M.D. Lytras et al. (Eds.): WSKS 2010, Part II, CCIS 112, pp. 278–288, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

Enhancing Users’ Participation in Business Process Modeling through Ontology-Based Training

A. Macris1,2, F. Malamateniou2, and G. Vassilacopoulos2

1 Department of Business Administration, University of Piraeus 2 Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus

80 Karaoli & Dimitriou str., 185 34 Piraeus, Greece

Abstract. Successful business process design requires active participation of users who are familiar with organizational activities and business process mod-elling concepts. Hence, there is a need to provide users with reusable, flexible, agile and adaptable training material in order to enable them instil their knowl-edge and expertise in business process design and automation activities. Knowledge reusability is of paramount importance in designing training mate-rial on process modelling since it enables users participate actively in process design/redesign activities stimulated by the changing business environment. This paper presents a prototype approach for the design and use of training ma-terial that provides significant advantages to both the designer (knowledge - content reusability and semantic web enabling) and the user (semantic search, knowledge navigation and knowledge dissemination). The approach is based on externalizing domain knowledge in the form of ontology-based knowledge net-works (i.e. training scenarios serving specific training needs) so that it is made reusable.

Keywords: Business process modeling, User training, Ontology-based training, Semantic web training.

1 Introduction

World economy has been transformed into a knowledge economy. In that economy the application of knowledge is the main means of production and has become more important than traditional resources, such as labour, capita or base materials. Tradi-tional economy that was primarily driven by transformational activities (turning raw product into finished product, or turning data into information) has been trans-formed into knowledge economy where the highest-value activities are complex interactions between people and systems. This shift from transformation activities to interactions represents a broad shift in the nature of economic activity. Economic success and most productivity gains in the future are going to be in interactions. Hence, enterprises are beginning to realize that strategic advantage resides in the institutional capacity to get better and faster the most promising flows of knowledge and in the rapid integration of the knowledge acquired from these flows into the enterprise activities [1].

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1.1 Training Knowledge Workers for the Knowledge Economy

Knowledge workers can be described as highly professional, highly competent indi-viduals with an excellent education, globally mobile and even independent from spe-cific national restrictions. They are global “knowledge players” with a main function to act as “knowledge brokers”.

On the other hand there are candidate knowledge workers. Those individuals own qualifications on a high level too and are capable to welcome constantly new working tasks. However, they are less virtuous and qualified than knowledge workers.

One of the key issues for the successful integration of knowledge flows into the en-terprise activities is active user participation. This is achieved through continuous interactions between experts (knowledge workers - specialists) and trainees (candidate knowledge workers - users). In essence, active user participation, which is enabled through user training, is considered a knowledge-creation spiral that emerges when the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge is elevated dynamically from lower to higher ontological levels, i.e. from the individual, to the group, to the organi-zation, to the inter-organization level [2], [3].

1.2 Business Process Management

In recent years, business processes management has emerged as an important disci-pline which is concerned with the understanding of, communication about and evolu-tion of business processes in a variety of application domains, such as banking, healthcare, technology and logistics [4], [5], [6], [7]. The topics addressed in this field cover areas like business process modeling, process mining and workflow manage-ment. Business process modeling is used for designing new processes or analyzing existing processes with the objective of redesigning them to improve current work practices [8]. Process mining facilitates the discovery of process specifications from process logs that are readily available in many organizations and therefore may sup-port process design and redesign [9]. Workflow management is used to automate business processes by coordinating the available resources with a more global per-spective taking into account the characteristics and workload of process participants [10]. Thus, business process modeling constitutes a basic premise for both process mining and workflow management.

Business process models convert the tacit knowledge contained in various business processes into explicit knowledge through externalization, thus allowing organiza-tions to evaluate and improve their procedures [2]. Moreover, business process modeling is an important activity of business process management that is commonly considered to be the development of business applications that directly follow the execution logic of the underlying business process, thus placing the resulting informa-tion system in its organizational context. In fact, the requirements posed by the prob-lem domain may stimulate a constructive interaction between users and specialists that often leads to the definition of a variety of business process models with different goals in mind and different levels of resolution in their representation. This paper is concerned with developing a training aid that enables users understand business proc-ess modeling concepts, with the objective to enhance and empower user-to-specialist interaction during the development of business applications, constituting a process-oriented information system.

