Simulation-based quantification of business impacts caused by service incidents

Abstract

Today, business processes heavily depend on IT, so that business results are affected by the quality of supporting IT services. To gauge the quality of service from a business point of view, we need to consider the service incidents that occur over a reference period and evaluate the effect of each service incident individually. In this work, we address this problem by developing a procedure to monetarily quantify the negative impact of single service incidents on the service customer business. We first review related literature to identify approaches to quantifying the negative consequences associated with a service incident. Based on our findings, we propose a simulation-based procedure for estimating the monetary impact. Contrary to existing approaches, we first apply business process simulation as a formal analysis technique to determine the effects of single service incidents on process performance. Then, the impact on process performance is translated into its monetary equivalent. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.