Business processes are part of our daily life. Whether you order a coffee to go in your preferred coffee store or check in at the airport for your next business trip. During these activities you are part of a business process, triggering different events and providing input for specific steps.
The figure shows a simple description of a business process.
Typical Examples of Business Processes are:
- Check-in at the airport.
- Ordering a coffee.
- Delivery of spare parts.
- Holiday approval.
- Business trip approval.
A business process always has a start event (for example ordering a cup of coffee the coffee shop) and a goal (receiving a cup of coffee). The process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks, that produces a service or product for a certain customer. A Business Process can be divided into subprocesses.
Finally a business process consists of events (start / end events), decisions (gateways) and activities or tasks.
The figure, Key Process Meta Model Components, summarizes the components of a business process.
The following list explains further aspects of business processes:
- SAP Business Suite
The SAP Business Suite provides ready-to-run business processes for 24 industries. New features and support for new business processes are continuously added, with enhancement packages that deliver innovation without disruption.
- SAP Composition Environment
The SAP Composition Environment (CE) helps you to create flexible differentiating company-specific business processes. These are processes that SAP does not yet address with standard software.
SAP CE is a set of tools that gives companies the ability to compose new processes and extend core business processes. This means these composite processes are being built on top of the SAP Business Suite, they are basically extensions of the SAP Business Suite. These processes are typically agile and tend to change often.
Composite business processes can be human-centric or system-centric.
- System-Centric
System-centric processes focus on integrating application core processes with third party systems. Examples of system-centric include B2B cases or the integration of suppliers and customers (covered by SAP Process Integration).
The following points apply to Composite Business Processes that are realized as system-centric:
Integrated across business systems and services
Integrated with human-centric processes
Defined by technical specifications based on functional business requirements
- Human-Centric
In human-centric processes, the majority of the activities in such a business process are driven by human activities. This is also where SAP’s new offerings, SAP Business Process Management (BPM) and SAP Business Rules Management (BRM) fit in. Both offerings are an integral part of the SAP NetWeaver CE.
The following points apply to Composite Business Processes that are realized as human-centric:
Collaborative across business systems and organizations.
Need ad hoc extensions to manage pockets of flexibility.
Defined by functional business requirements.