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BPM is architectural foundation of the enterprise

It is neither hardware infrastructure nor PC software, but business processes that are the ultimate reflection of an organisation`s success.
By Sybille McCloghrie, Group Business Development Director of COSA.
Johannesburg, 01 Jun 2005

The market started talking about workflow more than a decade ago when various vendors released product offerings to cater for the functionality and processes incorporated in what was supposedly a new technology. Following the success of workflow technologies, more attention was paid to the need to automate business processes and the discipline of business process management (BPM) was born.

The concept of automating processes is far older than workflow, of course, but it did not become a topic of interest until workflow technologies helped management understand that with these applications IT had the ability to embed processes that had previously been only concepts on paper and in the minds of management. As such, BPM goes much further than workflow or the practice of simply automating business processes.

Effective BPM also helps companies analyse their business processes and understand what needs to happen - compared to what does happen - in the daily business rush. It also provides a clear indication of who does what and why, and can assist management in determining the most efficient processes needed to get a particular job or set of jobs done. BPM is a crucial aspect of all business plans and strategies - trying to restructure a company successfully without BPM is like a long-term investment in dot-com stocks.

In other words, BPM is a full reflection of all the processes an organisation follows in generating its products or services. And in a world of increasingly tough legal compliance regulations and shareholder scrutiny regarding corporate performance and behaviour, ensuring the processes in a company are transparent is vital.

A process of processes

Effective BPM also helps companies analyse their business processes and understand what needs to happen - compared to what does happen - in the daily business rush.

Sybille McCloghrie, Group Business Development Director, COSA.

To effectively understand and implement BPM, organisations need to take a careful look at their business processes. Many can be grouped into functional segments, such as the accounting process or the HR process. These are high-level functional "boxes" that are made up of combinations and groupings of other sub-processes. The processes in each box are uniquely linked to provide certain functionality, while the business is structured via a unique series of links between the boxes.

If an organisation`s management understands the business, it will be able to describe it with a BPM tool (as a series of processes) and this will become the backbone of the corporation`s architecture - you don`t get any more granular than breaking down high-level business processes into their simplest components.

An effective BPM tool links all the processes into one system, providing a single interface as well as the ability to integrate other processes with ease. It is the drive to achieve the common interface and management ability that led to the appearance of the smart enterprise suite (SES).

Gartner first identified the SES in 2002. It has since been redefined by different analysts and vendors, but, in simple terms, the SES is a collection of BPM and integration tools that allows organisations to automate their business processes and link the various functional boxes in a manner that best suits the company.

The SES is therefore the mechanism through which all processes that make up the foundational architecture of an organisation are glued together and made accessible from a single interface. Moreover, the SES also allows the organisation to add functionality as required and integrate it with existing solutions because the system is developed on open standards.

The core of a company is its business processes. It is logical therefore, that BPM will form the foundation for defining and maintaining the architectural backbone of the organisation though mechanisms such as the SES. Technology is merely the tool used to consolidate the processes into a manageable interface and to transform the theoretical architecture into real-world solutions.

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