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Value-Driven Risk Analysis of Coordination Models
Abstract
Coordination processes are business processes that involve independent profit-and-loss responsible business actors who collectively provide something of value to a customer. Coordination processes are meant to be profitable for the business actors that execute them. However, because business actors are independent, there is also an increased risk of fraud. To compute profitability as well as quantify the risk of fraud, we need to attach value models to coordination process models. In this paper, we propose guidelines for deriving a value model from any coordination process model. Next, we show how our approach can be used to identify possibilities of fraud offered by a coordination process, as well as quantify the financial impact of known fraudulent processes. Finally, we discuss additional applications, such as identifying commercially superfluous tasks, or missing tasks needed to achieve a financially sustainable process.
... Best practices for Value Network Modeling have been documented further by Gordijn and Akkermans (2018) [4]. According to Ionita et al. (2016), a value network model can be used to prelude the specification of a process model, by supporting risk analysis and prospection of profitability share [12]. ...
... Best practices for Value Network Modeling have been documented further by Gordijn and Akkermans (2018) [4]. According to Ionita et al. (2016), a value network model can be used to prelude the specification of a process model, by supporting risk analysis and prospection of profitability share [12]. ...
The main purpose of a value network model is to prospect the sustainability of business strategies. However, much attention has been paid on the economic issues of value modeling, leaving critical environmental and social issues uncovered. On the environmental scope, this study proposes an ontology for modeling value networks to match Green Computing requirements. The ontology supports semi-automatic configuration of value network models to help business analysts deciding upon alternative value paths to satisfy market segments demanding products or services bundled with green accreditations or certifications. The ontology was built according to guidelines of Design Science in combination with specific methodologies for Ontology Engineering. For the ontology evaluation process, the acceptance, utility and usability of the ontology were evaluated by means of Technical Action Research (TAR) applied in a real-world case from the Brazilian agribusiness sector. Business expert opinion pointed to the viability of the models produced, from both the economic and environmental perspectives.
Modern e-services are provided by networks of collaborating businesses. However, collaborators, and even customers, don't always behave as expected or agreed upon, and fraudsters attempt unfair exploitation, legally or illegally.Profitability assessments of e-services should therefore look beyond revenue streams and also consider threats to the financial sustainability of the service offering. More importantly, any such analysis should consider the business network in which the e-service is embedded. The e ³ value method is an established modeling and analysis method that allows enterprises to estimate the net value flows of a networked e-business. Recently, the method and its ontology have been extended to cover aspects related to risk, e.g., fraud. In this paper, we introduce four new software-enabled risk and sensitivity analyses, which build upon this extension. The techniques are quantitative and therefore support making motivated risk mitigation decisions. We illustrate them in the context of three realistic case studies.
Every year, e-service providers report losses of billions of dollars due to fraud. Despite their huge efforts in implementing sophisticated fraud detection systems on top of their e-services, fraud effects seem to be rather increasing than decreasing. As a result, fraud risk assessment has been introduced as a fundamental part of e-service providers’ prevention strategies. In particular, identifying potential fraud risks and estimating their impacts are two essential requirements to prevent fraud risks while developing and delivering e-services to customers. In this paper, we show that fraud patterns can be used to perform fraud risk assessment. We analysed real fraud incidents from an e-service domain – Telecom, and identified six fraud patterns, which are recurrently used to commit fraud. We then use those patterns in the same scenario in order to demonstrate their applicability to fraud risk assessment.
Telecom providers are losing tremendous amounts of money due to fraud risks posed to Telecom services and products. Currently, they are mainly focusing on fraud detection approaches to reduce the impact of fraud risks against their services. However, fraud prevention approaches should also be investigated in order to further reduce fraud risks and improve the revenue of Telecom providers. Fraud risk modelling is a fraud prevention approach aims at identifying the potential fraud risks, estimating the damage and setting up preventive mechanisms before the fraud risks lead to actual losses. In this paper, we highlight the important requirements for a usable and context-aware fraud risk modelling approach for Telecom services. To do so, we have conducted two workshops with experts from a Telecom provider and experts from multi- disciplinary areas. In order to show and document the requirements, we present two exemplary Telecom fraud scenarios, analyse and estimate the impacts of fraud risks qualitatively.
