Since the early 90s, the evolution of the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline has been punctuated by successive waves of automation technologies. Some of these technologies enable the automation of individual tasks, while others focus on orchestrating the execution of end-to-end processes. The rise of Generative and Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) is opening the way for another such wave. However, this wave is poised to be different because it shifts the focus from automation to autonomy and from design-driven management of business processes to data-driven management, leveraging process mining techniques. This position paper, based on a keynote talk at the 2025 Workshop on AI for BPM, outlines how process mining has laid the foundations on top of which agents can sense process states, reason about improvement opportunities, and act to maintain and optimize performance. The paper proposes an architectural vision for Agentic Business Process Management Systems (A-BPMS): a new class of platforms that integrate autonomy, reasoning, and learning into process management and execution. The paper contends that such systems must support a continuum of processes, spanning from
This paper analyzes the relation between bank profit performance and business models. Using a machine learning-based approach, we propose a methodological strategy in which balance sheet components' contributions to profitability are the identification instruments of business models. We apply this strategy to the European Union banking system from 1997 to 2021. Our main findings indicate that the standard retail-oriented business model is the profile that performs best in terms of profitability, whereas adopting a non-specialized business profile is a strategic decision that leads to poor profitability. Additionally, our findings suggest that the effect of high capital ratios on profitability depends on the business profile. The contributions of business models to profitability decreased during the Great Recession. Although the situation showed signs of improvement afterward, the European Union banking system's ability to yield returns is still problematic in the post-crisis period, even for the best-performing group.
Business sentiment analysis (BSA) is one of the significant and popular topics of natural language processing. It is one kind of sentiment analysis techniques for business purposes. Different categories of sentiment analysis techniques like lexicon-based techniques and different types of machine learning algorithms are applied for sentiment analysis on different languages like English, Hindi, Spanish, etc. In this paper, long short-term memory (LSTM) is applied for business sentiment analysis, where a recurrent neural network is used. An LSTM model is used in a modified approach to prevent the vanishing gradient problem rather than applying the conventional recurrent neural network (RNN). To apply the modified RNN model, product review dataset is used. In this experiment, 70\% of the data is trained for the LSTM and the rest 30\% of the data is used for testing. The result of this modified RNN model is compared with other conventional RNN models, and a comparison is made among the results. It is noted that the proposed model performs better than the other conventional RNN models. Here, the proposed model, i.e., the modified RNN model approach has achieved around 91.33\% of accuracy
Interactive narratives offer a novel approach to presenting business process models, making them more accessible and collaborative. These narratives create a hyper-textual environment that facilitates knowledge exchange and comprehension for ordinary individuals. However, designing such narratives is complex, as business process modelers must accurately identify and translate the graphic elements of a process model into dynamic narrative elements. This research paper introduces the Scripting Your Process (SYP) method, which provides a systematic approach to designing interactive narratives based on business process models. Following the principles of Design Science Research (DSR), a quasi-experimental study demonstrates and evaluates the SYP method. The results show that the SYP method successfully achieves its objective, contributing to the systematic design of interactive narratives derived from business process models. Consequently, individuals who are not experts in business process management can understand these processes in an engaging and gameful manner.
The real-time data collection and automation capabilities offered by the Internet of Things (IoT) are revolutionizing and transforming Business Processes (BPs) into IoT-enhanced BPs, showing high potential for improving sustainability. Although already studied in Business Process Management (BPM), sustainability research has primarily focused on environmental concerns. However, achieving a holistic and lasting impact requires a systematic approach to address sustainability beyond the environmental dimension. This work proposes a conceptual model and a structured methodology with the goal of analyzing the potential of IoT to measure and improve the sustainability of BPs. The conceptual model formally represents key sustainability concepts, linking BPM and IoT by highlighting how IoT devices support and contribute to sustainability. The methodology guides the systematic analysis of existing BPs, identifies opportunities, and implements sustainability-aware, IoT-enhanced BPs. The approach is illustrated through a running example from the tourism domain and a controlled case study in healthcare.
Sensitive attributes like gender or age can lead to unfair predictions in machine learning tasks such as predictive business process monitoring, particularly when used without considering context. We present FairLoop1, a tool for human-guided bias mitigation in neural network-based prediction models. FairLoop distills decision trees from neural networks, allowing users to inspect and modify unfair decision logic, which is then used to fine-tune the original model towards fairer predictions. Compared to other approaches to fairness, FairLoop enables context-aware bias removal through human involvement, addressing the influence of sensitive attributes selectively rather than excluding them uniformly.
