Complexity Evaluation with Business Process Modeling and

Simulation

Krishan Chand

and Muthu Ramachandran

School of Computing, Creative Technologies and Engineering,

Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, U.K.

Keywords: Business Process Modeling, BPMN, Simulation, Complexity.

Abstract: To stay in the competition and to make a stand in the market, companies have to make the quick changes.

Business Process Modelling (BPM) has made an impact in the respect to capture the process and to make

the changes accordingly for improvement in business operations. Modeling and simulation is the process of

making a process simple to reduce complexity. However, modellers or researchers still making the complex

models. Modeling and simulation are the areas which need to be addressed, despite only a few researchers

worked in the respective areas of modelling and simulation. The paper addresses the complexity issue of

cloud performance criteria of time and cost. To this end, this paper has evaluated the domain of financial

services in the cloud with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and simulation. Two different

scenarios have been created to demonstrate the result of performance complexity of cloud services. Finally,

the conclusion has been derived to help and guide further research.

1 INTRODUCTION

Due to its existence importance not because of

descriptive nature of the process, but also the

characteristics representation for the activities such

as business process improvement, business process

re-engineering and process standardization, business

process modeling is the first stage to success the

organizational targets or objectives (Succi,

Predonzani & Vernazza, 2000).

Different stakeholders such as Business process

analyst, domain experts, technical analyst and

software developers are included in the activities of

the business process modeling. Thus, the

communication between these stakeholders is the

main aim of the business process modeling.

Moreover, business process should be simple and

uncomplicated to maintain and understand. The

business process with the high complexity and

unclear message can possibly result in defects,

errors, unsatisfactory results and adverse

understandability. Consequently, it can increase the

development time, testing time and maintenance of

the business process.

Modeling and Simulation are the processes to

reduce the complexity of the real world business

process. The main aim of the business process

modeling and simulation is to review the complexity

of a process directed to make it with fewer efforts,

accordingly to ease the complexity of the business

process and to make it simple and understanding.

However, the main objective of the process modeller

is to make the process understanding and to reduce

the complexity in the practical world, are designing

the complex models (Henriksen, 2008; Chwif et al.,

2000).

Though, to understanding the business process

complexity and to find out responsible aspects to

make the process complex and big, gives the

impression of less interest to elucidate the

complexity. Moreover, sporadically no one asked

this question that process complexity has a direct

impact on the performance attributes such as cost

and time. Consequently, the question comes that

how a process complexity can be measured? Does it

really important for modellers or the researchers to

measure the process simulation model complexity?

And how it would help if modellers can find out the

factors for increased complexity?

The objective of this paper is to find out the

concept behind the simulation model and

complexity. Two scenarios with the different

complexity of the process have been created to

conclude the results and to describe how complexity

can directly influence the performance (Time and

Cost).

136

Chand, K. and Ramachandran, M.

Complexity Evaluation with Business Process Modeling and Simulation.

DOI: 10.5220/0006790501360141

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk (COMPLEXIS 2018), pages 136-141

ISBN: 978-989-758-297-4

Next section will discuss the literature finding

and gaps which have motivated for this research.

Then after discussion related to BMPN and

simulation will be described with a complexity

evaluation framework. Section 4 will detail the case

study of a financial cloud application in which two

scenarios have been created to validate the results.

At the end, the paper will conclude the results which

can helpful for another researcher to endeavour other

research.

2 RELATED WORK

According to Robinson (2002), there are series of

factors to make a process large and complicated.

Additionally, simulation as a software engineering

term has been in some of the simulation situations

where the simulation models are very large and

complex (Robinson, 2002). Moreover, due to the

insufficient experience in the respective field can

also lead a process to make big and increase the

complexity which can affect the required

performance resources and can increase the

development time (Chwif et al., 2000).

As per described by the Henrikson (2008), the

complexity of the business process bad effect on the

performance and cost. Similarly, Arthur et al.,

(1999) noted that the large model size and the

complexity are upbringing the new issues as well.