Commercially provided electronic services commonly operate on top of a complex, highly-interconnected infrastructure, which provides a multitude of entry points for attackers. Providers of e-services also operate in dynamic, highly competitive markets, which provides fertile ground for fraud. Before a business idea to provide commercial e-services is implemented in practice, it should therefore be analysed on its fraud potential.
This analysis is a risk assessment process, in which risks are ordered on severity and the unacceptable ones are mitigated. Mitigations may consist of changes in the e-service network to reduce the attractiveness of fraud for the fraudster, or changes in coordination process steps or IT architecture elements to make fraud harder or better detectable.
We propose to use value business value models for the identification and quantification of risks associated with e-service packages. This allows for impact estimation as well as understanding the attacker’s business cases. We show how the value ontology — with minimal extensions – can be used to analyse known telecommunication fraud scenarios. We also show how the approach can be used to quantify infrastructure risks. Based on the results, as well as feedback from practitioners, we discuss the scope and limits of generalizability of our approach.
The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a graph-oriented language in which control and action nodes can be connected almost arbitrarily. It is primarily targeted at domain analysts and is supported by many modelling tools, but in its current form, it lacks the semantic precision required to capture fully executable business processes. The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) on the other hand is a mainly block-structured language, targeted at software developers and supported by several execution platforms. In the current setting, translating BPMN models into BPEL code is a necessary step towards standards-based business process development environments. This translation is challenging since BPMN and BPEL represent two fundamentally different classes of languages. Existing BPMN-to-BPEL translations rely on the identification of block-structured patterns in BPMN models that are mapped into block-structured BPEL constructs. This paper advances the state of the art in BPMN-to-BPEL translation by defining methods for identifying not only perfectly block-structured fragments in BPMN models, but also quasi-structured fragments that can be turned into perfectly structured ones and flow-based acyclic fragments that can be mapped into a combination of block-structured constructs and control links. Beyond its direct relevance in the context of BPMN and BPEL, this paper addresses issues that arise generally when translating between graph-oriented and block-structured flow definition languages. 1
We present control patterns: a framework for designing and analyzing inter- organizational control mechanisms, inspired by design patterns. A control pattern is a generic solution for some recurring control problem, applicable in a certain context. The patterns are based on internal control theory from the accounting and auditing fields, and on previous work on inter-organizational controls. The application of the patterns is supported by the e3-control methodology, which is based on the e3-value business modeling tool. The patterns are applied in a case study. This paper presents a methodology for the analysis and design of inter-organizational control mechanisms for value constellations. The approach is based on e3-control (Kartseva et al 2005b), which is a value-based modeling approach for the analysis and design of inter-organizational controls. Please note that e3-control itself is based on the e3-
Web services provide the basic technical platform required for application interoperability. They do not, however, provide higher level control, such as which web services need to be invoked, which operations should be called and in what sequence. Nor do they provide ways to describe the semantics of interfaces, the workflows, or e-business processes. BPEL is the missing link to assemble and integrate web services into a real business process BPEL4WS standardizes process automation between web services. This applies both within the enterprise, where BPEL4WS is used to integrate previously isolated systems, and between enterprises, where BPEL4WS enables easier and more effective integration with business partners. In providing a standard descriptive structure BPEL4WS enables enterprises to define their business processes during the design phase. Wider business benefits can flow from this through business process optimization, reengineering, and the selection of most appropriate processes . Supported by major vendors - including BEA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, SAP, Sun, and others - BPEL4WS is becoming the accepted standard for business process management.This book provides detailed coverage of BPEL4WS, its syntax, and where, and how, it is used. It begins with an overview of web services, showing both the foundation of, and need for, BPEL. The web services orchestration stack is explained, including standards such as WS-Security, WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction, WS-Addressing, and others. The BPEL language itself is explained in detail, with Code snippets and complete examples illustrating both its syntax and typical construction. Having covered BPEL itself, the book then goes on to show BPEL is used in context. by providing an overview of major BPEL4WS servers. It covers the Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 in detail, and shows how to write BPEL4WS solutions using these servers.
