In order to adapt business systems to the operation mechanism of enterprises, it is necessary to deeply integrate multiple business systems, including data integration and process integration, and BPM(Business Process Management) came into being.
In the IT field, there is an unwritten law that I like to fool people with concepts. "2005 is the year of ERP", the slogan has just come out, and ERP manufacturers are surging overnight, spreading their advanced ideas everywhere. Anything that can get along with ERP is called ERP system, which directly leads to the failure of ERP in China. So is BPM. Because BPM, ERP, OA, workflow, EAI and other concepts are interrelated, many of them are inevitably routine and begin to publicize their own BPM concepts. If you are a developer who has never learned to fool, you will deeply understand BPM and really improve the quality of products, so that you will not be fooled by the market; If you are a user who has never learned anti-fraud skills and has a deep understanding of BPM, then you can really evaluate a good BPM product, so that you will not be fooled by developers.
There is no clear definition (clear meaning) on the question of "what is BPM" in many materials, because many concepts in the IT field have different meanings on different occasions and develop with time, so they can't be called definitions, but only descriptions, and even authoritative organizations, such as Gartner in the United States, use the word "description". The following is Gartner's summary of BPM description: "Rapid change is aggressive, and processes are embedded in participatory applications.
The development of BPM technology enables business managers to abstract process flows and rules from the underlying applications and infrastructure, and directly change them. "
The following is my understanding of this: it is unrealistic that the embedded processes in conventional programs need to be changed quickly. Managers need to design business processes, and they need to extract the logic of the process from the underlying code and change it directly.
Before understanding BPM, let's talk about a familiar term-business process.
Business process is a series of activities carried out by enterprises, governments and other organizations to achieve their business goals. These activities must be performed by two or more people or IT systems in series or in parallel, and the execution of these activities needs to meet certain rules and conditions. The following figure shows a report approval process.
In the above report approval process, first, relevant business personnel (participants) submit expense reports (implementation activities) to relevant leaders. After the approval of the leader, the system will automatically judge the total cost (business data carried by the process) according to the preset rules. When the total >: 5000 (rules or conditions) requires the approval of the second-level leader, it will be submitted to the document administrator for filing and preservation (the participant is the system). In the whole process, there are manual operations (called AgileWork for the time being), such as submitting expense report and leader's approval, and automatic operations (called AgilePart for the time being), such as approving or not, judging total value, saving documents, etc.
Based on the above understanding, BPM should be a method of business process management in enterprises, and the software system supporting its management is called BPMS (Business Process Management Suite). Therefore, BPM should be a method in enterprise management, and BPMS is a software system for establishing, executing, evaluating and managing enterprise business processes, which is what we often call a software platform. To sum up, BPM should embody the following characteristics:
(1) business process modeling: business people describe business processes with flowcharts from the business perspective, which is also a process design tool.
(2) Business process automation: according to the defined process, it is automatically executed in the BPM system, completely abandoning the traditional paper, and the process flow does not need manual intervention, so it is an intelligent BPM process engine.
(3) System integration: BPM is not only about human participation, but also some activities can be participated by IT systems. For example, in the leave process, it is necessary to judge whether the leave taker has an annual leave cycle in the HR system. This requires BPM to provide the function of executing automatic jobs, such as calling WebService and executing certain methods.
(4) Business process management: it can visually monitor the implementation of the process and handle unexpected situations in the process of process implementation, that is, provide real-time process monitoring.
(5) Business process optimization: statistical analysis of process implementation (including efficiency, cost, bottleneck and load). According to the statistical analysis results, the process is reformed and the implementation of the process is optimized, that is, the process simulation and analysis tools are provided.
Business process modeling is the foundation, business process automation and system integration are the means of realization, business process management is the process, and business process optimization is the goal. BPM is a collection of methodology and software systems. As a methodology, BPM has its own planning, implementation and management methods. Under the guidance of this method, the effective management of business process is realized through software system. From this perspective, BPM is a continuous process, and each link of this process will form a closed cycle, which caters to the process of enterprise growth. Therefore, BPMS will certainly play a very important role in enterprise information construction and improve the market competitiveness of enterprises.
2. BPM and workflow, EAI
First, let's look at BPM and workflow. When it comes to workflow, we naturally think of OA system.
In the early 1980s, with the production and popularization of a large number of PCs, a group of researchers at MIT first put forward the concept of office automation, and published an article in 198 1: Etudes: Integrated Document Processing System. The article mentioned the development of an integrated tool, including office workbench and personal interactive software system, to improve the work efficiency of office workers.