BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT OPERATES WITHIN THE NEW ARCHITECTURE

Attention can now be turned to the advantages for the supply chain provided
by the combination of a new-style architecture with a BPMS at its heart. Change
is a fundamental driving force in business, and therefore agility is a mandatory
requirement of enterprise architecture. A BMPS streamlines internal and external
business processes, eliminates redundancies, and increases automation, providing
end-to-end process visibility, control, and accountability. This improvement
is not limited to the processes in a department or a business unit. Processes
that comply with the new standards can join with other similarly compliant
processes wherever they are � in other parts of a single enterprise or with value
chain partners across the whole supply network.
The new BMPS, embedded at the heart of a new architecture, support the
automation and continuous improvement of traditional processes such as mar-
keting and sales, human resources, finance, operations, supply chain, product
design, forecasting, logistics, and customer relationship management, as well
as:
_ Commonly used process design patterns such as CPFR, SCOR�, straight
through processing (STP), and Telemanagement Forum (TMF)
_ Industry standards such as XML, J2EE, and .net
_ Open standards like GPL, JCA, and BPML
Now the user of a process has a completely new experience. The computer
screen used to access the process is designed to show only those elements that
are needed to execute the process � even if the data being processed are in
several different applications. The steps in the process are presented precisely
the way the user finds them in the easiest manner. If she or he wants to change
the process for the better, the business user can do so, in the BPMS, usually
without having to involve the IT community at all. The major advantages
include:
_ Help for the business user, who knows, owns, and can upgrade the
process
_ Minimize the time in executing the process � no more logging on and
off different applications until the job is done
_ Extend the process across departmental and company boundaries, so the
environment for collaboration is set up, ready to go
Other questions can be adequately answered as well, like what�s in it for
IT. To start, the IT community can implement a new-style architecture and
provide functionality to the user more quickly than before. Applications are
implemented in their vanilla form, and processes and screens are developed
more quickly in the BPMS. Fewer user screens are needed because processes
are executed in fewer steps. Once the new architecture is up and running,
application upgrades can be made at the time that suits the IT community and
are totally transparent to the user community, so maintenance costs are reduced.