Patent Publication Number: US-2007100673-A1

Title: MATRIX methodology for modeling a business intelligence system based on individual life cycles within a business process

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
      1. Field of the Invention  
      The invention relates generally to the field of business intelligence systems. More particularly, this invention relates to a MATRIX methodology for modeling a business intelligence system based on individual life cycles comprising a business process.  
      2. Description of Related Art  
      Over the past two decades companies have invested heavily in automating their business and processes by implementing ERP, CRM, BPM and other enterprise software applications to gain competitive edge. These applications have improved the productivity of the companies resulting in reduced costs and gaining competitive edge. However, most companies have implemented these applications resulting in less differentiation between companies. So, the next step in gaining competitive advantage is to improve the business processes by analyzing the data collected in the enterprise software applications and optimizing the business processes.  
      The present invention relates to structuring business process analysis right from designing and modeling, to integrating and automating, to deploying and executing, and to measuring and optimizing the business process to allow businesses to take control of their data, stay informed and optimize using Business Intelligence methodologies. This invention defines a novel MATRIX methodology that is predicated on breaking up a business process into individual lifecycles and further split the life cycles into individual stages and interlinking these life cycle stages to generate a Business Intelligence system.  
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
      The present invention relates to a MATRIX methodology used for modeling a comprehensive Business Intelligence system based on a business process lifecycle approach that comprises of the steps of: modeling, building, generating and analyzing in order to analyze a business process end to end. In accordance with the present invention, modeling comprises the steps of defining a business process, splitting the business process into small quantifiable life cycles, further decomposing each business process lifecycle into several events or stages and defining the associated metrics for the lifecycle and stages. This step also includes facilitating gathering of business requirements and developing a project plan based on them.  
      It is an advantage of the present invention to model a Business Intelligence system that is a comprehensive Business Process Intelligence solution that is derived from blending both Business Process Management and Business Intelligence methodologies.  
      Another advantage of the present invention is to allow businesses to get a better value from their investments in terms of venerating Business Intelligence solutions.  
      Another advantage of the present invention is to generate a comprehensive Business Intelligence system that provides improved efficiency for businesses.  
      Another advantage of the present invention to aid with corporate compliance by generating an end to end visibility of the lowest detail at the corporate level that can assist in Sarbanes Oxley compliance.  
      It is yet another advantage of the present invention to allow C-Level executives/top management to define and measure the strategic metrics i.e. the life cycle metrics  
      It is yet another advantage of the present invention to allow operational managers to define and measure operational/tactical metrics that are related to the individual life cycle stages.  
      It is an objective of the present invention to provide a Business Intelligence system that is a comprehensive Business Process Intelligence solution that is derived from blending both Business Process Management and Business Intelligence.  
      Another objective of the present invention is to allow businesses to get a better value from their investments in terms of generating Business Intelligence solutions.  
      Another objective of the present invention is to generate a comprehensive Business Intelligence system that provides improved efficiency for businesses.  
      Another objective of the present invention to aid with corporate compliance by generating an end to end visibility of the lowest detail at the corporate level that can assist in Sarbanes Oxley compliance.  
      It is yet another objective of the present invention to allow C-Level executives/top management to define and measure the strategic metrics i.e. the life cycle metrics  
      It is yet another objective of the present invention to allow operational managers to define and measure operational/tactical metrics that are related to the individual life cycle stages. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating the sequence of steps involved in the generation of a Business Intelligence system within an enterprise.  
       FIG. 2  is a flow chart illustrating the sequence of steps involved in modeling a business process towards the generation of a comprehensive Business Intelligence system.  
       FIG. 3  is a flow chart illustrating the sequence of steps involved in translating a business process into building a comprehensive Business Intelligence system.  
       FIG. 4  is a flow chart illustrating the steps involved in formulating the matrix during the modeling phase in the generation of the Business Intelligence system.  
       FIG. 5  is a flow chart representation of the series of steps followed during the modeling phase to capture information from executives at the enterprise.  
       FIG. 6  is a flow chart illustrating the sequence of steps involved in MATRIX methodology illustrating how the business process life cycles and the stages are interconnected.  
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
      Business process benchmarking has become a competitive strategic element that affects business partners, individual customers, employee morale, productivity and profitability. Applying Business Intelligence to Business processes and paving paths to Business Process Intelligence has become a determining factor for the success of an organization. The many business processes that run an organization are not isolated systems, but include a maze of small life cycles connected to each other.  
