Towards a Visual Analytics Framework for Handling Complex Business Processes

Organizing data that can come from anywhere in the complex business process in a variety of types is a challeng-ing task. To tackle the challenge, we introduce the concepts of virtual sensors and process events. In addition, a visual interface is presented in this paper to aid deploying the vir-tual sensors and analyzing process events information. The virtual sensors permit collection from the streams of data at any point in the process and transmission of the data in a form ready to be analyzed by the central analytics engine. Process events provide a uniform expression of data of dif-ferent types in a form that can be automatically prioritized and that is readily meaningful to the users. Through the visual interface, the user can place the virtual sensors, in-teract with and group the process events, and delve into the details of the process at any point. The visual interface pro-vides a multiview investigative environment for sensemak-ing and decisive action by the user. 1