bpm and bpel

7/29/2019 Bpm and Bpel

1/14

BPM & BPEL

Author : Arun Pareek

March 2010


2/14

Agenda

Overview of BPM discipline

Types of processes Standards, Tools & Roles

Overview of BPEL

Key Differences - BPM & BPEL Case study of Order-to-Cash process for

manufacturing industry like Dell

Conclusions & Recommendations

Discuss the application of these twotechnologies for the right business context andrequirements.


3/14

Business Process Management Is a discipline for management of atomic business processes

whose functional boundaries and human actors are well-defined. Hence, centres around documents, people and

processes.

High-level Activities in BPM

Process Definition Process Execution

Process Monitoring

Process Optimization


4/14

Type of Processes Document-centric: Processes revolve around approval,

routing and handling of documents.

People-centric: Processes revolve around human tasks,refer back or re-execution of tasks, parallel tasks, complexuser interactions (loops), escalations, etc. with quick turn-around times.

Process-centric: Processes revolve around a core businessfunction/process which has a well defined boundary(within a department like a Warehouse, Finance, etc).

System-centric: Processes revolve around the executionof functional workflows/processes in other systems, re-

execution of sub-processes, etc. while retaining control ofthe end-to-end business process at a macro level whenwork flows across systems (rather than just people)


5/14

Standard, Tools & Roles

Complemented by other standards on

Standardized data models for verticals (OAGIS, ebXML, RosettaNet)

Technology standards XML, SOA security, Messaging, etc(OASIS)

Activity Standard Tools Role

Process

Definition

BPMN

XPDL ebXML BPSS

AquaLogic Business Process

Modeller IDS-Scheer ARIS (Oracle BPA Suite)

WebSphere Business Process

Modeller

Business Analyst

Business ProcessArchitect

Process

Execution

Proprietary

BPEL

BPEL4People

WS-CDL

Wf-XML

AquaLogic BPM (earlier Fuego BPM)

Lombardi

PEGA BPM

TIBCO iProcess Suite

Business Process

Developer/Designer

BPEL Developer

Process

Monitoring

Proprietary right

now

Standard evolving

Oracle BAM

TIBCO BAM

PEGA BAM

Business stakeholders

Operations


6/14


7/14

Overview of BPEL BPEL is a popular standard for orchestration

of composite business processes that span

across systems that in turn run atomic &

functional sub-processes. Hence is system-

centric Currently the standard is BPEL 1.2 (Oracle

supports BPEL 1.1)

BPEL is XML based standard and is machine-readable

DELLCONFIDEN

TIAL7


8/14

Select Lowest Offer

10:00am

Handle Negative

Credit Exception

Credit Rating

start

end

BPEL Flow

?

United Loan Star Loan

Get Rating

Send Loan Application

Receive Loan Offer

03:00pm

Send Loan Application

Receive Loan Offer

Overview of BPEL


9/14

Key Differences - BPM & BPELCriteria BPM BPEL

Scope Intra-department functional

workflows with well definedboundaries

Inter-department, cross-system composite (end-

to-end) processes; sometimes acrossorganizational boundaries

Centricity or

Focus

Document-centric

People-centric

Process-centric

System-centric

Actors Actors are mostly Humans

Workflows are complex with the

actors confined to largely one

department and its functions.

Actors are mostly Systems

Human tasks in the processes are mostly

reserved for process/business exceptions to be

handled by process owners.

Standards Proprietary execution formats &

standards

Processes can be defined in BPMN

Open standard

BPEL engines do have proprietary extensions

Processes can be defined in BPMN and exported

to BPEL format

Structure Fairly un-structured Structured

Transaction

Volume

Cannot handle large volumes

Typically support large number ofusers

Can handle large transaction processing volumes

(millions of processes per day)


10/14

Case StudyA Typical End-to-End O2C Process

In the real world,

most of these

systems will be

from different

vendors.

These core

functional systems

will have their own

proprietaryworkflow tools

Most of these core

functional systems

are designed from

the function and

user point of view.

BPM cannotorchestrate these

E2E and also

provide visibility.