280 A. Macris, F. Malamateniou, and G. Vassilacopoulos

One important consideration in business process management is to enable and promote active user participation, since users are required to think of their activities as constituents of business processes and, hence, to instil their knowledge and expertise in the definition and automation of business processes. Indeed, user participation has been strongly advocated by several studies as a way for ensuring that genuine user needs are satisfied and for gaining user acceptance of a new system [11], [12], [13]. The basic contention of these studies is that users who are actively involved in the system development process will likely influence design and implementation deci-sions in accordance with their needs and desires, resulting in a system they perceive useful and usable and an implementation strategy they perceive suitable for the par-ticular situation. Thus, users are expected to develop positive attitudes toward the new system, increasing the likelihood of system success.

A participative approach to business process management implies that users are ac-tually full members of the business application development team, so that they can exert constructive influence in the development process, contrary to a function-oriented system development process, where specialists make design and implementa-tion decisions on the basis of users’ experience (as this is expressed by users and perceived by specialists). Thus, participative business application development is con-cerned not only with making users’ knowledge explicit (i.e. eliciting users’ knowl-edge) but also with developing users’ knowledge and producing new conceptions [14], [15], [13]. In this context, enabling active user participation requires change in the users’ perception of their work (from function-oriented to process-oriented) and an in-depth understanding of each business process.

Along with the adoption of a participative approach to business process manage-ment comes concern about providing users with an appropriate training aid that will enable them understand business process concepts, assimilate the business logic of existing site-specific business processes and identify areas where redesigning or streamlining of existing processes is required to adapt to today’s complex and dy-namic business environment [16], [17]. To this end, an ontology-based knowledge network is developed that can be used as a tool for the semantic representation of business process concepts and, hence, as a means for the development of an appropri-ate training aid. An illustrative example of a business process from the banking do-main is also presented.

2 Design of an Ontology-Based Training Aid

Ontologies are collections of concepts, instances of concepts and relations among them. Ontology constructs (e.g. concepts, relations and instances) defined in the ontology could be enriched with terms, definitions, axioms and constraints that are expressed at the desired level of formality and that are deemed to be important in characterizing the knowledge domain under consideration at the desired level of detail [18], [19]. These are used in asking and answering questions, making assertions, of-fering insights, describing practices and discussing investigations.

The development of an ontology is usually a top-down process which starts at the high-est level of resolution considered and finishes at the lowest level of resolution which is considered appropriate for the purpose of the ontology building process [20], [21].

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Most of the existing automated training aids are essentially collections of multime-dia objects. These multimedia objects are usually grouped hierarchically (e.g. in units and sub-units), indexed and combined, through hyperlinks, in order to support various training needs. However, these training aids only provide for manipulating and re-structuring multimedia objects in order to create training material, serving specific needs, for the knowledge domain under consideration. Hence, this knowledge must be externalized and made explicit by the user in order to become diffused and reusable.

The approach proposed in this paper enables domain experts (specialists) to exter-nalize the domain knowledge in the form of ontology-based knowledge networks (training scenarios serving specific training needs) and, hence, better communicate it and make it reusable. The basic structure of the proposed approach is a domain spe-cific ontology which captures the relevant knowledge. Thus, training scenarios com-bine ontology constructs with supportive multimedia objects helping trainees acquire an in depth understanding of the knowledge domain. The approach is based on Sowa’s definition of user perception as the process of building a working model that represents and interprets sensory input (mosaic of percepts) into a more abstract part (conceptual graph) [22], [23]. Hence, understanding of a training material by a trainee can be modelled as a two stage process: (i) the analysis sub-process, where the mate-rial is broken down into concepts, and (ii) the synthesis sub-process where concepts are linked to other concepts which are found either in the training material at hand or in other related material that the trainee has already analyzed before in order to form more complex structures (conceptual graphs). Thus, meaning is not discovered but constructed and training material has meaning only in relation to other material, being interconnected to each other as codes and systems in the culture and in the minds of the trainees.

