Business Modelling. Languages and Tools

The paper provides an overview of business modelling techniques both at language and tool level. The basic elements of some most popular business modelling languages are briefly outlined, including the GRAPES-BM language developed by IMCS, University of Latvia. The paper presents also the basic principles, how metamodel based generic modelling techniques can be used for supporting several modelling notations simultaneously. 1 What is Business Modelling There exist two types of mathematical modelling: − the standard (continuous) one what ECMI is typically about and which is based on various sorts of mathematical equations − the discrete modelling based on diagramming techniques with mathematical logics and set theory as deep foundations. Discrete models are sets of related diagrams with various constraints on their structure, representing some relevant aspects of the system to be modelled. The degree of model formality may be different from semiformal to completely formal. The discrete modelling itself may be of different types, the most popular ones are: − object modelling (modelling of static structure of systems) − business process modelling − data modelling − concurrent system modelling by means of sets of finite state machines. This paper deals mainly with business process modelling (or Business Modelling (BM) for short) a set of methods for semiformal description of business processes. Business modelling appeared as a discipline in early nineties and suddenly got a limelight after the appearance of the well-known book [1] by M. Hammer and J.Champy, the "inventors" of BPR (Business Process Reengineering) in 1993. Though the book has nothing to do with modelling in the exact sense, it stimulated the interest of corporate managers to look for BM methodologies and tools as a support for this "silver bullet" BPR. Namely then the idea of building a pair of business models those of "as-is" and "to-be" appeared, with the hope of finding the optimal "to-be" model in the end. But BPR is not the sole goal of BM, there are more: − to understand the behaviour of large business systems (e.g., by managers) − to specify a business system as part of the requirements specification for a software system supporting it.