EXPLANATION GENERATION IN BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MODELS - With a Case Study in Competition Benchmarking

Hennie Daniels, Emiel Caron

2007

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an extension of the methodology for explanation generation in financial knowledge-based systems. This offers the possibility to automatically generate diagnostics to support business decision tasks. The central goal is the identification of specific knowledge structures and reasoning methods required to construct computerized explanations from financial data and models. A multi-step look-ahead algorithm is proposed that deals with so-called cancelling-out effects. The extended methodology was tested on a case-study conducted for Statistics Netherlands involving the comparison of financial figures of firms in the Dutch retail branch. The analysis is performed with a diagnostic software application which implements our theory of explanation. Comparison of results of the method described in (Daniels and Feelders, 2001) with the results of the extended method clearly improves the analyses when cancelling-out effects are present in the data.

References

  1. Courtney, J. F., Paradice, D. B., and Mohammed, N. H. A. (1987). A knowledge-based dss for managerial problem diagnosis. Decision Sciences, 18(3):373-399.
  2. Daniels, H. A. M. and Feelders, A. J. (2001). A general model for automated business diagnosis. European Journal of Operational Research, 130:623-637.
  3. Feelders, A. J. (1993). Diagnostic reasoning and explanation in financial models of the firm. PhD thesis, Tilburg University, Department of Economics.
  4. Hesslow, G. (1983). Explaining differences and weighting causes. Theoria, 49:87-111.
  5. Humphreys, P. W. (1989). The chances of explanation. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
  6. Kosy, D. W. and Wise, B. P. (1984). Self-explanatory financial planning models. In Proc. of AAAI-84 , pages 176-181, Austin, TX.
  7. Pounds, W. F. (1969). The process of problem finding. Industrial Management Review, 11(1):1-19.
  8. Statistics Netherlands (2006). statistiek.
  9. Centraal bureau voor de Verkooijen, W. J. (1993). Automated financial diagnosis: a comparison with other diagnostic domains. J. Inf. Sci., 19(2):125-135.
  10. 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: 15: 16: Algorithm: Multi-level Look-ahead
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Daniels H. and Caron E. (2007). EXPLANATION GENERATION IN BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MODELS - With a Case Study in Competition Benchmarking . In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-89-4, pages 119-128. DOI: 10.5220/0002346101190128


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis07,
author={Hennie Daniels and Emiel Caron},
title={EXPLANATION GENERATION IN BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MODELS - With a Case Study in Competition Benchmarking},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,},
year={2007},
pages={119-128},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002346101190128},
isbn={978-972-8865-89-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,
TI - EXPLANATION GENERATION IN BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MODELS - With a Case Study in Competition Benchmarking
SN - 978-972-8865-89-4
AU - Daniels H.
AU - Caron E.
PY - 2007
SP - 119
EP - 128
DO - 10.5220/0002346101190128