      Organizational structure throughout the many diverse industries varies but for the most part, all organizations have similar business processes. It is necessary that business and IT users understand the way these processes are, and apply techniques that result in Business Process Intelligence and not just Business Intelligence. Converging Business Intelligence and Business Process helps business analysts continuously and consistently monitor and measure business processes through all phases and with all permutations and combinations. This allows companies to overcome the limitations being posed by creating business intelligence systems that purely based on combing data from disparate sources into one database.  
      For example there are a number of high level business processes like customer relationship management, supply chain management, production management, financials management and so on, which run a business organization. All these business processes have a number of small quantifiable life cycles to guide the flow of action through a series of activities or stages.  
      For instance, a business process such as CRM comprises of numerous lifecycles such as Lead to Order, Request to Service etc., The Lead to Order-L20 in turn is made up of Lead, Opportunity, Quote, and Order stages. And the Request to Service-R2S, lifecycle comprises of Switch, Agent/Customer interaction, Customer repair and survey stages.  
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating the sequence of steps involved in the generation of a Business Intelligence system within an enterprise.  
      For each business process within an enterprise (step  5 ) the process of generation of a Business Intelligence system starts with modeling the Business Process (step  10 ) followed by building the Businiess Intelligence System (step  15 ). This is followed by generating the Business Intelligence system (step  20 ) followed by an analysis of the Business process (step  25 ). The process concludes with correcting earlier assumptions about performance of the business process and increasing performance metrics and through a re-input of those metrics into the business process (step  30 .) Statistical analysis and data mining techniques will be used to optimize the business process.  
       FIG. 2  is a flow chart illustrating the sequence of steps involved in modeling a business process towards the generation of a comprehensive Business Intelligence system.  
      Modeling  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a business process analysis starts with modeling the business processes. The modeling step allows a business analyst to capture the broad outline and procedures that govern what it is that a business does. Modeling allows integration of the regular tasks undertaken by a Business with the business processes through insight-driven actions. Modeling helps define business processes, process life cycles, stages, specific inputs and outputs, resources consumed, chronology of activities performed and the events that drive the overall process.  
      Business process modeling may affect more than one organizational unit. So modeling a business process requires well developed, user-friendly tools and interfaces to structure the business process. Moreover, business process modeling requires a business-centric approach and not a techno-centric view. The business process modeler should be designed to meet the business requirements of business users, but not IT stall.  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Modeler helps organizations visualize, analyze and improve business processes. A business process modeler provides business analysts and IT developers with an easy to use way to model their business value of IT solutions by allowing business analysts to tie corporate initiatives and goals to business requirements and processes. A modeler helps design a business process life cycle and stages, define overall metrics for the business process life cycle, define individual life cycle stage metrics, generate requirements documentation and develop applications to real-life organizations.  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the process of modeling a Business process comprises of several steps illustrated as follows. In step  30 , a contract to analyze the business process of an enterprise is obtained. In step  35 , a team of experts prepares questionnaire tailor made for the specific enterprise and its business process is prepared. In step  40 , the team meets with various C-Level executives within the enterprise to obtain a detailed understanding of the business, its goals, driving factors and their performance metrics. Once the team&#39;s questions have been answered (step  45 ) and based on the output from these interviews various life cycles within the Business process are identified (step  50 .) F, or each life cycle, modeling is done to define the project, its goals and an overall project plan (step  60 .) In step  62 , each business process lifecycle is split into several events or stages. In step  65 , all business activities (stages) and their dependencies (sub stages) are input into the modeler. In step  70 , for each stage and its sub stage all pertinent information, buzz words and subject areas are captured and entered. In step  75 , the metrics to be measured and the type of measurement to be undertaken are defined (step  75 .) If there are no more life cycles (step  80 ) the modeling process is concluded.  
       FIG. 3  is a flow chart illustrating the sequence of steps involved in translating a business process into building a comprehensive Business Intelligence system.  