Additionally, large and complex models are

problematic for verification and validation process

and also increase the cost of testing the simulation

model (Arthur et al., 1999). Moreover, Astrup et al.,

(2008) advised that large model and complexity

models can affect the predictive capability of a

simulation model as well and also stated that

predictive ability of the large and complex models

are deprived instead of simple or intermediate

complexity models (Astrup et al., 2008).

3 COMPLEXITY EVALUATION

FRAMEWORK WITH BPMN

FOR CLOUD COMPUTING

APPLICATION

Below Figure 1 illustrates the list of processes which

BPMN uses for cloud computing to reduce or

evaluate complexity. The process starts with

gathering performance requirements which need to

get all the resources get collected to achieve the

desired results for the business. Next step leads the

process of designing process. Modeller designs the

business process in keeping mind the current aspects

of the business, with help of business stakeholders.

After designing the process next step is to provide

parameters to all the task or subtask to simulates the

process and illustrate the results as per the

parameters provided. Different scenarios can be

created in the simulation and execution phase of the

process. Finally, the last phase is to validate and test

the process with the performance requirements

provided.

Figure 1: Describes the Framework to Evaluate

Complexity.

The next subsection will describe the BPMN and

simulation processes and there steps in detail.

3.1 Business Process Modeling

The communication of ideas is very important for

business and stakeholders. Numerous techniques are

available for the communication purpose such as

documentary description and graphical

representation. Graphical techniques used charts,

diagrams, pictures etc. for communication and

exploration. As it is relating to pictorial art, provides

a spontaneous understanding of the ideas or

concepts. According to Lodhi et al., (2014), the

concept of addressing the problems related to

business management operations in the graphic flora

is known as business process Modelling. Business

process Modelling helps the stakeholders and

business operations to design and understand the

business process, subsequently follow the analysis

and improvement process to until implementation.

Business Process Modelling (BPM) is the process of

collection of tools and methods to get the in-depth

understanding of a business process to manage and

improve the performance of an organization.

Business process modelling is the activity of

demonstrating the internal procedures of the

Complexity Evaluation with Business Process Modeling and Simulation

137

business to find out the current situation in order to

improve in future. There are different graphical

models available for the business process

management like flow charts and (Unified Modeling

Languages) UML diagrams.

According to Havey (2009), business process

modelling forces a business to get the better

understanding and formalise the existing process in

the way to make potential improvements. The main

inspiration to use the BPM is as follows:

 Well-organized process flow

 Spontaneous improvement when needed.

 Reengineering of a process flow when

required.

Getting work faster with fewer people will increase

productivity and reduce cost.

3.2 BPMN

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

process includes the different cyclic phases shown in

figure 2. The process always starts with a green

round notation that is called the client or user. The

user sends a message which contains a task to a

particular process. According to the particular

processes defined by the experimenter, the process

ends with the finishing red end circle. (Creation of

BPMN process with green and red round notations

are shown in Figure 3. After the creation of the

whole process, the next task for the experimenter is

to provide appropriate notation and assign variable

to each process. Subsequently, the next task is to

manage resources and load profiles. And then

finally, run the simulation. The experimenter can run

the simulation multiple times according to the

requirement of the process. The experimenter can

change the variables and resources accordingly in

order to enhance the performance.

Figure 2: BPMN Simulation Process Cycle.

3.3 Simulation

According to Naim (1996), simulation involves a

series of processes for building a computerised

model so that particular results can be achieved

through the observation of the model. Simulation

process includes assumption making and

parameterization (Siddiqi & Shekaran, 1996). Once

the process has been developed and documented, it

worth to simulate the process. Simulation of the

process can help to categorize the resources used by

the process and can provide the insight of the

duration of the process. Simulation of the process

will provide you with the performance level, but also

gives you the opportunity to validate the existing

process without affecting the current business

manoeuvres.

4 CASE STUDY OF FINANCIAL

CLOUD APPLICATION

To understand how the complexity of a business

process can be measured and how it can directly

impact on the performance aspects of time and cost

of a business process. Two scenarios have been

created for a loan process of a financial cloud

business which describes the two different ways to

complete a loan process and it will also explain how

the time and cost has changed. The main purpose of

the research is to classify the performance

requirement and to explain the resources that can be

used in the In-house banking and cloud-based

banking to increase the performance with fewer

resources and reduced complexity.

