Automation and Integration with Business Processes

Business process modeling supports your end-to-end integration goals by enabling you to link vital systems and processes using services, adapters and human interaction points that you need to achieve your business objectives. You can embed conditions within the process flows.

Any time you can replace manual intervention points in your business processes with automated capabilities, you save money. Classic examples of intervention points include exception management such as escalation and transaction reconciliation, error handling, and content-based routing.

The following figure shows a Sterling B2B Integrator integration engine coordinating communication of data to trading partners. Business processes related to this scenario might involve:

  • Transforming data (using services) from different applications so that it can be communicated to other systems.
  • Moving and communicating data between different systems external to Sterling B2B Integrator, using adapters.
  • Communicating data to trading partners, using adapters.

Examples

The following table provides examples of how business process models can help you to automate and integrate your activities:

Automating
  • Route messages according to their content.
  • Configure mailbox store-and-forward services.
  • Support real-time request and reply processing within a process.
  • Build on-fault processing steps into your process models
  • Send alerts and notifications automatically within a process.
Integrating
  • Incorporate messaging, human interaction, and file and database activities (a set of services, called human interaction services, enable people to interact with a business process). For instance, a worker can use a Web browser to send a message, as a step in a business process. When the message is sent, the business process continues. The process could be configured to both send the message and store a record in a database.
  • Set up self-service access to information across trading partner systems.
  • Integrate with SNMP network management, LDAP directories, and Web services.
  • Integrate with diverse operating and ERP systems.
Automating and Integrating
  • Incorporate XML, EDI, and proprietary file translation, transformation and filtering.
  • Facilitate e-business with your trading partners for a vast assortment of transactions, including EDI, e-mail, data publishing, and reliable bulk file management.
  • Automate the integration of batch, synchronous, and asynchronous applications. For instance, you can integrate a legacy inventory management system with your front office Web-based order processing and accounts receivable invoicing systems.
  • Support multi-party collaboration work processes for the entire document life cycle. For instance, you can route data through a series of review-and-approval steps, allowing data modifications to be made by the reviewing parties along the way, and the reviewers could be using disparate systems.
  • Synchronize data in different internal applications or between your organization and your trading partners.