Networked organizations, consisting of enterprises who exchange things of economic value with each other, often have participants
who commit a fraud or perform other actions, not agreed in a contract. To explore such opportunistic behavior, and to design solutions to mitigate it, we propose the e
3
controlapproach. This approach takes the valuable objects, which are exchanged between enterprises, as a point of departure, and
proposes a control patterns library to find solutions for various types of opportunistic behavior in network organizations.
The practical use of the patterns is illustrated by a case study in the field of renewable electricity supply in UK.
Inter-organizational B2B systems are most likely tending to change their business requirements over time - e.g. establishing
new partnerships or change existing ones. The problem is that business analysts design the business processes from scratch,
disregarding the economic drivers of the business network. We propose to use business modeling techniques - such as REA (Resource-Event-Agents)
- to ensure that business processes beneath do not violate the domain rules, i.e. to fulfill the basic economic principle
for every business transaction - the give-and-take convention, called economic reciprocity. This helps us to quickly adapt
the B2B processes to changing requirements without the need to change the overall architecture. In this paper we provide a
mapping from REA, which represents one of the most prominent ontologies for business modeling, to UMM (UN/CEFACT’s Modeling
Methodology), a standardized methodology for modeling the global choreography of inter-organizational business processes.
We formalize the mapping by the use of the model-to-model transformation language ATL (Atlas Transformation Language).
A common task in business process modelling is the verification of process models regarding syntactical and structural errors. While the former might be checked with low efforts, the latter usually requires a complex state-space analysis to prove properties like deadlock-freedom of the models. In this paper, we address the issue of deadlock detection with a novel approach based on business process querying. Using queries, we are able to detect a broad range of common structural errors that lead to deadlocks, such as misaligned splits and joins. While not being complete, the proposed approach has the advantages of low computational efforts as well as providing graphical outputs that directly lead to the errors.
While exploring value webs -cooperating enterprises- it is common to view such webs from multiple perspectives: (1) the business value perspective, (2) the business process perspective, and (3) the information system perspective. The value perspective explains why a web can exist from a commercial perspective, whereas the process perspective shows the interacting processes of enterprises and the IT perspectives shows the supporting IT architecture. These perspectives each take a different view on the same phe- nomenon: the value web. Because the phenomenon is for each viewpoint the same the perspectives need to be consis- tent. This paper introduces an approach to arrive at a busi- ness process model of a value web that is consistent with a business value model of the same value web. We propose a step-wise approach that starts with considering the inde- pendent transfer of ownership right of a value object and the actual object itself, and finally considers time ordering of these transfers. We illustrate our approach using an in- dustrial strength case study in the aviation sector.
A precise definition of interaction behavior between services is a prerequisite for successful business-to-business integration.
Service choreographies provide a view on message exchanges and their ordering constraints from a global perspective. Assuming
message sending and receiving as one atomic step allows to reduce the modelers’ effort. As downside, problematic race conditions
resulting in deadlocks might appear when realizing the choreography using services that exchange messages asynchronously.
This paper presents typical issues when desynchronizing service choreographies. Solutions from practice are discussed and
a formal approach based on Petri nets is introduced for identifying desynchronizable choreographies.
