Services are the building blocks of SOA, and like building blocks of a house or a building, the quality will define the value of the finished product. In this case, the SOA itself. Thus, spending...

Open BPM assumes there are no boundaries in creating, adopting, and improving innovative business processes. With an Open BPM strategy, business processes can now be designed and executed with more flexibility, using standards and best-of-breed functionality to deliver a tailored end-to-end process that is more closely aligned with corporate objectives. A successful Open BPM initiative supports the Business Process Lifecycle. Business Process Strategy identifies processes as well as the necessary innovation and forms the basis for the design which delivers the blueprint for the implementation and execution of business processes. Then the process controlling enables the measurement and performance management of the business processes. The results of the controlling phase serve as input for continuously improving and optimizing business processes.

In line with the process strategy, enterprise architecture sets the standard for consistent holistic process design and serves as a precondition for successful execution. Thus, they form the basis for the use of next generation process automation environments like Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Enterprise architectures are key to enforce business process governance rules and guidelines. They ensure an efficient and effective process design which aligns with the strategic objectives.

While SOA is a hot topic, companies are still determining what this really means for the enterprise. Most SOA discussions have focused on the technical aspects versus the role of technology to support business processes. Business processes blueprints can be improved by using special process design and analysis tools, but there are often significant gaps when implementing the business processes due to a rigid IT landscape. Successful SOA strategies define and manage how technical services for process automation can be derived from business processes. The result is higher flexibility in process automation at a lower level of total cost of ownership (TCO) Open BPM together with SOA represents the new paradigm that allows organizations to leverage information technology to be more agile, nimble, and flexible. SOA has evolved into the key concept for execution and integration of process design through open standards like BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).

To ensure that all facets of Open BPM are working for an organization, process monitoring and corporate performance management become key success factors that are integrated with specification and overall execution. Process performance management ensures that key performance indicators (KPIs) are met and a continuous process improvement is in place. It’s supported by next generation process controlling applications based on process mining techniques. Process Performance Management makes Open BPM a continuous, on-going, dynamic initiative.

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