Enterprise Resource Planning

MODULE 10 : Business Process Management Systems

Topics

· Different phases of Business Process Management (BPM)

· BPM Framework
· Business process management systems/suites (BPMS)
· BPM suites vs. Workflow applications
· Modules of BPMS
· Contribution of BPM to ERP and other enterprise systems

Different phases of Business Process Management (BPM)

BPM is a tool that allows users to design, build, and implement functions and processes that suit
their needs. As Microsoft Word is a tool to create and manage documents, BPM is a tool to
create and manage processes.

The different phases involved in BPM are:

· Discovery : Discovery involves capturing – manually or automatically – the business

processes (event flow, message flow and control flow) from the perspective of all participants,
including the computer systems that implement parts of the process, and any sub-processes that it
may make use of. Discovery develops a clear picture of how the business processes work
internally and externally. It synchronises understandings of systems and activities across the
enterprise, and brings customers, suppliers and partners into the process design activity.
Automated discovery of system logic will be a key feature of new business process management
systems.

• Design : Design means explicitly modelling, designing, simulating and redesigning the process
as the organisation learns what is possible. Business analysts need to restructure processes
quickly in response to competitive pressure or business opportunity. Process composition and
decomposition will be a key feature, as systems and business interfaces are reengineered
internally or with partners. The process repository must support reuse, generalisation and
specialisation of process elements. Some organisations will begin to develop repositories of
industry best practices and patterns.

• Deployment : Deployment means rolling out new processes to all the participants, including
people, applications and other processes. Good process management systems will make it easy to
deploy new processes, so change will be accomplished with little or no programming.
Application components will be integrated in advance, using a projection of the processes
ingrained in the application business logic. Processes will be mapped to standard public
interfaces between organisations. It will be possible to distribute processes at will across process

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participants and computing resources. Fine-grained change management and customisation of

processes will be not only possible but mandatory.

• Execution : Execution ensures that the new process is carried out by all participants – people,
other organisations, systems and other processes. It involves managing distributed transactions
using new and legacy systems across complex nested processes, and interweaving existing
applications as process components of larger processes. The execution state must be protected
from disturbance from underlying technologies or the behaviour of applications.

• Interaction : Interaction involves allowing humans to manage the interface between automated
and manual processes. For example, the workflow user interface is itself a process, lying
between the automated and manual domains. Process management requires the definition of
workflow processes and their interaction with both automated and manual activities. Systems
will include facilities for interacting with the workflow processes, for example to enter data as
quickly and reliably as possible, and to ascertain what workflow steps have been allocated to a
particular user. User interfaces to processes should as far as possible be generated automatically
from the process definitions and some vendors will extend the traditional interface with
expressive capabilities that support natural interactions with executing processes.

• Operating and maintaining : Operation and maintenance phase is particularly concerned with
intervening to resolve exceptions. Other management tasks include moving the boundary
between private implementation of the process in the enterprise and the public interface to
partners; upgrading processes on the fly at the level of sub-processes; adding, removing and
changing participants in the process; and re-allocating the process steps between business
entities.

• Optimisation : Optimization means process improvement, which should be an ongoing activity.

It closes the loop between process design and process maintenance. The domain of optimisation
will need to expand beyond the organisation’s walls. The system should automatically detect
bottlenecks, deadlocks and other inconsistencies in processes across whole extended enterprise –
that is everyone and everything involved in delivering value to the customer.

• Analysis : Analysis involves measurement of process performance and devising improvement

strategies. Analysis provides a wide-angle view of the time and resources consumed by
enterprise-wide processes. Analytical tools guide process improvement and deployment.

BPM framework

Business Process Management core competencies are focused on the following areas:
• Process Modeling – Analyzing, modeling, and documenting business processes from
existing IT systems or business stakeholders
• Process Simulation and Analysis – Utilizing the captured business model to simulate
processes, identify issues and gaps, and determine strategies for improvement
• Process Execution and Performance – Bringing your business process to life through

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There are three different kinds of BPM frameworks available in the market today – Horizontal,
Vertical and Full-service BPM suites.
Horizontal frameworks deal with design and development of business processes and are
generally focused on technology and reuse.

Vertical BPM frameworks focus on a specific set of coordinated tasks and have pre-built
templates that can be readily configured and deployed.

Full-service BPM suites have five basic components:

· Process discovery and project scoping
· Process modeling and design
· Business rules engine
· Workflow engine
· Simulation and testing

The following figure, Fig.1 gives a basic framework covering the different phases and activities
involved in business process management.

Fig. 1. BPM framework

Business process Improvement

Business Business Business Business Business Business Business

process process process process process process process
Discover Design Deployment Execution Operations Optimizatio Analysis
y n

Business Business
Automated process Manual process
Processes Interaction Processes Automation

Business
Workflow/ process
Collaboration Integration

Enterprise Application Web

Integration Integration

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Business process management systems/suites (BPMS)

BPM suites are integrated toolkits for building and managing tailored solutions based on a
company's unique business processes. Other enterprise applications typically consist of prebuilt
functionality, such as a human resource management application, with some capability to tailor
the base functionality through configuration options. This usually means that companies
implementing an enterprise application must choose between accepting the vendor's prebuilt
business process behavior or paying the vendor to make expensive modifications that make
upgrades costly or impossible. In contrast, BPM enables a company to cost-effectively and
quickly model and change its business processes to meet the specific needs of the business.

