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Thinking Out of the Box: Discovering the Relevance of External Context to Business Processes

  • Conference paper
Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2011)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 348))

Abstract

Successful organizations are those able to identify and respond appropriately to changes in their internal and external environments. The search for flexibility is linked to the need for the organization to adapt to frequent and exceptional changes in scenarios imposed to them. Those disruptions in routine should be reflected in business processes, in a sense that processes must be adjusted to such variations, taking into account both internal and external variables, typically referred in the literature as the context of the process. In particular, defining the relevance of external context for the execution of a process is still an open research issue. We propose a method to identify and prioritize external variables that impact the execution of specific activities of a process, applying competitive intelligence concepts and data mining techniques. We have evaluated the method in a case study, which showed how the discovered variables influenced specific activities of the process.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NP2Tec, Department of Applied Informatics, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Eduardo Costa Ramos, Flavia Maria Santoro & Fernanda Baião

Authors
  1. Eduardo Costa Ramos
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  2. Flavia Maria Santoro
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  3. Fernanda Baião
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IST - Technical University of Lisbon, Av.Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Fred

  2. Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD, Delft, The Netherlands

    Jan L. G. Dietz

  3. Informatics Research Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, RG6 6UD, Reading, UK

    Kecheng Liu

  4. INSTICC and IPS, Estefanilha, Setúbal, Portugal

    Joaquim Filipe

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ramos, E.C., Santoro, F.M., Baião, F. (2013). Thinking Out of the Box: Discovering the Relevance of External Context to Business Processes. In: Fred, A., Dietz, J.L.G., Liu, K., Filipe, J. (eds) Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. IC3K 2011. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 348. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37186-8_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37186-8_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-37185-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-37186-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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