Untitled Document
In this article, we explore how BPM and SOA are inseparable from one another.
The article details the phases involved in development of SOA-based business
processes. We look at how an SOA-based approach can help reduce costs and increase
reuse within the organization, thereby allowing enterprises to gain more from
less.
Chicken or egg?
Most of the enterprises have difficulty determining whether they should adopt
SOA first and then BPM or vice versa. While BPM is more about orchestrating
and consuming the services, SOA is about defining and creating those services
that are easy to use. Enterprises that initially adopt SOA face the challenge
of not knowing which services to create and risk creating a plethora of services
that seldom get consumed. On the contrary, enterprises that adopt BPM at the
outset end up creating business processes that are tightly coupled and difficult
to maintain.
It is not wrong to say that BPM and SOA adoption go hand in hand. While BPM
helps the business community to visualize, model and define the business processes,
SOA helps the IT community deliver services that are needed by those business
processes. The services could be extension of the existing application/interface
wrapped as web services.
Bullock-cart on Formula 1 track?
Adopting SOA and realizing the ROI on BPM needs an understanding of the following:
1. Culture
Enterprise culture forms an important aspect in integrating SOA and BPM.
If the enterprise has boundaries drawn between IT and business units, it makes
the integration even more difficult. What is a good starting point? A good way
to build partnership is to decide on a "Quick Win" and showcase the
business value. While SOA can be applied at the application level, it's the
enterprise level that brings about the true benefits of SOA adoption. Enterprises
should change their organization structure and roles/skills to align themselves
to SOA or BPM.
Since different organizations are involved, it is essential to come to a common
understanding on how to integrate SOA with BPM. For instance, Procure to Pay
(P2P) is a business process that involves business services like "Raise
Purchase Order." The functionality of the business service and the process
is defined by the business community. On the other hand, exception handling,
like reporting data inconsistencies, involves infrastructure services like "Raise
Data Error" and the functionality originating from the IT group.
1
Print this article
Email this article
Talk Back!
Write to Editor
