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BPM Architecture

Overview

A business process is any sequence of activities performed by an organisation to accomplish some commercial goal.

In any single business, many different processes will be used in order to achieve a range of goals. For example, fulfilling customer orders; bringing new product to market; planning equipment maintenance etc.

Typically, a business, and the computer application systems used to support the business, are organised into operational units (i.e. Accounts, Manufacturing etc.) that carry out activities within a process independently of each other. In the order fulfilment process, for example, a Distribution Centre (DC) may be used to receive, store and deliver product based on instructions from other units in the business, but it often will not have any direct view of the fulfilment process.

The inherent problem with this model is that there is no overall process visibility or control. At best, some insight can be gained by building complex interdependencies between different application systems; at worst the company will be blind to its own performance.

This problem becomes particularly significant when process performance is dependant upon a company's supply-chain partners. It becomes vital to build process control systems that can interconnect with numerous different participants to provide complete process visibility.

This is what ediTRACK does.

ediTRACK captures data from all the systems that are used throughout multiple organisations, including manual and ad-hoc applications (e.g. spreadsheets) and presents it in a process centric view.

ediTRACK makes processes visible, and exposes their dependencies and relationships. Its sophisticated yet conceptually simple approach allows business processes to be tracked automatically, with all the resulting management benefits.

How it works

A process model is a formal description of a business process. Usually constructed by a business analyst, the model identifies the various activities, participants and interfaces that are used in the process. A number of software packages can be used to aid the construction of the model and a variety of standards are emerging to support their interoperation: BPEL, XPDL etc.

The model can be used to describe, in great detail, how a particular operational procedure should be performed. The model provides a blueprint for the way a process should work.

But the model is only a model. It is a description of the ideal process, and can be a useful tool for optimisation, simulation, development of operational manuals etc, but it has no significant tangible benefit beyond its initial construction.

With ediTRACK, the process model is used to create a complete database of the actual process execution. So if a process model describes order fulfilment, then for every order, a record is created for everything that happens with the order.

The process database interfaces with legacy and third-party applications so every detail of a process is recorded. If an item changes (an order quantity for example), a version record is stored so that a complete audit trail is available throughout the process lifecycle and can be used as feedback to measure performance.

Within the database, a continuous monitoring system compares the process model with actual live processes and, where necessary, automatic alerts are raised if the process deviates from the model within predefined tolerances.

The database can be accessed using any standards compatible web-browser; so process-based applications can be deployed throughout a supply chain, capturing information from partners irrespective of their systems capability.

Application Architecture

The ediTRACK process execution engine allows a business analyst to build a working web application directly from a process model. Whenever a process is used the engine creates a process track, based on the model, and records the results of all the activities in the process database.

Changes in the process model are immediately reflected in the process track allowing applications to change rapidly, aligning closely to business objectives while maintaining a complete audit trail.

An extensive library of components is available to allow process models to be constructed from a stock range of activities.

Activities can also be built to order, so process models can be built to encompass everything from completion of a simple web form, to complex interactions with other systems.

The combination of process modelling and activity libraries allows ediTRACK applications to be implemented in a fraction of the time normally expected for business application systems.

In addition to process tracking, the core systems include built-in support for a wide range of tools, including:

• Document Management
• Process Dialog
• Dashboards
• Exception Management

The web-based interface is simple and intuitive, presenting an easy, accessible interface while also providing a rich and powerful tool for experienced users.

Using the ediTRACK application tool suite, the process is the application.

Software components

The ediTRACK software suite requires a Microsoft Windows .Net platform and is compatible with the Microsoft SQL-Server database system.

The software suite consists of four major components:

Liberty

Liberty is an IIS hosted application that provides the main user interface to the process database. To most users, Liberty will be presented as a web site that allows them to access the process database.

Liberty is compatible with the latest w3c standards and can be configured using cascading style sheets to reinforce a company's existing web brand.

Activity

Activity is a scheduling and integration application that continuously monitors the process database to generate alerts; process data feeds and perform housekeeping tasks.

Activity is at the heart of the ediTRACK business process execution engine, providing the main database interactivity for application integration.

Harmony

Harmony is an intuitive and interactive tool for designing business process models.

Harmony is designed to run on a laptop, allowing a business analyst to interactively construct process models with the target process audience.

Unity

Unity is ediTRACK's message exchange application, allowing business processes to be synchronised between multiple ediTRACK installations.