Deep business optimization: Making business process optimization theory work in practice

Abstract

The success of most of today's businesses is tied to the efficiency and effectiveness of their core processes. This importance has been recognized in research, leading to a wealth of sophisticated process optimization and analysis techniques. Their use in practice is, however, often limited as both the selection and the application of the appropriate techniques are challenging tasks. Hence, many techniques are not considered causing potentially significant opportunities of improvement not to be implemented. This paper proposes an approach to addressing this challenge using our deep Business Optimization Platform. By integrating a catalogue of formalized optimization techniques with data analysis and integration capabilities, it assists analysts both with the selection and the application of the most fitting optimization techniques for their specific situation. The paper presents both the concepts underlying this platform as well as its prototypical implementation. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.