This paper investigates the "Exploitation Business" model, which capitalizes on information asymmetry to exploit vulnerable populations. It focuses on businesses targeting non-experts or fraudsters who capitalize on information asymmetry to sell their products or services to desperate individuals. This phenomenon, also described as "profit-making activities based on informational exploitation," thrives on individuals' limited access to information, lack of expertise, and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). The recent advancement of social media and the rising trend of fandom business have accelerated the proliferation of such exploitation business models. Discussions on the empowerment and exploitation of fans in the digital media era present a restructuring of relationships between fans and media creators, highlighting the necessity of not overlooking the exploitation of fans' free labor. This paper analyzes the various facets and impacts of exploitation business models, enriched by real-world examples from sectors like cryptocurrency and GenAI, thereby discussing their social, economic, and ethical implications. Moreover, through theoretical backgrounds and research, it explores similar
Business Process Management (BPM) is mostly centered around finding technical solutions. Nudging is an approach from psychology and behavioral economics to guide people's behavior. In this paper, we show how nudging can be integrated into the different phases of the BPM lifecycle. Further, we outline how nudging can be an alternative strategy for more sustainable business processes. We show how the integration of nudging offers significant opportunities for process mining and business process management in general to be more human-centric. We also discuss challenges that come with the adoption of nudging.
Business and technology are intricately connected through logic and design. They are equally sensitive to societal changes and may be devastated by scandal. Cooperative multi-robot systems (MRSs) are on the rise, allowing robots of different types and brands to work together in diverse contexts. Generative artificial intelligence has been a dominant topic in recent artificial intelligence (AI) discussions due to its capacity to mimic humans through the use of natural language and the production of media, including deep fakes. In this article, we focus specifically on the conversational aspects of generative AI, and hence use the term Conversational Generative artificial intelligence (CGI). Like MRSs, CGIs have enormous potential for revolutionizing processes across sectors and transforming the way humans conduct business. From a business perspective, cooperative MRSs alone, with potential conflicts of interest, privacy practices, and safety concerns, require ethical examination. MRSs empowered by CGIs demand multi-dimensional and sophisticated methods to uncover imminent ethical pitfalls. This study focuses on ethics in CGI-empowered MRSs while reporting the stages of developing th
Next activity prediction represents a fundamental challenge for optimizing business processes in service-oriented architectures such as microservices environments, distributed enterprise systems, and cloud-native platforms, which enables proactive resource allocation and dynamic service composition. Despite the prevalence of sequence-based methods, these approaches fail to capture non-sequential relationships that arise from parallel executions and conditional dependencies. Even though graph-based approaches address structural preservation, they suffer from homogeneous representations and static structures that apply uniform modeling strategies regardless of individual process complexity characteristics. To address these limitations, we introduce RLHGNN, a novel framework that transforms event logs into heterogeneous process graphs with three distinct edge types grounded in established process mining theory. Our approach creates four flexible graph structures by selectively combining these edges to accommodate different process complexities, and employs reinforcement learning formulated as a Markov Decision Process to automatically determine the optimal graph structure for each spe
Large language models (LLMs) have changed the reality of how software is produced. Within the wider software engineering community, among many other purposes, they are explored for code generation use cases from different types of input. In this work, we present an exploratory study to investigate the use of LLMs for generating smart contract code from business process descriptions, an idea that has emerged in recent literature to overcome the limitations of traditional rule-based code generation approaches. However, current LLM-based work evaluates generated code on small samples, relying on manual inspection, or testing whether code compiles but ignoring correct execution. With this work, we introduce an automated evaluation framework and provide empirical data from larger data sets of process models. We test LLMs of different types and sizes in their capabilities of achieving important properties of process execution, including enforcing process flow, resource allocation, and data-based conditions. Our results show that LLM performance falls short of the perfect reliability required for smart contract development. We suggest future work to explore responsible LLM integrations in
Business Process Visualisations (BPVs) have become indispensable tools for organisations seeking to enhance their operational efficiency, decision-making capabilities, and overall performance. The burgeoning interest in process modeling and tool development, coupled with the rise of data visualisation field, underscores the significant role of visual tools in leveraging human cognition. Unlike traditional models, data visualisation approaches graphics from a novel angle, emphasising the potency of visual representations. This review aims to integrate the domains of BPV and data visualisation to assess their combined influence on organisational effectiveness comprehensively. Through a meticulous analysis of existing literature, this study aims to amalgamate insights on BPVs impact from a data visualisation standpoint, advocating for a design philosophy that prioritises user engagement to bolster organisational outcomes. Additionally, our systematic review has unveiled promising avenues for future research, identifying underexplored variables that influence the efficacy of BPVs, thereby charting a path for forthcoming scholarly inquiries.
Given the continuous global degradation of the Earth's ecosystem due to unsustainable human activity, it is increasingly important for enterprises to evaluate the effects they have on the environment. Consequently, assessing the impact of business processes on sustainability is becoming an important consideration in the discipline of Business Process Management (BPM). However, existing practical approaches that aim at a sustainability-oriented analysis of business processes provide only a limited perspective on the environmental impact caused. Further, they provide no clear and practically applicable mechanism for sustainability-driven process analysis and re-design. Following a design science methodology, we here propose and study SOPA, a framework for sustainability-oriented process analysis and re-design. SOPA extends the BPM life cycle by use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for sustainability analysis in combination with Activity-based Costing (ABC). We evaluate SOPA and its usefulness with a case study, by means of an implementation to support the approach, thereby also illustrating the practical applicability of this work.