In designing an ontology-based training aid, the main objective is to capture and represent the knowledge which is implicit in the application domain so that it can be made reusable. Thus, domain experts record their knowledge on the particular field under consideration in terms of an ontology which is recorded in the ontology reposi-tory. Hence, each ontology construct is recorded only once and can be made available to every training scenario using it. In addition, relevant supportive material (either existing or created) in the form of multimedia objects (e.g. text, image, video and animation) is used in order to develop a collection of reusable multimedia objects that are related to the knowledge domain under consideration [24]. This collection of mul-timedia objects comprises the content repository. The ontology and content reposito-ries are then used to create knowledge networks, each corresponding to a training scenario, and are recorded in the knowledge repository.

Contrary to traditionally designed training scenarios which are based on mere user navigation to multimedia objects, training scenarios that are based on the proposed approach are enhanced and empowered in that they allow users to navigate into the domain knowledge which has been represented in the form of a knowledge network. Thus, the user of the training scenarios is guided either through a semantic search followed by a navigation to the knowledge network, or directly through navigation to the knowledge network. To enhance his/her understanding of each ontology construct included in a knowledge network, the user can access relevant supportive material in the form of multimedia objects and identify the relation of the particular construct with other relevant constructs.

282 A. Macris, F. Malamateniou, and G. Vassilacopoulos

3 A Case Study in a Banking Environment

In recent years, banks have been facing the challenges of rapidly changing business environments with their business processes displaying more complexity due to inter-actions between their internal components and interactions of business processes with the external environment. Moreover, the need for managing banking business proc-esses and improving quality of service has created a shift from function-centered to customer-centered services, requiring increased cooperation among functional units. Hence, considerable attention has been paid on designing new banking business proc-esses, or redesigning existing ones, and on developing process-oriented information systems to support them [25], [26].

For business process modelling to be successful it is necessary to get hold of the necessary requirements that are, mainly, clustered around understanding of the prob-lem domain, management of complexity and clear and concise communication. Such requirements are then used to design a process model that offers clear and concise views, consistent with each other, that demonstrably fulfil the requirements placed on process capture. Hence, on the common assumption that requirements elicitation and verification for business process modelling is best performed through active user par-ticipation, there is a need for providing users with suitable and, in some cases, adapt-able training material so that to enable them instil their knowledge and expertise in the process modelling activity.

For the needs of this research, a business process concerning the asset management unit (AMU) of a bank was considered. The need to involve users in the business proc-ess definition and automation activities provided the basic motivation for developing a suitable user training aid that allows incorporating the underlying knowledge in these business processes. For illustrative purposes, a simple business process con-cerned with the AMU’s marketing and sales activity is presented. Each existing bank customer or a third party who satisfies certain criteria is considered as a prospective customer (PC) and is assigned a primary and a secondary customer relations officer (CRO). Then, the CRO conducts business activities (e.g. personal contacts, telephone calls) with each PC with the objective to propose him/her one or more investment opportunities that match the PC’s risk profile. Each PC who accepts an investment opportunity offer becomes an AMU customer and opened an investment account.

In order to enable users understand the business process considered and participate actively in the business process modelling activity, a training scenario (knowledge net-work) incorporating the underlying business logic was created using the tools developed by the CULTOS1 (Cultural Units of Learning - Tools and Services) project. These tools are: (i) K-infinity2 tool (for creating and populating the ontology repository), (ii) CUL-TOS media import tool (for creating and populating the content repository) and (iii) CULTOS authoring tool (for creating and populating the knowledge repository). The training scenario (knowledge network) created for business process modelling is saved as a structured multimedia meta-object containing expert knowledge which is called enhanced multimedia meta-object (EMMO). Thus, each scenario is a self-contained entity that includes relevant entries of the three repositories defined above.

1 http://www.cultos.org 2 http://www.i-views.de

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3.1 The Ontology

For the purpose of this research, which is mainly to show the advantages of the knowledge network approach, the ontology model proposed by Sowa was used due to its simplicity [18]. However, the dynamic spatial ontology model SNAP and SPAN, proposed by the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS)3 can also be considered as a more elaborate model.

