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The “Enterprise” is an entity that is formed to serve a purpose of value to society via visions, goals, and strategies. Let us review a few forms of an Enterprise. 

•  Federal, state and local government agencies
•  Non-profit organizations
•  Business companies 

All of the above-mentioned enterprises share something in common; they all have internal components that govern and guide operations. These components [must] be constantly improved to maintain and enhance the life of an “Enterprise.” 

The three “primary” components that govern and guide operations of the Enterprise are: 

• Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP)
• Enterprise\Business Process Management (EPM or BPM)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 

Enterprise Architecture Plan 

The Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP) is derived from the vision, goals, and strategies of its creators. The EAP will present the five W’s and the How of Enterprise Architecture. The following are the five W’s and the How. 

• The What of the Enterprise (Data)
• The Where of the Enterprise (Network)
• The Who of the Enterprise (Organization)
• The When of the Enterprise (Schedule)
• The Why  of the Enterprise (Strategy)
• The How  of the Enterprise (Function) 

Enterprise Architectural Principles 

The specifics of enterprise architectural principles will depend on the vertical market the Enterprise is in, the long-term strategy of the Enterprise (to-be), and the short-term imperative goals of the Enterprise (as-is). The following is by no means an exhaustive list of specifics to the architectural principles. This short list is the core elements of the architectural principles. 

The EAP should encompass some, of if not all, of these enterprise architectural principles: 

1. 1. Organization-enabling
2. 2. Value-enabling
3. 3. Brand-name advancing
4. 4. Market-share expanding
5. 5. Processes-simplifying
6. 6. Processes-minimizing
7. 7. Optimized-continually
8. 8. Customer-centric
9. 8. Scalable
10. 10. Reconfigurable 

These principles along with the five W’s and the How will lay the foundation to the construction of the Enterprise. 

Enterprise\Business Process Management

The flow of tasks, objectives, events, and transactions through the Enterprise is governed, managed, and implemented by processes. Theses processes have to be governed and management in a way that all tasks, objectives, events, and transactions flow efficiently within and outside of the Enterprise to accomplish the set goals and strategies. 

Process management in its simplest form is defined as tasks and or events that receive stimulus inputs that in turn produces a predetermined outputs (even in the case of exceptions). 

This is accomplished by and through human and technology process interactions. 

Let us use the case of an admittance or discharge to the hospital from the emergency room. 

One may feel ill enough to go to the emergency care at the local hospital. Once the person enters the doors of the ER and the receptionist greets the person, two essential processes are initiated into action. 

They are: 

• Collect information about the illness (human-centric)
• Collect information about the patient (human-centric) 

The collected information is then pushed to a database (technology-centric) for use by other processes associated to the emergency protocol. Based upon the illness or symptoms of the patient, the next [technology-centric] process will determine which doctor to summon to the assigned examination room (human-centric and or technology-centric). The doctor will then interact with the patient to determine, which course of action to take which will lead to an admittance process or discharge process. Now this is a very short and simple snapshot of actions taken for someone who may visit the emergency room but I trust you have the gist of have these processes interact for this given case. 

Therefore, you can see how Enterprise\Business Process Management is the heart of the Enterprise functionality. Processes MUST be well defined and optimized to provide best performance for an organization. This in turn will grant the enterprise agility and increase successfulness of the desired goals and strategies. 

Customer Relationship Management 

As the BPM provides functionality to the Enterprise, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) methodology provides life to the Enterprise. Most enterprises operate in a product service-centric manner, which means they created product(s) and or service(s) without the thought of the customer in conducting business. 

A product service-centric enterprise is destined to demise for lack of customer integration. Here is a great quote that all members of Top management should hang on the wall:         

“Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.” 

-Peter Drucker 

A CRM solution allows the enterprise to transform into a “customer-centric” entity. CRM in its general definition is; processes and methodologies which an enterprise uses to communicate, track, and organize its interactions with its current and prospective customers. 

A well-implemented CRM solution will provide a ROI of increased customer loyalty and continuous growth of new customers. 

In Summary 

We have learned that the Enterprise is an entity that is formed to serve a purpose via visions, goals, and strategies. An Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP) is then created from theses visions, goals, and strategies. The EAP will capture and present the What, Where, Who, When, Why, and How of the Enterprise. 

Processes within an Enterprise are controlled through Enterprise\Business Process Management methodologies.  Processes are all tasks, objectives, events, and transactions that flow within and outside of the Enterprise. Process management in its simplest form is defined as tasks and events that receive stimulus inputs that in turn produces a predetermined outputs (even in the case of exceptions). 

The Customer Relationship Management methodology is the bridge that connects the Enterprise to the customer and the customer to the Enterprise. A CRM solution allows the Enterprise to transform into a “customer-centric” entity. CRM in its general definition is; processes and methodologies an Enterprise uses to communicate, track, and organize its interactions with its current and prospective customers.  

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for an evaluation of your enterprise! 

What a ‘Process’ Is

An enterprise can solve many problems by defining their operational concepts properly. Improper definitions will make for poor operations of the enterprise.

