8.1 Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) technology is a framework for applications that can effectively track and orchestrate business processes. BPM solutions can automatically manage processes and process flow, yet also allow for manual intervention when necessary.

For example, BPM might coordinate the extraction of customer information from a database or manage a new customer information transaction. BPM could generate transactions in multiple related systems or support complete though processing automatically, without human intervention. BPM allows you to automate tasks involving information from multiple systems with rules to define the sequence in which the tasks are performed, as well as responsibilities, conditions and other aspects of the process. BPM not only allows a business process to be executed more efficiently, it also provides the tools to allow you to measure performance and identify opportunities for improvement. A benefit of BPM is that changes can be easily made in processes or flow by adding, removing or updating a process.

To best take advantage of BPM, the software application components of an Oracle process follow a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). These components are published as web services for reuse and ease of integration using BPEL.