Unifying business concepts for SMEs with Prosecco ontology

Abstract

Knowledge management in business information systems often requires a unified dictionary of business concepts, that allows for a transparent integration of such systems. Thanks to it sharing the conceptualization between users becomes possible, and better decision support facilities can be provided. The Prosecco project is a research and development project aims to address the needs and constraints of small and medium enterprises by designing methods that will significantly improve BPM systems. In this paper we focus on the development of ontology-based mechanisms allowing for creating taxonomies of business logic concepts unifying system objects. Building a taxonomy of business concepts shared by number of SMEs targeted in the project and then turning it into a formalized ontology integrating the software components is a major challenge. The paper demonstrates how this ontology is used to unify vocabulary of business processes and rules. The original contribution of this research discussed in the paper is the design and implementation of the ontology, and the demonstration of its practical use in the system.