Sunday, August 26, 2007

BPM Suite as a component in a logical architecture

In a number of assignments in the past, I was involved in defining a high level logical component architecture for organizations handling administrative processes. My thinking around this continuously develops (learning from mistakes ;-), so I decided to take a snapshot.
I am always interested in additional views....and still puzzling with roles of each component (for instance: who will have the knowledge to show a certain taskscreen, interfacing with the core admin platform, based on a certain task from a certain process? And what will trigger the output management platform - an event or a service call from the BPM engine)

Here is a diagram of the logical architecture:
Three notes:
- Components are rectangulars
- Arrows are showing dependence (e.g. knowledge of), not information flow.
- All arrows would use the integration component (call it ESB or SOA grid or message broker, or someone picking up the phone...)

A breakdown, by component:

Input management - component (consisting of people, technology, processes) responsible for receiving messages from outside the scope of this system: external parties, such as clients, other service providers etc. This would be multi-channel, e.g. able to serve incoming documents by regular mail, phone, email, internet, etc.

CEP - Complex Event Processing platform - component that is able to detect and interprete an incoming message (or other internal event), and, using business rules, translate it to an action. Most times this either means triggering a BPM engine to start a new process, or, in the event of a correlation, to restart/continue an existing process. Of course, the CEP Platform has its own datastore for events (logging) and provide services to ask what happened when, and why did it result in a certain action.
ECM Solution - used for storing all non-structured data, such as emails, documents, faxes, etc. It might also be used to store structured data (incoming XML), to have a complete overview of all incoming messages (incoming records management). It of course contains all index/meta data, and provide services to lookup, view, alter content.
BPM Engine - used for process coordination. Based on process templates, it can execute steps in a proces, including logistic decisions (if's, supported by decision or BRE platform). It can handle automated tasks (e.g. calling services), and it can handle manual tasks (assigning a task to a certain user/usergroup), using information from the workforce management system. It records various process execution statistics for business activity monitoring.

BAM Solution - used for process monitoring. Is able to analyse data in the BPM engine, and present it. Could have all types of additional services, around KPI calculation, SLA monitoring and alerts.
CRM system - used for customer information. Gives a complete oversight of the customer, in terms of profile, current products, processes/services running and done. Decoupled of core administration system (since you could have multiple core admin systems, but only one customer!).
Workforce system - used to supply BPM engine with appropriate information to be able to send tasks to the right user or usergroup (via pull or push). This could range from simple static user/usergroup assignment, to complex rule-driven skill/availability/workload driven assignments.
Core administration platform - this would be the core system for supporting the business of this organization. For instance: account administration for banking, insurance handling, claim handling, stock market transaction system, etc. The system allows functionality and data to be accessed through services, or through context driven screens (triggered by a certain task in a process).
PLM Platform (product life cycle management, or product configurator). A platform which allows for quick adaption of products, supported by the core platform. It supports definition of products, product components, data definitions, rules and calculations.
The Decision Platform has the responsibility to make decisions (or advice them), based on data and rules. This could be fully automated, or a more manual supporting service (think traffic light signaling, for instance, frequently done in credit scoring, where a employee can still decide to accept a loan-request, even though the signal is orange or red).
Security platform. Users, roles, etc. Should be implemented centrally, otherwise you end up with various platforms (usually as part of the other components), with less strength and much more synchronisation effort.
Presentation technology - this component is able to enable various users to interact with the components, and view data. Think of the regular inbox and task windows, document viewing, but also event monitoring, BAM and system admin.
Outputmanagement - this component is responsible for communication outward. Based on events (or a called service from the BPM engine, not sure yet!), it knows, using output rules, what to communicate, to whom, through what channel (paper, email, website, etc). It is able to format a message (email, pdf, Word file, etc) and send it directly or to a printing facility. Of course, output is also send to the ECM solution for storage.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Roeland!

Great to see you positioning CEP to initiate BPM actions and workflows.

Thanks for a nice summary.

Yours faithfully, Tim

www.thecepblog.com

James Taylor said...

Roeland
Nice post. I blogged about it over on my blog here. Enjoy
JT
The EDM blog
My ebizQ blog
Author of Smart (Enough) Systems