industry and nature of work, business processes are often broken up into different categories. These categories include:

Operational processes -- or primary processes: Operational or primary processes deal with the core business and value chain. These processes deliver value to the customer by helping to produce a product or service. Operational processes represent _____________________ that accomplish business objectives, e.g., generating revenue. Some examples of this include taking customer orders and managing bank accounts.

Supporting processes -- or secondary processes: Supporting processes back core processes and functions within an organization. Examples of supporting or management processes include accounting, HR management and workplace safety. One key differentiator between operational and support processes is that support processes do not provide value to customers directly.

Management processes: Management processes measure, monitor and control the activities related to business ___________________ and systems. Examples of management processes include internal communications, governance, strategic planning, budgeting, and infrastructure or capacity management. Like supporting processes, management processes do not provide value directly to the customers.

BP MODEL This will be covered in another module, but here are some sample of the BPMN

Example

In order to manage Business Processes, they have to be described and documented in terms of process models.

BPM Basic Model Elements

Connecting Activities

Another example:

Data Data can be classified as _____________, _________________ or _________________. But what bearing do these classifications have on a company’s data-handling strategy? The short answer is that it is becoming more important in our rapidly changing IT world to be aware of different data forms and how (or if) you need to manage them.

Structured data Data that has been split into small, discrete units. Each piece of data concerns ONE thing, for example, the last name of a customer. Structured data is typically stored in tables. Continuing with our example, one column of data would list the last names of all customers, and each row would pertain to one customer. These tables, in turn, are typically stored in a relational database.

Unstructured Data Unstructured data is essentially everything else. Unstructured data has internal structure but is not structured via pre-defined data models or schema. It may be textual or non-textual, and human- or machine-generated. It may also be stored within a non-relational database like NoSQL. Unstructured data cannot be stored in ____________ ordered columns and rows.

Typical human-generated unstructured data includes: Text files: Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email, logs. Email: Email has some internal structure thanks to its metadata, and we sometimes refer to it as semi-structured. However, its message field is unstructured and traditional analytics tools cannot parse it. Social Media: Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Website: YouTube, Instagram, photo sharing sites. Mobile data: Text messages, locations. Communications: Chat, IM, phone recordings, collaboration software. Media: MP3, digital photos, audio and video files. Business applications: MS Office documents, productivity applications.

Typical machine-generated unstructured data includes: Satellite imagery: Weather data, land forms, military movements. Scientific data: Oil and gas exploration, space exploration, seismic imagery, atmospheric data. Digital surveillance: Surveillance photos and video. Sensor data: Traffic, weather, oceanographic sensors.

How Semi-Structured Data Fits with Structured and Unstructured Data? Semi-structured data maintains internal tags and markings that identify separate data elements, which enables information grouping and hierarchies. Both documents and databases can be semi-structured. This type of data only represents about 5-10% of the structured/semi- structured/unstructured data pie, but has critical business usage cases. Email is a very common example of a semi-structured data type. Although more advanced analysis tools are necessary for thread tracking and concept searching; email’s native metadata enables ______________ and keyword searching without any additional tools. Email is a huge use case, but most semi-structured development centers on easing data transport issues. Sharing sensor data is a growing use case, as are Web-based data sharing and transport: electronic data interchange (EDI), many social media platforms, document markup languages, and NoSQL databases.

Research Activity Explain at least 5 Security Considerations that you think is important for Business Process Management.