Saturday, December 09, 2006

Process automation? Two words

When using BPM Suites, two concepts are important:
1) Straight Through Processing.
What is it? Well, basically it is "hands off". Let a trigger start a process, supplying sufficient data, let a process execution engine walk through all process steps, and execute services towards systems (rules, data, output). Let the BPMS collect data, so that monitoring can be done (real time). And possibly, based on business rules, let certain STP processes be presented at some stage to a human being, as a check (every random 10 out of 100 orders, we visually check, to make sure we are doing the right things)

2. Skill based distribution.
The new concept of workflow management: the right task, at the right time, for the right employee. Basically, based on process characteristics (type of process, product), employee properties (experience in certain process or products, or even at task level, workload, availability) and process instance/input data (product, complexity, priority, certain tresholds in terms of money), pick a set of employees to assign this task to.

Together - pure automated processing power.

How to design and tune it? Through business rules.

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