Figure 1 shows the ontology concepts of the business process considered, in the form of a generalization-specialization hierarchy, linked with relations. The upper ontology consists of the six categorizations of concepts proposed by Sowa [18]: Physical (concerning matter or energy) and Abstract (concerning pure information structures) which are further broken down into Physical and Abstract Continuants (having stable attributes that enable their various appearances at different times to be recognized as the same object) and Physical and Abstract Occurrents (processes or events that are in a state of flux and that can only be identified by their locations in some region of time-space). These concepts are then further specialized into lower level sub-concepts. For example, in Figure 1, the Physical Occurrent concept is

Fig. 1. A training ontology for the banking business process

3 http://ifomis.uni-leipzig.de

284 A. Macris, F. Malamateniou, and G. Vassilacopoulos

specialized into the concepts Customer, Operator and Activity and the Abstract Con-tinuant concept is specialized into the concepts Product, Informational Structure and Organizational Structure. Moreover, relations are defined between ontology concepts of upper and lower level of resolution.

3.2 A Training Scenario

In the training scenario (knowledge network) designed on the business process con-sidered, concepts are represented as rounded rectangled nodes and relations are repre-sented as oval edges. In what follows, a description of the above business process is provided using ontology concepts (shown in italics) and ontology global and local relations (shown in single quote enclosures). Figure 2 shows the entire training sce-nario on the above business process constituted by the following process tasks:

a. Create PCs (task) ‘using’ Customer Selection Criteria (which ‘are defined by’ the AMU), ‘compares to’ Customer Characteristics (which ‘is about’ a Customer) and ‘creates’ a PC (who ‘is sub-concept of’ Customer), who (the PC) ‘is not an AMU customer and satisfies’ Customer Selection Criteria. The PC ‘is assigned to’ a Primary CRO, who ‘belongs to’ the AMU. The Secondary CRO ‘replaces when unable’ the Primary CRO and also ‘belongs to’ the AMU.

b. Collect PC data (task) ‘from’ a PC, ‘is performed by’ a Primary CRO and ‘cre-ates’ PC characteristics, which ‘are about’ PCs.

c. To create a Sales Opportunity one must ‘examine’ Products (which ‘are offered by’ the AMU) and ‘compares to find a match in’ PC characteristics. A Sales Op-portunity ‘is about’ a PC and ‘is performed by’ the primary CRO.

d. The Sales Opportunity ‘results in’ a Proposal/Quote which ‘is about a mix of’ Products. The Proposal/Quote ‘is about’ a PC and ‘is performed by’ the Primary CRO.

e. A Sale ‘refers to’ a Proposal / Quote, ‘is about a mix of’ Products and ‘is performed by’ the primary CRO. A Sale task ‘changes a PC to a Customer’.

Instances and links to multimedia objects are not shown in Figure 2. However, in-stances have been defined for each concept and links to multimedia objects have been defined for all concepts, concept instances and relations in order to further clarify the ontology constructs. For example, a multimedia object representing an AMU internal document can describe the set of customer selection criteria and this object can be modified when needed without affecting the knowledge network structure.

In practice, using the above approach for designing training material would involve not only a high level view of a business process model, such as the one described above, but a low level view of the business process model regarding a certain AMU and specific investment products. In addition, multimedia objects will be associated with concepts, concept instances and relations in order to demonstrate both the static and the dynamic features of the business process under investigation. Thus, each training scenario designed can be easily modified to represent another version of the business process model considered so that to enable users assess the pros and cons of a process redesign exercise. Redesign of a business process model can be performed by simply manipulating already defined objects, hence providing flexibility, agility and reusability of the training material designed.

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Fig. 2. A training scenario for the banking business process

4 Discussion

The approach proposed in this paper is mainly concerned with capturing and repre-senting the knowledge found in the logic, the structure and the ways of use of busi-ness processes as an ontology-based knowledge network (a training scenario serving a specific training need). The ontology contains all the relative concepts and instances of concepts and the relations between them. The knowledge network relates the basic entities defined in the ontology with the various multimedia (text, image, video, animation etc.), which are supportive for better understanding the entities of the ontology. Thus, the user of the resulting training material is enabled to search for a business process concept and understand its meaning and usage with the help of the supportive multimedia. Furthermore, the user can navigate to associated business process concepts in order to acquire an in depth knowledge about the business process tasks, the data and control flows between process tasks and the needs for designing new or redesigning old business processes.