Business value and coordination process perspectives need to be taken into consideration while modeling business collaborations. The need for these two models stems from the importance of separating the how from the what concerns. A business value model shows what is offered by whom to whom while a coordination process model shows how these offerings are fulfilled operationally. This case study addresses the model transformation between e3value and BPMN, commonly used for modeling business collaborations from value and coordination perspectives respectively.
An alignment of the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) promises
seamless integration of process documentation and executable process definitions. Thus, a lot of research has been conducted
on a mapping from BPMN to BPEL. The other perspective of this alignment, i.e. a BPEL-to-BPMN mapping, was largely neglected.
This paper presents a condensed discussion of such a mapping and its pitfalls. We illustrate why such a mapping is not as
straight-forward as commonly assumed and discuss the gaps to be bridged towards a better alignment of both languages.
Innovative e-business projects start with a design of the e-business model. We often encounter the view, in research as well as industry practice, that an e-business model is similar to a business process model, and so can be specified using UML activity diagrams or Petri nets. In this paper, we explain why this is a misunderstanding. The root cause is that a business model is not about process but about value exchanged between actors. Failure to make this separation of concerns leads to poor business decision-making and inadequate business requirements.
Business process modeling has undoubtedly emerged as a popular and relevant practice in Information Systems. Despite being an actively researched field, anecdotal evidence and experiences suggest that the focus of the research community is not always well aligned with the needs of industry. The main aim of this paper is, accordingly, to explore the current issues and the future challenges in business process modeling, as perceived by three key stakeholder groups (academics, practitioners, and tool vendors). We present the results of a global Delphi study with these three groups of stakeholders, and discuss the findings and their implications for research and practice. Our findings suggest that the critical areas of concern are standardization of modeling approaches, identification of the value proposition of business process
modeling, and model-driven process execution. These areas are also expected to persist as business process modeling roadblocks in the future.
The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a
graph-oriented language in which control and action nodes
can be connected almost arbitrarily. It is supported by
various modelling tools but so far no systems can directly
execute BPMN models. The Business Process Execution
Language for Web Services (BPEL) on the other hand is a
mainly block-structured language supported by several execution
platforms. In the current setting, mapping BPMN
models to BPEL code is a necessary step towards unified
and standards-based business process development environments.
It turns out that this mapping is challenging
from a scientific viewpoint as BPMN and BPEL represent
two fundamentally different classes of languages. Existing
methods for mapping BPMN to BPEL impose limitations
on the structure of the source model. This paper proposes
a technique that overcomes these limitations. Beyond its direct
relevance in the context of BPMN and BPEL, this technique
addresses difficult problems that arise generally when
translating between flow-based languages with parallelism.
Business practice shows that, often, different process models are employed in the various phases of the Business Process Management life cycle, each providing a different paradigm for capturing and representing the business process domain. Recently, significant efforts have been made to overcome the disintegration of process models by providing complementary language standards for process design (BPMN) and execution (BPEL), based on the claim that these languages are semantically integrated. However, the conceptual mapping between both languages remains unclear, thus it is undecided whether any BPMN diagram can be transformed to BPEL. In this paper we argue that there is conceptual mismatch between BPMN and BPEL that needs to be identified in order to guide the language integration process semantically. In our analysis we take into account the various perspectives of the Business Process Management life cycle, in particular business and technical analyst perspectives. Our approach is generic and can also be utilized as a guiding framework for identifying conceptual mismatch between other business process modeling languages.
The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a graph-oriented language in which control and action nodes can be connected almost arbitrarily. It is supported by various modelling tools but so far no systems can directly execute BPMN models. The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) on the other hand is a mainly block-structured language supported by several execution platforms. In the current setting, mapping BPMN models to BPEL code is a necessary step towards unified and standards-based business process development environments. It turns out that this mapping is challenging from a scientific viewpoint as BPMN and BPEL represent two fundamentally different classes of languages. Existing methods for mapping BPMN to BPEL impose limitations on the structure of the source model, especially with respect to cycles. This report proposes a technique that overcomes these limitations. Beyond its direct relevance in the context of BPMN and BPEL, this technique addresses difficult problems that arise generally when translating between floow-based languages with parallelism.
