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ERP Event Log Preprocessing: Timestamps vs. Accounting Logic

  • Conference paper
Book cover Design Science at the Intersection of Physical and Virtual Design (DESRIST 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7939))

Abstract

Process mining has been gaining significant attention in academia and practice. A promising first step to apply process mining in the audit domain was taken with the mining of process instances from accounting data. However, the resulting process instances constitute graphs. Commonly, timestamp oriented event log formats require a sequential list of activities and do not support graph structures. Thus, event log based process mining techniques cannot readily be applied to accounting data. To close this gap, we present an algorithm that determines an activity sequence from accounting data. With this algorithm, mined process instance graphs can be decomposed in a way they fit into sequential event log formats. Event log based process mining techniques can then be used to construct process models. A case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the presented approach. Results reveal that the preprocessing of the event logs considerably improves the derived process models.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair for Information Systems, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Niels Mueller-Wickop & Martin Schultz

Authors
  1. Niels Mueller-Wickop
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  2. Martin Schultz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Fürst-Franz-Josef-Strasse 21, 9490, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

    Jan vom Brocke

  2. Department of Information and Service Economy, Aalto University, Chydenia (Runeberginkatu 22-24), P.O. Box 21220, 00076, Aalto, Finland

    Riitta Hekkala  & Matti Rossi  & 

  3. Department of Management Information Systems, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 430J McClelland Hall, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Sudha Ram

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Mueller-Wickop, N., Schultz, M. (2013). ERP Event Log Preprocessing: Timestamps vs. Accounting Logic. In: vom Brocke, J., Hekkala, R., Ram, S., Rossi, M. (eds) Design Science at the Intersection of Physical and Virtual Design. DESRIST 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7939. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38827-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38827-9_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-38826-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-38827-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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