      Once modeling is concluded (step  85 ), Business Intelligence architect defines the measures based on the metrics defined in model analysis (step  88 .) In step  90 , the measures are defined into base and derived measures. In step  92 , Business Intelligence architect defines the dimensions based on “how to measure.” In step  94 , a matrix of the measures and dimensions is formed. In step  96 , groupings of base measures that have the same dimension are created. In step  98 , groupings of derived measures that have the same dimension are created. In step  100 , a matrix of dimensions and facts is created and are associated with the business process life cycle and stages. In step  102 , dimensions and facts are enhanced as needed. In step  104 , a data model schema is created. It would be known to those of ordinary skill in the art that the data model so created may be in any format including star or snowflake. In step  110 , the schemas are organized into subject areas and life cycles. In step  112 , the data model for the OLAP is defined. In step  114 , the OLAP schema is organized into life cycles and stages. In step  116 , a staging area for the data warehouse is created. In step  118 , the source systems that contain the transaction data for the sources is identified. In step  120 , the mapping between the source systems to staging is defined followed by a defining of the mapping of staging database to data warehouse (step  121 .) In step  122 , the mapping between data warehouse and OLAP is defined. In step  123 , web services are defined so as to expose each life cycle and stage. In step  124 , web services are defined to load real time business process life cycle data into the Business Intelligence system.  
      It will be known to those of ordinary skill in the art that based on the specific needs some of the steps can be by passed and a data warehouse created.  
       FIG. 4  is a flow chart illustrating the steps involved in formulating the matrix during the modeling phase in the generation of the Business Intelligence system.  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, in step  125  the individual events comprising each business process lifecycle are plotted in a matrix. In step  130 , the inter dependences of the different lifecycles are represented on the matrix by arrows indicating the process flow. In step  135 , all lifecycles and events/stages comprising them are represented in the matrix so that ultimately the Business processes of the entire enterprise are represented in the matrix. In step  140 , the effect of change to each event or stage can be analyzed to ultimately understand its effect through the processes of the entire enterprise. In step  145 , a visual representation of the entire business process lifecycles are presented to users to aid in understanding the role of each event or stage in the overall performance of the business enterprise. This helps the users obtain more Business Intelligence pertaining to effects of each event or stage depending on the Business process lifecycle it is in ( 148 .)  
       FIG. 5  is a flow chart representation of the series of steps followed during the modeling phase to capture information from executives at the enterprise, which in turn shapes the matrix. In step  150 , during the initial interviews conducted with C-level executives at an enterprise, all the business process lifecycles are identified. In step  155 , events or stages constituting each business process lifecycle are identified. In other words, each business process is split into numerous stages/events. In step  160 , for each business process lifecycle performance metrics are identified and business goals are established. In step  165 , interrelationships between lifecycles are identified which results in life cycles being interlinked to form a matrix. In step  170 , these business process lifecycles and related data is stored within the modeler and used to build and generate the Business intelligence system. In step  175 , the matrix is obtained which can be used to perform “what if” analysis and to improve the performance metrics set earlier.  
       FIG. 6  is an illustration depicting the MATRIX methodology in a preferred embodiment of the present invention.  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, as shown in  FIG. 6 , the first life cycle ( 180 ) being analyzed in the analysis of the overall business process is Lead-to-Order which is part of Customer relationship Management Life Cycle. The second lifecycle ( 185 ) is Order-to-Procure which is part of Supply Chain Management Life Cycle. The third lifecycle ( 190 ) being analyzed is Design-to-Source which is part of Production Management lifecycle. The fourth lifecycle ( 195 ) being analyzed is Procure-to-Shipment which is part of Supply Chain Management lifecycle.  
      The fifth lifecycle ( 200 ) is Request-to-Resolve which is part of Customer Support Management lifecycle. The sixth lifecycle ( 205 ) is Forecast-to-Revenue which is part of Financials Management lifecycle.  
      In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the matrix methodology relates to taking a Business process and splitting it into smaller lifecycles, defining and identifying smaller stages within a lifecycle, and analyzing the way each event behaves depending on the lifecycle it is in. Thus, the MATRIX methodology relates to how an event or a stage behaves based on the life cycle it is part of. For instance when analyzing the event “Order” in the lifecycle Lead-to-Order, what the user is analyzing is different from what is being analyzed with regards to the event “Order” when it is analyzed as being part of the Order-to-Revenue lifecycle. The reason is that the former lifecycle takes into account events and/factors that take place prior to the order being booked and in the latter lifecycle the events/factors being analyzed are ones that occurred after the order had been booked.  
      Although the present invention has been particularly shown and described above with reference to specific embodiments, it is anticipated that alterations and modifications thereof will no doubt become apparels to those skilled in the art. It is therefore intended that the following claims be interpreted as covering all such alterations and modifications as fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention.