Effect of Using Automated Auditing Tools on Detecting Compliance Failures in Unmanaged Processes

The effect of using automated auditing tools to detect compliance failures in unmanaged business processes is investigated. In the absence of a process execution engine, compliance of an unmanaged business process is tracked by using an auditing tool developed based on business provenance technology or employing auditors. Since budget constraints limit employing auditors to evaluate all process instances, a methodology is devised to use both expert opinion on a limited set of process instances and the results produced by fallible automated audit machines on all process instances. An improvement factor is defined based on the average number of non-compliant process instances detected and it is shown that the improvement depends on the prevalence of non-compliance in the process as well as the sensitivity and the specificity of the audit machine.