Business models are usually represented by a mixture of informal textual, verbal, and ad-hoc graphical representations. However, these representations typically limit a clear understanding of the e-business issues that confront the stakeholders, and often perpetuate the existing gap between business executives and the IT developers who This article presents an e-business modeling approach that combines the rigorous approach of IT systems analysis with an economic value perspective from business sciences. must create the e-business information systems. This article presents a conceptual modeling approach to
. Innovative e-business projects start with a design of the e-business model. We often encounter the view, in research as well as industry practice, that an e-business model is similar to a business process model, and so can be specified using UML activity diagrams or Petri nets. In this paper, we explain why this is a misunderstanding. The root cause is that a business model is not about process but about value exchanged between actors. Failure to make this separation of concerns leads to poor business decision-making and inadequate business requirements. 1 Introduction An important part of an e-commerce information system development process is the design of an e-business model. Such a model shows the business essentials of the ecommerce business case to be developed. It can be seen as a first step in requirements engineering for e-commerce information systems. Sometimes, an e-business model is represented using a standard process modelling method such as the UML modelling ...
Modern e-service providers rely on service innovation to stay relevant. Once a new service package is designed, implementation-specific aspects such as value (co-)creation and cost/benefit analysis are investigated. However, due to time-to-market or competitive advantage constraints, innovative services are rarely assessed for potential risks of fraud before they are put out on the market. But these risks may result in loss of economic value for actors involved in the e-service’s provision.
Our approach automatically generates and prioritizes undesired-able scenarios from a business value model of the e-service, thereby drastically reducing the time needed to conduct an assessment. We provide examples from telecom service provision to motivate and illustrate the utility of the tool.
A first step in developing eBusiness ideas is to understand such an idea thoroughly. In the recent past, industry has clearly demonstrated that such an understanding lacks or at least is insufficient, resulting in failures and sometimes even bankruptcies. In this chapter we present an approach to design an eBusiness model, called the e 3 value approach. This approach is ontologically founded in business science, marketing and axiology, but exploits rigorous conceptual modelling as a way of working known from computer science. The aim is that an e 3 value eBusiness model contributes to a better and shared understanding of the idea at stake, specifically with the respect to its profit drivers. If the model is attributed with various assumptions, such as economic valuation of objects produced, distributed, and consumed, we can derive profitability sheets using the business model. These can be used to assess whether the idea seems to be profitable for all actors involved in the idea. We illustrate the e 3 value approach by a project we carried out for an Internet Service Provider.
After explaining why business executives and academics should consider thinking about a rigorous approach to e-business models, we introduce a new e-Business Model Ontology. Using the concept of business models can help companies understand, communicate and share, change, measure, simulate and learn more about the different aspects of e-business in their firm. The generic e-Business Model Ontology (a rigorous definition of the e-business issues and their interdependencies in a company's business model), which we outline in this paper is the foundation for the development of various useful tools for e-business management and IS Requirements Engineering. The e-Business Model Ontology is based on an extensive literature review and describes the logic of a "business system" for creating value in the Internet era. It is composed of four main pillars, which are product innovation, infrastructure management, customer relationship and financials. These elements are then further decomposed.
This paper focuses on the realizability problem of a framework for modeling and specifying the global behavior of reactive electronic
services (e-services). In this framework, Web accessible programs (peers) communicate by asynchronous message passing, and a virtual global watcher listens silently to the network. The global behavior
is characterized by a conversation, which is the infinite sequence of messages observed by the watcher. We show that given
a Büchi automaton specifying the desired set of conversations, called a conversation protocol, it is possible to implement it using a set of finite state peers if three realizability conditions are satisfied. In particular, the synthesized peers will conform to the protocol by generating only those conversations specified
by the protocol. Our results enable a top-down verification strategy where: (1) A conversation protocol is specified by a
realizable Büchi automaton, (2) The properties of the protocol are verified on the Büchi automaton specification, (3) The
peer implementations are synthesized from the protocol via projection.