4.1 Scenario 1

The below figure 3 shows a loan process of a

financial business, which includes all the different

processes and sub-process used by the loan

department. The process starts with the login

authentication where Customers ID and passwords

are required. If the id or password is wrong, it will

not allow the user to proceed further. If id and

password are valid then the user can go ahead with

the loan request process. Then the next process is to

identify the risk of the customer, which has

subcategories such as higher risk, Lesser Risk,

Premium customers and other customers. Thereafter,

the process is called the check credit rating which is

divided into two sub-processes (bad credit rating and

good credit rating). The customers with the bad

credit rating have two parallel task, first to reject

loan and the other one is to notify the customer that

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your loan has been rejected and the process

completed. On the other hand, the customers with

good credit ratings follow the process of the request

has been approved and loan granted where the

process completed.

The next step for the researcher is to provide

parameters to every process and subprocess to

evaluate the performance as a result of minimum,

average and maximum time taken to complete one

process, furthermore, simulation results also

evaluate the total cost to complete 100 incoming

counter arrivals or processes.

Through this BPMN model, an experimenter or

modeller or researcher can evaluate the performance

by changing the parameter according to the situation

of the business processes and can also check the

factors making a process more complex and big.

Figure 3: Loan Process Scenario 1.

4.2 Scenario 2

In this scenario below figure 4, all the process are

same but to make it more secure, a user task process

has been added just after the risk the identified and

before check credit ratings, which is completed by

the bank manager to validate the customers and the

decision of the manager leads the process to reject or

approved decision. After approval, the process

continues the same process of credit check rating to

follow on and the rejected decision informs the

customers and ends the process there only. However,

the adding the task completed by the manager

increases the complexity of the process and

increased the cost and time respectively.

The next section will compare the results of both

scenarios.

Figure 4: Loan Process Scenario 2.

5 RESULTS

This section of the paper compares the results of

scenario 1 and scenario 2. Results show the

minimum, average and maximum time taken to

complete one process and also evaluates the total

cost of all the resources to complete 100 instances or

processes.

5.1 Scenario 1 Results

Figure 5 confirms the time is taken to complete a

process, which is 10m 40s, 27m 10s and 24m 10s as

a minimum, maximum and average respectively to

complete one process, and to complete the 100

process, the total time has taken is 1 day 16hours 29

minutes and 47 seconds.

Figure 5: Shows the Minimum, Average and Maximum

time to complete a Process.

Underneath Figure 6 illustrates the total cost

used by all the resources of the process to complete

the 100 processes, which is £232.20. This results

also depict the resource utilization of all the

resources.

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139

Figure 6 shows the total cost to complete 100 processes.

5.2 Scenario 2 Results

After changing the processes to make it more secure

and authentic has increased the complexity, which

has directly amplified the time to finish one process

and also increased the total cost of the process. The

below figure 7 clearly shows that the minimum time

is same as before but the maximum and average time

has changed to 30m 20s and 25m 54s respectively.

Figure 7: Shows the Minimum, Average and Maximum

time to complete a Process.

Figure 8 clearly indicates after including a

human task into the cloud to make a decision and to

make the process more secure, the total cost of all

the resources has been changed to £310.21 from

£232.20.

Figure 8: shows the total cost to complete 100 processes.

6 CONCLUSION

This paper has provided the Insight of the BPMN

modeling and simulation process to reduce the

complexity of the business process to improve the

performance with fewer resources and reduced cost.

The research used BPMN modeling to design a

business process for financial cloud application and

tried to achieve the maximum performance from two

different scenarios. The research also guides us

about the size and complexity of the business

process. Understanding of the increased sized model

and more complexity may also help modellers and

researchers to complete the process within in the

budget (Jacobson and Yücesan, 1999).

The results of the research have also argued and

concluded that how to identify the complexity of the

process and how to make full utilization of resources

to increase the performance in terms of time and

cost. Results also validate adding more elements or

processes may increase the complexity of the

business process and can reduce the performance.

The research has also noticed that while using

the cloud banking there should be some security

aspect or firewall to be addressed for security

purpose which can be addressed in the future work.

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