Every enterprise operates to achieve objectives. For example:

• Sales of goods and/or services
• Hiring of personnel
• The prototyping and design of new products
• Presentation of goods and/or services to market
• Collection of capital for goods and/or services sold

These are all ‘processes’ of an enterprise. The ‘processes’ have units of ‘activates’, ‘tasks’, and ‘events’ that embody the enterprise operations. These units provide certain outcomes of the ‘processes.’ The above objectives may have the following outcomes:

• Sales – to respond to a market demand
• Hiring – to obtain skilled personnel for operational elements of the enterprise
• Prototyping and Design – to create new products/services for changing markets
• Marketing – to capture market share for the enterprise good and/or services
• Finances – to ensure capital income from good and/or services

So the essentials of a ‘process’ are personnel and/or equipment that accomplish things. A ‘process’ outcome is people and/or equipment working together. In particular this is about collaborated ‘activities’, ‘tasks’, and ‘events’ of the enterprise. A ‘process’ has an outcome: which is intended to achieve the objectives of the enterprise.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of a ‘business process’:

A business process or business method is a collection of interrelated ‘tasks’, which accomplish a particular goal.

There are three types of business processes:

• Management processes, the processes that govern the operation of a system. Typical management processes include “Corporate Governance” and “Strategic Management”
• Operational processes, processes that constitute the core business and create the primary value stream. Typical operational processes are Purchasing, Manufacturing, Marketing, and Sales
• Supporting processes, which support the core processes. Examples include Accounting, Recruitment, and Technical support

A business process begins with a customer’s need and ends with a customer’s need fulfillment. Process oriented organizations break down the barriers of structural departments and try to avoid functional silos.

A business process can be decomposed into several sub-processes, which have their own attributes, but also contribute to achieving the goal of the super-process. The analysis of business processes typically includes the mapping of processes and sub-processes down to activity level.

Business Processes are designed to add value for the customer and should not include unnecessary activities. The outcome of a well-designed business process is increased effectiveness (value for the customer) and increased efficiency (less costs for the company).

Business Processes can be modeled through a large number of methods and techniques. For instance, the Business Process Modeling Notation is a Business Process Modeling technique that can be used for drawing business processes in a workflow.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your BPM consultation

The definition of a business process is defined by inputs, activities, tasks, relationships, status, and outputs to accomplish a defined objective. An example would consist of actions required to purchase raw materials [business value chain process] to produce plastic clothes hanger. The process might run as such:

1. A directive is given from the business planning process to locate plastic vendors for hanger production  – Input of process
2. Locate vendors of plastic for molding hanger – activity/task of process
3. Initiate purchase request for the business resource process – activity/task, and relationship of process
4. Update required procedures and close process – status update and output of process

A sound business processes architecture will defined a core set of reusable processes for the enterprise. Business knowledge and logic shall be consumed to create business process patterns (BPP) for the core processes.

Thus we can create four core processes that will fit any enterprise. They are as follows:       1. Value Chain
      2. Future Capabilities
      3. Planning
      4. Resources

I will now outline the coverage of theses processes. The Value Chain processes implements the production of good and services as defined by the enterprise vision. It handles all activities/tasks of customer request to satisfactory delivery. The Future Capabilities processes perform activities/tasks to produce new capabilities, product and/or services, and infrastructures to enhance the enterprise competitiveness.  The Planning processes define plans, projects, programs, and strategies for the enterprise growth. The Resources processes manage the resources required by the enterprise to function such as financial, human, infrastructure, and others.Within these core processes are three primary sub processes of functionality. They are:

      1. Execution
      2. Management
      3. Status

The Execution sub processes activities/tasks transform inputs into a “product(s) and/or service(s).”  The Management sub processes activities/tasks gathers requirements to direct Execution sub processes by means of plans, projects, programs, and resource assignments to produce the defined objectivities. The Status sub processes activities/tasks gather results and information from the Execution and Management sub processes to update and feedback status to related core processes.
As you can see this business process architecture may be applied to any enterprise thus enabling the enterprise to become more agile and competitive.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your BPM consultation.

SOA and BPM are converging to the point that the “integration suite” market category is obsolete and is being replaced by emerging “integration-centric business process management suite” (IC-BPMS), according to Forrester Research Inc.

The new category of software products focus on business process capabilities using the service-oriented approach to provide connectivity through Web services, as well as the ability to quickly build new composite applications to respond to changing market requirements, according to Forrester.

The products in the new IC-BPMS category are “not your Dad’s EAI,” Forrester analysts wrote in the report on the convergence titled, “The Forrester Wave: Integration-Centric Business Process Management Suites, Q4 2006 - IT View and Business View Tech Choice.” “The products in this category have lowered the barrier between integration and new application development — particularly, the development of composite applications that extend the mindset of the organization to complete, cross-functional business processes,” write the report’s authors, Forrester analysts Ken Vollmer and Henry Peyret. “IC-BPMS tools are uniquely capable of supporting model-driven, composite application development based on existing or captured business metadata stored in embedded, SOA-based registry/repositories. This approach supports high levels of system artifact reuse and can frequently result in dramatically reduced coding for new application functionality.”

As SOA emerged in the past five years, vendors of the original EAI and BPM products have moved away from their proprietary technology to embrace a standards-based approach, the Forrester analysts say. In the past three years, this trend has been accompanied by a move to embedding the enterprise service bus (ESB) and BPM capabilities into their integration products, the report states.

While IC-BPMS may be maturing, the vendors products are not at the end point of where this technology is going, as two new business process capabilities are likely to emerge in the coming year, said Vollmer.

“Wider implementation of business event management (BEM) and complex event processing (CEP) will need to be implemented,” he said. BEM and CEP are new technologies, which according to Vollmer extend business processing to a higher level of sophistication. Forrester defines BEM as “the process of capturing real-time business events from multiple sources and assigning them to the appropriate decision-maker for resolution based on the business context of the events.” The analyst firm defines CEP as technology that “automatically correlates events into patterns that may represent a threat or opportunity and orchestrates an appropriate response.”

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your SOA & BPM consultation.