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resources needed, and the business rules to control the behavior of tasks
or processes.
Second, in the automation phase, the business processes designed
are translated into a format that can be understood by the underlying
process engine (also known as, workflow engine) and become opera-
tional in a BPM system (BPMS). Through the BPMS backbone, a
process in execution can invoke computer applications, command
organizational units, and consume resources to achieve the goal defined
in the previous design phase. Nowadays many BPMSs are based on
SOA infrastructure. Business processes are translated into BPEL [8]
and Web services are adopted as the communication interfaces among
processes, applications, and even organizational units.
The designed and later automated processes are monitored in the
monitoring phase. Usually in a BPMS, the status of running processes
and activities are traced, the performance indicators measured, and
anomalies reported. Besides the real-time aspect of business process
monitoring, the historical data collected in this phase can be used in
the subsequent improvement phase.
In the fourth phase, that is, improvement, the process model from the
design and automation phases, as well as the performance indicator
accumulated from the monitoring phase, are put together to provide a
retrospect to a process. In 1990s, business process reengineering (BPR)
[9,10] emerged. It states that managers need to fundamentally rethink
their processes and change them in a dramaticway so as to offer processes
with improved customer satisfaction and reduced operational cost. Later
when business processes were better managed, a less radical approach
compared to BPR, i.e., business process improvement (BPI), became
more appealing [11]. The improvement phase in a BPM life cycle
addresses the issue of process improvement by examining the process
performance indicators, identifying the bottleneck as well as other
potentials to improve, and providing guidance to the next iteration of
process design.
Business processes are the nexus of many aspects in enterprise
management, including quality management, rule management, enter-
prise resource planning, and business analytics. Here, we briefly discuss
these aspects and their relations to BPM. Please note that because
concepts such as quality management, enterprise planning, and business
analytics are by themselves complex and evolving, we do not mean to
make a comprehensive survey.