In the emergence of transformative global economy, information system has became a necessity in businesses to obtain organizations operational excellence, adaptation to new business models, improved decision making and providing exceptional customer service, and eventual competitive advantage of the enterprise setting while keeping business alliances. This paper presents sectors of economy serviced by the pre-industry developers, explores the evolution of computer-based information system designed and developed by pre-industry system developers, and examine the effects of an information system in business to countervail indentified recurring problems. Nineteen of forty-six identified sectors of economy falls in the categories of primary, secondary, tertiary, quarternary and quinary were the recipient of computer-based system designed and developed. There have been several effects of computer-based systems to organizations, including the implied relevance to their business processes, continuum process improvement, business process reengineering, business driver and facilitator, and customer satisfaction.
A common challenge for improving business processes in large organizations is that business people in charge of the operations are lacking a fact-based understanding of the execution details, process variants, and exceptions taking place in business operations. While existing process mining methodologies can discover these details based on event logs, it is challenging to communicate the process mining findings to business people. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for discovering business areas that have a significant effect on the process execution details. Our method uses clustering to group similar cases based on process flow characteristics and then influence analysis for detecting those business areas that correlate most with the discovered clusters. Our analysis serves as a bridge between BPM people and business, people facilitating the knowledge sharing between these groups. We also present an example analysis based on publicly available real-life purchase order process data.
Logical flaws in smart contracts are often exploited, leading to significant financial losses. Our tool, HighGuard, detects transactions that violate business logic specifications of smart contracts. HighGuard employs dynamic condition response (DCR) graph models as formal specifications to verify contract execution against these models. It is capable of operating in a cross-chain environment for detecting business logic flaws across different blockchain platforms. We demonstrate HighGuard's effectiveness in identifying deviations from specified behaviors in smart contracts without requiring code instrumentation or incurring additional gas costs. By using precise specifications in the monitor, HighGuard achieves detection without false positives. Our evaluation, involving 54 exploits, confirms HighGuard's effectiveness in detecting business logic vulnerabilities. Our open-source implementation of HighGuard and a screencast of its usage are available at: https://github.com/mojtaba-eshghie/HighGuard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZYVV-slDaY
This paper elaborates on the sectoral-regional view of the business cycle synchronization in the EU -- a necessary condition for the optimal currency area. We argue that complete and tidy clustering of the data improves the decision maker's understanding of the business cycle and, by extension, the quality of economic decisions. We define the business cycles by applying a wavelet approach to drift-adjusted gross value added data spanning over 2000Q1 to 2021Q2. For the application of the synchronization analysis, we propose the novel soft-clustering approach, which adjusts hierarchical clustering in several aspects. First, the method relies on synchronicity dissimilarity measures, noting that, for time series data, the feature space is the set of all points in time. Then, the ``soft'' part of the approach strengthens the synchronization signal by using silhouette measures. Finally, we add a probabilistic sparsity algorithm to drop out the most asynchronous ``noisy'' data improving the silhouette scores of the most and less synchronous groups. The method, hence, splits the sectoral-regional data into three groups: the synchronous group that shapes the EU business cycle; the less sync
This paper builds on a presentation provided as part of a recent panel session on ITSM (IT Service Management) Business Value at the NYC itSMF (Service Management Forum) Local Interest Group meeting. The panel presentation explored the definition of Business Value and how ITSM itself could be measured to produce business value. While ITSM and ITIL have been in use for years it often remains a challenge to demonstrate the business value of these methods or even to understand business value itself. This paper expands on the panel discussion on what is meant by business value and how it can be found (if at all) in the context of ITSM development and process improvement.
We propose a software architecture where SAT solvers act as a shared network resource for distributed business applications. There can be multiple parallel SAT solvers running either on dedicated hardware (a multi-processor system or a system with a specific GPU) or in the cloud. In order to avoid complex message passing between network nodes, we introduce a novel concept of the shared SAT memory, which can be accessed (in the read/write mode) from multiple different SAT solvers and modules implementing the business logic. As a result, our architecture allows for the easy generation, diversification, and solving of SAT instances from existing high-level programming languages without the need to think about the network. We demonstrate our architecture on the use case of transforming the integer factorization problem to SAT.
Business Process Simulation (BPS) is an approach to analyze the performance of business processes under different scenarios. For example, BPS allows us to estimate what would be the cycle time of a process if one or more resources became unavailable. The starting point of BPS is a process model annotated with simulation parameters (a BPS model). BPS models may be manually designed, based on information collected from stakeholders and empirical observations, or automatically discovered from execution data. Regardless of its origin, a key question when using a BPS model is how to assess its quality. In this paper, we propose a collection of measures to evaluate the quality of a BPS model w.r.t. its ability to replicate the observed behavior of the process. We advocate an approach whereby different measures tackle different process perspectives. We evaluate the ability of the proposed measures to discern the impact of modifications to a BPS model, and their ability to uncover the relative strengths and weaknesses of two approaches for automated discovery of BPS models. The evaluation shows that the measures not only capture how close a BPS model is to the observed behavior, but they a