Most of the BPM suites consist of different elements including the elements of design and
monitoring. The rules engine and process registry indicate descriptions of the lessons learned
from the analysis and design that allows the system to automate the process. The combination of
the rules engine and registry allows a BPM suite to be a flexible tool that helps control and
manage the business processes. Rules should be easy to update and change to make certain that
any feedback from the monitoring tools can be used to further improve the business processes.
All this leads to a continuous cycle of evaluating and improving the organizational business.

BPM suites vs. Workflow applications

BPM goes beyond traditional workflow applications in two ways. First, most enterprise
application workflow is implemented through code. This means that programmers must develop
and maintain it. BPM uses graphical process modeling tools that enable business users and
business analysts—those most familiar with the process—to implement and manage the process
definition. Second, workflow of the typical enterprise application is generally limited to
document or task routing. BPM enhances workflow routing by providing an integrated capability
to include rich user interfaces, system integration, rule processing (the rules necessary to
determine which path you should take next in a process that has multiple paths

Modules of BPMS

BPM suites/systems (BPMS) must be able to gather, integrate, and manage various types of data
in order to efficiently manage processes. A modern BPM system is typically made up of these
modules:

Process modeling : The new business process is modeled and developed through the use of
graphical tools that define steps and events in the process. By using different drag and drop
modeling icons available from a palette, the business process can be outlined and reviewed.

Process connectors : BPM packages come with a library of software components that form the
links with the new business process and the various connect points of the process such as ERP or
Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). This could include existing processes and procedures
from existing process sources. The connectors are frequently based on web access to various
systems but connecters can be provided to legacy systems without web access.

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Process manager : One of the more significant impacts of a BPM system is the ability to manage
business processes and make changes easily and quickly. It is possible to simulate a process
using real data prior to actual use to identify potential problems and make changes. Measurement
of the performance of a business process to see frequency, cycle time, and process histories is
common. The process is viewed, tracked, measured, and changed, using the BPM system.
Changes are easily made to fit new business issues and modified versions of the process are used
elsewhere.

Process life cycle management provides the ability to trace the full development and history of
the process much like reviewing the revision levels on a product design. It is possible to use
instances of the process with variations to suit specific business needs. One example is a
shipping process that is tailored to fit individual customers.

Process system server : This is the core system component that provides the transactional
execution of the processes.

Functional management defines the new process outlining in detail what is to be changed
developing the “as is” and “to be” visions. The process is modeled by functional management
using graphic icons to identify the “to be” process steps. The modeled process is simulated to test
the assumptions and examine performance. Changes are made to suit and the process is
converted to a run environment.

Following figure, Fig.2 represents the working of a BPMS.

Fig.2 : working of a BPMS

Graphic Simulation
icons/symbols

IT Model and
Functional Revise Finished
Department Business
management Business
Review Process process

Modified
Modified
version
version

Contribution of BPM to ERP and other enterprise systems

BPM suites are integrated toolkits for building and managing tailored solutions based on a
company's unique business processes. Other enterprise applications typically consist of prebuilt

Prepared by Dr. NASINA JIGEESH

 Enterprise Resource Planning

functionality, such as a human resource management application, with some capability to tailor
the base functionality through configuration options. This usually means that companies
implementing an enterprise application must choose between accepting the vendor's prebuilt
business process behavior or paying the vendor to make expensive modifications that make
upgrades costly or impossible. In contrast, BPM enables a company to cost-effectively and
quickly model and change its business processes to meet the specific needs of the business.

BPM is often used to integrate multiple enterprise applications and various internal and external
users into a new process. Enterprise application integration products help you move data between
applications. Many BPM products provide real-time insight into the process operation. The
process-flow model of BPM allows management the ability not only to easily identify
bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the process, but also to more easily modify the process to
improve productivity.

Enterprises increasingly look for business agility, transparency and business process control.
Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) enable management of all the stages of business
process lifecycle: design, modeling, execution, monitoring and optimization.
As such, they bring a next step in business process automation: dealing with current demands for
business agility, cost reduction and cost flexibility. BPMS are tightly related to Business
ProcessModeling (BPM), for the design and modeling of business process, and to Service-
Oriented Architecture (SOA), as architectural patterns
and principles used to build the system.

Many organizations have been facing problems to integrate the existing ERP systems with other
enterprise systems like SCM, CRM, etc. To benefit from this situation, many middleware
vendors emerged to help solve some of the vexing system-to-system integration issues. While
integrating ERP systems with other enterprise systems, many problems arise by standing as the
hardest automation challenges - processes that changed and/or involved multiple subsystems;
external processes and systems beyond the control of organization; and perhaps most challenging
- people.

BPM can be thought of as an integration layer that automates business processes, includes legacy
and other systems, and coaches users through the new process. Just as a typical business process
(like introducing a new product) involves multiple functional areas, BPM integrates those areas
and the existing systems that support them.

Prepared by Dr. NASINA JIGEESH