The proposed model does not disregard existing methodologies for structuring training material, but enhances and empowers them by allowing the semantic repre-sentation of knowledge so that to enable users navigate into a knowledge network based on the characteristics of the application domain under consideration. Thus, the model can combine the existing multimedia material with ontology entities, using knowledge-based multimedia authoring tools, in order to build user training scenarios and satisfy specific training needs. Hence, in addition to the existing multimedia ob-jects, the knowledge built into both the ontology and the training scenarios is fully reusable.

286 A. Macris, F. Malamateniou, and G. Vassilacopoulos

With regard to the creator of the training material, the main advantages of the pro-posed model are the following: (a) Reusability of the knowledge recorded into the ontology and the knowledge instilled into older scenarios to meet new training needs. (b) Unique definition of ontology constructs since they are recorded once and can be used where and when required with the same name and the same features (synonyms, attributes, relations to other concepts, supportive multimedia related to it etc.). (c) Inheritance in ontology creation whereby lower-level concepts inherit all the charac-teristics of higher-level concepts (attributes, relations etc.). and (d) Semantic web that allows combining and using geographically dispersed training ontologies by both from creators and specially designed software components (i.e. web services) [27].

With regard to the trainee, the main advantages of the proposed model are the fol-lowing: (a) Semantic search – This allows to search ontology constructs semantically instead of textually (i.e. the search is based on language-agnostic semantic matching instead of keyword matching) putting emphasis on matching the content and the real meaning of each relevant concept searched, (b) Knowledge navigation - This allows the use of browsing and navigation capabilities in order to identify the ontology con-structs as they are recorded into the ontology repository and used in the training sce-narios and (c) Knowledge dissemination – This is an important function of any kind of training activity that can only be achieved if the trainee is provided with the ability to extract the knowledge implicit in the problem domain, as opposed to the mere pres-entation of facts and disconnected information which, in most cases, is not adequate.

With regard to business process modelling, trying to change users’ perception of their work (from function-oriented to process-oriented) an in-depth analysis of each process and its tasks is required. Considering a business process from another view-point besides your own leads to deeper understanding of the business processes under consideration and this understanding is essential when trying to develop critically thinking users. And the ability to think critically is a necessary criterion in order to say that knowledge has been disseminated. Obviously, this ability is much more im-portant when studying complex business processes that consist of many interrelated tasks that combine various business resources available in an organization.

The proposed approach to user training may have significant impact to enabling users participate actively in business process management activities since they are equipped with an appropriate tool for acquiring a clear and an in depth understanding of a business process. Based on this understanding, increased cooperation and col-laboration between users and specialists can be achieved towards a common objective of improving business process performance in an ever changing business environment since process changes that are deemed appropriate can be incorporated easily by sim-ply manipulating objects already defined in the ontology and/or in the knowledge network. Besides, the training tool provides users with business process objects, such as mock-ups and animations, to enable them get a grip of the situation under study. Hence, user acceptance of designed, or redesigned, business processes can be consid-erably improved due to an increased likelihood of being perceived useful and usable by users. Due to the encouraging results of the approach described, it is intended to evaluate it extensively using more elaborate implementation tools and more complex business processes in real-world situations.

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5 Concluding Remarks

This paper presents an ontology-based prototype approach for the construction of user training scenarios on business process modelling concepts, whereby both the multi-media objects used and the knowledge built into the training scenarios are fully reus-able. The approach consists of the following steps: (i) define and implement a general ontology, (ii) design the training scenario that best fits training objectives and define the multimedia objects required, (iii) refine the general ontology by adding all ontol-ogy constructs required by the various training scenarios, (iv) develop or select the multimedia objects which are deemed necessary to support the various ontology con-structs to be used in the training scenarios, and (v) construct each training scenario (knowledge network) by combining ontology constructs with multimedia objects.

The objective of the approach presented in this paper is to enable users get familiar with and, hence, participate actively in business process modeling activities. In this context, a sample training scenario in the banking domain was built.

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