This research domain explores the tools that automate business processes. Currently RPA tools are popular. We explore this field of research. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging domain form of process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or atificial intelligence (AI) workers. RPA is currently one of the most popular AI application areas as it allows companies with legacy systems to automate their workflows. RPA can be thought about as a digital spine connecting all applications. Having a digital spine to connect all applications is more valuable today because we have a large number of applications. RPA interact with applications via integrations and screen scraping, allowing RPA tools to perform actions like if an employee was typing on that screen. Advanced RPA automation are trained, and learn from, both IT and business professionals, utilizing their collective knowledge with a self-learning engine.
Following a number of consulting mandates, we have identified a number of areas where improvements are needed. For example in one of our consulting activity the client had mapped all its business processes using Microsoft Visio. All process maps (hundreds) were placed on the intranet of the company. Management loved this simple process representation but IT decided to recreate maps using the BPNM notation. This creates inneficiencies and duplication. Our first research project, BPM+, tries to unify both the management and the IT views into one representation that everybody in the organization could share instead of duplicating.
BPM+: Study and validation of notations. Extensions to the BPNM notation to create a unified representation that can be shared by management and IT analysts when creating the business process maps with the objective of sharing them instead of creating two different sets in different notations.
Multiperspective controls: We have also noted, during consulting activities, that once process controls are inserted into business process maps it becomes very hard to assess their completeness/conformance and to manage them from many perspectives (finance, IT security, ISO9001, ITIL, CMMi, ....). Another issue is that process controls are repeated across referentials and best practice guides (like CobIT, CMMI, ISO9001, ISO27002, SOX and many others). This project aims at allowing each individual perspective of a process control to be tracked and represented wit its conformance (green, yellow, red):
- Research published by Dr. Carlos Monsalve: Formal validation of the Qualigram notation was done for level 2, using the Bush-Wand-Weber reference model, allowed to identify issues with the notation. Some changes were proposed to ensure that the notation translate to BPMN (to and from).