TRENDS IN BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Huberts, Arjen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, arjen.huberts@vrisbi.nlPetten, Alexander van, Erasmus University Rotterdam, alexander.vanpetten@vrisbi.nl

Abstract

BPM is continuous changing and there are different trends within this management. A companythat has implemented BPM systems uses tools to design, enact, control and analyze business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sourceinformation. A company uses BPM to have a competitive advantage. BPM systems are constantlydeveloping. One of the last, and also one of the most exciting trends at this moment is the simultaneously implementation of SOA and BPM. An SOA makes it possible to design more flexibility in the design of processes and therefore it is more adaptive to external changes. BPM can be seen as a tool for an SOA because it gives an overview of the service specifications for the technical services that are used to create an SOA. So it is the actual business processesand not the services that determine the SOA design. Hence it would be a mistake for company to implement one without the other.Companies, who only use one of the two, miss the opportunity of enhancing their businessefficiency.

INTRODUCTION

1.1

Introduction

This paper is a result of the study project Economics & Informatics 2007/2008. The main themeof this study project is innovation. Within this research our focus will be on trends in BusinessProcess Management.Every company has certain goals and objectives. They all want to understand the processes thathave been used to reach their goals. Almost every company uses Business Process Managementto some extent to get a grip on their business processes.Companies cannot afford to make extra unnecessary costs anymore. At first the companieswanted to decrease their costs with getting a better view on their processes. But now BusinessProcess Management, BPM, focuses on the business goals and organizational structure.BPM has developed rapidly and is still developing. There are some different trends in BPM at themoment. The Business processes are more automated then a couple of years ago. The processesshift more towards the customer side. The gap between customer and service provider has become obscured. This is known as the personalization of BPM.Business Rule Management systems maintain a repository of business rules that represent the policies and procedures of an enterprise results. Therefore systems are faster in development,faster maintenance, clearer auditability, more reusable business logic, greater consistency and better alignment and understanding between business and IT. BRM will be used as a service toapplications and processes. BRM will therefore become a tool for BPM.

BPM using simulations will become more important. Simulations offer many opportunities. WithBPM you already know what happens within a process, you know the inputs and you know theoutputs. With this information it is possible to create a good simulation model. These models willhave an advantage on the operational systems.

A new trend is the implementation of BPM and SOA simultaneously. Some believe it will bring business process evolution into a new phase. As it will now be possible to flexibly automatedynamic processes.

1.2

Research question

The relationship between BPM and SOA is a new development and is at the moment a ‘hot’ topicwithin the BPM area. Many people have high expectations using these two methodssimultaneously. We will examine this trend in our paper. Our main research question is:

Why should a company implement BPM and SOA simultaneously?

With sub questions we will further discuss the man research questions. The sub questions willfocus on what the advantages are, what the disadvantages are and how is it used in practice at themoment.

Business Rules And Information Systems, Morgan A.

From the interview with W. van Aalst

1.3

Methodology

This paper is mostly based on the literature concerning BPM, SOA, and the relationship betweenBPM and SOA.For this study project we went to different companies in the Netherlands and in Ireland. Our goalwas to discover how different types of companies use BPM systems and what the latest trends arein this segment. Most of the companies we visited did not implement BPM into their systems.We also went to a symposium where we had an interview with a BPM expert Wil van der Aalst.He was able to tell us about some trends in BPM.This led us to scope our research into one trend and using literature to describe it. The trend wechose is the combination of service-oriented architecture and BPM, because it is a very popular topic now and there is a lot of information available on this trend.We will first explain what BPM and SOA are and afterwards we will discuss the integration between BPM and SOA.

BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

2.1

What is Business Process Management?

In the last 30 years companies have become more business process aware. A business process issimply the complete and dynamically coordinated set of activities and transactions that deliver value to the customers or market. The emphasis is upon how work is done within the company. A business process can be simple or complex, short-running or long-running, function-specific or industry-specific. It can be for a department, the entire enterprise or the whole value chain(supply chain management). A business process is typically difficult to make visible.

Companies understand the importance of business processes as it helps them with critical business goals such as cost efficiency, compliance, customer retention and length of service and production time.At first the processes were managed with workflow management and enterprise applicationintegration. With workflow management people were connected by automating inefficicientmanual processes within a single application. It was limited because it couldn’t connectapplications. The enterprise application integration could connect these applications by writinginformation between them so that the data was automatically synchronized. But enterpriseapplication integration couldn’t connect people, as it could not automate long running processesor interactive processes.

Business Process Management brought these two applications together. Business ProcessManagement, BPM, covers activities performed by organizations to manage and, if necessary, toimprove their business processes. This definition doesn’t explain how this is done. A better definition is that BPM is a management that combines a process centric and cross functionalapproach to how organizations achieve their business goals and improve their business goals. ABPM solution uses tools to design, enact, control and analyze business processes involvinghumans, organizations, applications, documents and other source information.

Business Process Management; The third wave

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H. Smith and P. Fingar

www.bpm-research.com