How is Savvion’s BPM Solution Different? (Part 2)A comprehensive Business Process Management platform provides an organization with the ability to collectively define their business processes, deploy those processes as applications accessible via the Web that are integrated with their existing software systems, and then provide managers with the visibility to monitor, analyze, control and improve the execution of those processes in real time. To be a comprehensive BPM platform a system must not only automate processes, it must: - Integrate with existing operational systems such as ERP and databases
- Integrate business processes with those of a company’s suppliers and partners
- Incorporate the business rules that guide a business
- Provide managers with the visibility into those automated processes to monitor operations in real time
- Offer managers the ability to deal with exceptions when they occur by changing business rules or entire processes to respond to business conditions in real time
BPM vs EAI
Many products on the market today purporting to be Business Process Management systems provide only basic process automation or workflow capabilities that route tasks between systems or people. There is a great deal more involved in critical business processes. And there is a significant gap in the capabilities of a basic EAI or workflow system and a comprehensive BPM system like Savvion BusinessManager. If you were to consider an enterprise as an interconnected set of layers, with the very top being the business strategy layer, and the bottom the IT infrastructure layer, you would begin to see how very different BPM is from EAI, Application Server and Workflow systems. The terms that make up the acronyms BPM ¬– Business, Process and Management – and EAI – Enterprise Application Integration – give a good indication for where they fit into the enterprise ‘stack’. BPM provides an organization with the ability to define its processes at a business strategy level, to automate those processes in a controlled application to execute on that strategy, and finally to provide business managers with the visibility to monitor and analyze the operation of those processes to improve their operation and to resolve business problems when they occur. EAI, on the other hand is a ‘middleware’ technology that provides the ‘plumbing’ to route data between applications (application integration). EAI operates at the technology layer of a business and is a set of programming tools used by an IT organization to reduce the amount of custom software that would otherwise need to be written. BPM addresses business issues and EAI addresses IT issues. As the top layer in the stack, BPM serves as the critical business productivity layer linked to the software systems, applications, middleware, databases, messaging technologies and the IT resources of large scaled business enterprises to execute those processes. Some applications such as ERP systems incorporate the middleware and databases in one layer. Others, like new Supply Chain Management (SCM) products, exist at the application layer and run on top of application servers and EAI/B2Bi services. It is very important for a BPM platform to allow processes that span multiple enterprises and use multiple existing software systems to be defined quickly and to be deployed rapidly. Otherwise, a BPM platform provides little value to no value as a workflow automation and management platform. Business is in a constant state of change, driven by internal and external activities and a business process management system must be able to respond to these changes. | |
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