PROCESS MINING: A NEW TECHNIQUE FOR EDP-AUDITING?

Doorga, Prashand, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands,253594pd@student.eur.nlJanglie, Arun, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 265882aj@student.eur.nl

Abstract

Process mining is a new, growing discipline in the world of business and especially in the world of business process analysis. The goal of process mining is to extract an explicit process model from event logs recorded by an Enterprise Information System.The EDP-auditor is has to determine whether evaluated information systems are safeguarding assets, maintaining data integrity, and operating effectively and efficiently to achieve theorganization’s goals or objectives. In this paper the topic of process mining is put into the context of EDP-auditing to see whether it can be a helpful tool for the EDP-auditor in his work field. Key words: Process mining, EDP auditing

INTRODUCTION

Processes are the main engine of any organization. The business process is a fundamental conceptin any enterprise and to be able to evaluate these processes it is important to have an (schematic)overview of how the business processes (the workflows) within the enterprise are. Informationtechnology is being widely used in organizations nowadays. In the recent years WorkflowManagement Systems have offered generic modelling and enactment capabilities for structured business processes. Also other software such as ERP systems, CRM systems have made use of explicit process models. In these software systems still little attention has been paid to themonitoring and improvement of the business process models. Business Process Analysis is theterm used for evaluating the business processes to help an organization improve its processes andthus how it conducts its functions and activities. Business Activity Monitoring is one of theemerging areas in BPA. The goal of BAM tools is to use data logged by the information systemto diagnose the operational processes. Information systems in organizations make a great deal of transaction every single day. These transactions are all recorded in event logs and these event logsare at the basis of process mining. Process mining can be seen as a technology used to monitor the operation business processes. The goal of process mining is to extract information from eventlogs recorded by an information system and given such a log process mining tools will create a process model consistent with the observed dynamic behaviour. The rich data resources lyingaround in the transaction and workflow application software can be turned into vital knowledgeabout business operations.When computer technology came into accounting systems the way of storing, retrieving andcontrolling of data changed. The first use of a computerized accounting system was at GeneralElectric in 1954. During 1954 to the mid of 1960s, the audit profession was still doing its work with less usage of computer capacity. At this time only big mainframe computers were used and afew people had the skills and abilities for programming.After this period, this changed because the introduction of new, smaller and less expensivemachines the computer had more possibilities for an auditor to use. The use of computer in businesses increased very much and with it came the need of auditors to become familiar withEDP concepts in business. With the increasing usage of computer the rise of different types of accounting systems had raised.The industry realized that they needed to develop Audit software and this generalized auditsoftware (GAS) was developed. In 1968 the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants(AICPA) had the Big Eight accounting firms participate in the development of EDP auditing. Theresult of this that auditing and EDP was combined and that Auditing & EDP was released. [1]

1.1

Research

With process mining being a new, growing discipline the question is whether it can haveapplications in other areas of business than Business Process Management. For the field of EDP-auditing no research has been done on the topic of process mining as a tool for the EDP-auditor so far.To be able to research whether process mining can be of any use to the EDP-auditor the followingresearch question is formulated:

‘Are there EDP auditing applications for BPM process mining?’

To answer this question first a set of sub questions needed to be formulated and answered. Thesub questions are:

‘What is BPM process mining?’ ‘What types of analysis are possible with process mining?’ ‘What is EDP-auditing?’ ‘What is the work field of the EDP-auditor?’ ‘What is the relationship between EDP-auditing and process mining?’

This paper consists of chapters giving answers to these sub questions. With the knowledge gained by answering these sub questions an attempt is made to answer the main research question of this paper and also an attempt is made to give insight in whether process mining can be of any help tothe EDP-auditor.

PROCESS MINING

The technique of process mining can be used to retrieve information from the event logs whichhave data stored from information systems. The audit trails of workflow management system or the transaction logs of an ERP system can be used for this technique. Process mining can thenextract model which describe processes, organization and products. It can also be used to monitor deviations through the evaluation of the actual events occurred with the predefined models or the business rules.BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), BOM (Business Operations Management), BPI (BusinessProcess Intelligence), and data/workflow mining are all work fields closely related to Processmining. Unlike classical data mining techniques the focus is on processes and questions thattranscend the simple performance-related queries supported by tools [2].When having a look at the scope of process mining the figure 1 can help to clarify. Figure 1 givesan overview of the role of information systems and its interaction with the real world (e.g. business processes, organizations, people, machines), the role of models and its influence on thereal world, the effect models can have on information systems and the different types of analysisthat can be done by process mining technology.