Process Owner

does not have

visibility of the E2E

process.

Order-to-Cash Process

Inventory

Management

(WMS)

Finance

Order

M

anagement

Shipping

Production

Management

CustomerRelationship

Management(CRM)

Enquiry & Quote

Generate

Sales Order

Make

Payment

Soft-copy

Receipt

Check in

Warehouse

Create Work Order

Transfer from

Storage to

Shipping Area

Y

N

Order Booking

Load

&

Ship

Generate AR

Invoice

Inventory

Exists? Inventory

Update

Enquire &

Request

Quote

Produce

Product

Increase

Inventory

Shipping Invoicing

Generate

Pick

Ticket

Generate

Packing

Slip

Ship

Confirm

Raise

Invoicing

Request

Generate

AR ReceiptInvoice

Allocation

Reduce

Inventory

Plan Dispatch

Quote

Accepted?Order Entry

Y

Receipt & AllocationOrder Processing

Receive

Invoice

CrossSy

stemI

nteractions


11/14

Order-to-Cash Process

Inventory

Management

(WMS)

Finance

Order

M

anagement

Shipping

Production

Management

CustomerRelationship

Management(CRM)

Enquiry & Quote

Generate

Sales Order

Make

Payment

Soft-copy

Receipt

Check in

Warehouse

Create Work Order

Transfer from

Storage to

Shipping Area

Y

N

Order Booking

Load

&

Ship

Generate AR

Invoice

Inventory

Exists? Inventory

Update

Enquire &

Request

Quote

Produce

Product

Increase

Inventory

Shipping Invoicing

Generate

Pick

Ticket

Generate

Packing

Slip

Ship

Confirm

Raise

Invoicing

Request

Generate

AR ReceiptInvoice

Allocation

Receive

Invoice

Reduce

Inventory

Plan Dispatch

Quote

Accepted?Order Entry

Y

Receipt & AllocationOrder Processing

Pick A BPM

Candidate

Most of the atomicand departmental

functions/processes

are well-defined.

If implemented as

part of a packaged

application, the

choice of using BPMfor such processes

wont be there.

If implemented from

scratch, such

processes are good

BPM candidates.



12/14

Inventory count and adjustment

Inventory Update in WMS

WMS

Manager

WMS

Clerk

EventWMS Receipt &

Put Away or

Pick Ticket & Dispatch

Create Physical

InventoryDocument

Physical

Inventory

Document

Physical

Count

Enter Count in

WMS

Review

Inventory Count

End Process

Accept

Count? RecountNo

Yes

In the real world,

such functions

involve a lot of

human tasks that

have to be done

manually.

In the real world,

these systems are

packagedapplications with

their own workflows

which may or may

not be in BPM tools.

These core

functional systems

are designed fromthe Functional User

point of view.



13/14

Conclusions BPM is a discipline for management of atomic business process whose

functional boundaries are well-defined rather than management of long-

running end-to-end business processes that fulfil an end-to-end businessprocess that spans across multiple disparate systems.

BPEL is a sub-set of the Business Process Management discipline

BPEL bridges the gap between BPM and SOA. BPEL does what BPM

cannot do on its own i.e. execute/orchestrate processes across

department/functional systems in a standard way while at the same time

providing Visibility & Control to the Business Process Owner.

BPEL is not good at handling complex workflows that involve a lot of

human tasks (work-items) and which demand quick turn-around times.

EAI can fill in the cross-system workflow gap to some extent but it does

not give visibility and control to the Process Owners.

BPM tools are not suitable for high-volume transaction processing while

most BPEL tools are.


14/14

Recommendations Use BPM for inter-departmental function workflows/processes that are

centred around human tasks and documents

Orchestrate end-to-end, cross-system processes using a BPEL engine.

In a green-field project, if all functional workflows are going to be built

from scratch, then BPM can be used for process management and

process-integration instead of BPEL but if more than one packaged

application/system are going to be used in the project, then using BPEL

along with BPM is a better option.

Use BAM in tandem with BPM and BPEL for end-to-end process visibility.

bpm and bpel

Documents