In scenarios where a set of independent business partners engage in complex conversations, global interaction models are a
means to specify the allowed interaction behavior from a global perspective. In these models atomic interactions serve as
basic building blocks and behavioral dependencies are defined between them. Global interaction models might not be locally enforceable, i.e. they specify constraints that cannot be enforced during execution without additional synchronization interactions.
As this property has only been defined textually so far, this paper presents a formal definition. For doing so, this paper
introduces interaction Petri nets, a Petri net extension for representing global interaction models. Algorithms for deriving
the behavioral interface for each partner and for enforceability checking are provided.
This paper focuses on the realizability problem of a framework for modeling and specifying the global behaviors of reactive electronic services (e-services). In this framework, Web accessible programs (peers) communicate by asynchronous message passing, and a virtual global watcher silently listens to the network. The global behavior is characterized by a “conversation”, which is the infinite sequence of messages observed by the watcher. We show that given a Büchi automaton specifying the desired set of conversations, called a “conversation protocol”, it is possible to realize the protocol using a set of finite state peers if three realizability conditions are satisfied. In particular, the synthesized peers will conform to the protocol by generating only those conversations specified by the protocol. Our results enable a top-down verification strategy where (1) A conversation protocol is specified by a realizable Büchi automaton, (2) The properties of the protocol are verified on the Büchi automaton specification, and (3) The peer implementations are synthesized from the protocol via projection.
In order to open-up enterprise applications to e-business and make them profitable for a communication with other enterprise applications, a business model is needed showing the business essentials of the e-commerce business case to be developed. Currently there are two major business modeling techniques - e3-value and REA (Resource-Event-Agent). Whereas e3-value was designed for modeling value exchanges within an e-business network of multiple business partners, the REA ontology assumes that, in the presence of money and available prices, all multi-party collaborations may be decomposed into a set of corresponding binary collaborations. This paper is a preliminary attempt to view e3-value and REA used side-by-side to see where they can complement each other in coordinated use in the context of multiple-partner collaboration. A real life scenario from the print media domain has been taken to proof our approach.
To support deadlock detection by computer, five patterns which
cause deadlock are defined. In expressing the pattern of deadlock
structures by control-node combinations only, it is difficult to express
the connection properties, since these are decided by many complex
combinations of control nodes. Therefore, two new concepts,
“reachability” and “absolute transferability”,
which express connection properties between two control nodes, are
introduced. With these concepts, the five deadlock patterns are
expressed simply. It is demonstrated mathematically that all deadlock
structures can be classified into these patterns and that deadlock
occurs in business process workflow models which have one or more of
these patterns
Business process management is usually treated from two different perspectives: business administration and computer science. While business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management for experts to handle, by contrast computer science professionals often consider business goals and organizational regulations as terms that do not deserve much thought but require the appropriate level of abstraction. Matthias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management. To this end, he details the complete business process lifecycle from the modeling phase to process enactment and improvement, taking into account all different stakeholders involved. After starting with a presentation of general foundations and abstraction models, he explains concepts like process orchestrations and choreographies, as well as process properties and data dependencies. Finally, he presents both traditional and advanced business process management architectures, covering, for example, workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures, and data-driven approaches. In addition, he shows how standards like WfMC, SOAP, WSDL, and BPEL fit into the picture. This textbook is ideally suited for classes on business process management, information systems architecture, and workflow management. This 2nd edition contains major updates on BPMN Version 2 process orchestration and process choreographies, and the chapter on BPM methodologies has been completely rewritten. The accompanying website www.bpm-book.com contains further information and additional teaching material.
E-business value modelling using the e3-value ontology Preprint available
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