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Distinguish between Workflow and BPM

According to my original idea, this article should not have written about the difference between Workflow and BPM, but the world is always changing so fast. A few days ago, I wrote an article about workflow for the company's internal journals, and then many colleagues asked about the distinction between Workflow and BPM. So I had no choice but to write some of my own views in this respect, and an excerpt is as follows:

There is no strict conceptual distinction between Workflow and BPM.

First of all, let us recall that in the 1990s, "Process Reengineering" was born. Unfortunately, it was just a gust of wind at that time. Because the technology could not keep up with it, most of them only stayed on the concept of management. However, in the 1990s, workflow technology is booming, it can be said that a hundred schools of thought contend and prosper with each passing day.

About 2000, the application of workflow technology has been very mature, data integration, application integration is also developing rapidly. It also promotes the application requirements of business process management, integration, statistics, optimization and so on. So the concept of "BPM" was born. After that, we made our own BPM development platform ES2007 in 2001, starting from the simplest flow chart to today's founder Feihong platform (www.founderfix.com).

If Workflow is the application technology and solution born by early people to solve "office automation" and "process automation", then BPM is for "overall business analysis and integration". And an application technology and solution that can provide support for upper management decisions based on these analyses.

In fact, how to describe a business process "Business Process" has always been a controversial topic, so there are several standards. It is mainly BPMN and BPDM represented by XPDL,OASIS represented by WfMC and represented by BPEL,OMG.

Although the standard for describing process "Process" is not the same, it is almost the same to delineate the BPM Solution with the core of process definition, process execution, process monitoring, process analysis and process optimization, but the implementation technology is different.

BPM focuses on the simulation, definition, execution, analysis and management of business processes composed of independent applications. BPM is a superset of workflow, and the biggest difference is that different application activities cooperate with each other to provide strong integration capabilities.

Workflow management system is used to control the process from one person to another, from one application to another, so it is used to manage the information of workflow. Workflow management does not consider the optimization of business processes. BPM really controls the entire process to ensure that the workflow is implemented as planned.

BPM's solution includes a number of tools that can help business people easily create and document processes. A collaborative environment can be provided for IT personnel to transform business processes created by business people into executable code that integrates with databases, spreadsheets, and business rules. When the business process is very complex, one person is not enough, many different people have to work together, collaborative tools are necessary, it enables business people and IT personnel to collaborate.

BPM can help software developers integrate third-party applications. There are many different application systems in the enterprise. For example, ERP, PLM, financial software, etc. These systems can be integrated through the BPM platform. In addition, BPM is also used to deal with unexpected and special situations during the execution of the process, release the process, and version control the process. In addition, there is a tool that can extract a series of indicators from the process being implemented and generate various forms of reports, so that the owner of the process can manage the resources of the process and optimize the process.

In short, BPM can provide all the flow control functions and integrate with all kinds of application software, but workflow management can not achieve these functions.

1. Workflow (Workflow)

Do not care much about full-cycle process management in terms of simulation, definition, execution, and analysis. There is no built-in process management concept.

Limited scalability and reliability, usually only designed for departmental use and supported by limited platforms.

Lack of integration capabilities, usually limited to sending pictures or document attachments.

Usually only the specified application system can be run, but not the external host application system, such as Oracle, SAP and so on.

The function focuses on providing powerful e-form functions.

It is commonly used in the areas of non-task validation and revenue settlement.

2 、 BPM

An independent software platform for the management, simulation, execution, and analysis of business processes, commonly used in P2P, P2A and A2A (STP) task verification and revenue settlement processes.

Design of high testability, high number of transactions and large number of users.

With strong integration ability, business processes can be connected end to end with multiple software / hardware platforms through different application systems.

Main features provided

a. High visualization

b. Manageability

c. Flexibility

d. Modularization

e. Integration

f. rule-based

g. Continuous optimization

h. Embedded

Workflows focus on the sequence of specific applications that make up active components through predefined instruction sets, including automated processes (software-based) and manual activities (manual work).

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Author: linglongwan

Source: CSDN

Original: https://blog.csdn.net/linglongwan/article/details/6590853

Copyright notice: this article is the original article of the blogger, please attach a link to the blog article to reprint it!

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