Business Process Management and Integration

Abstract

Business companies are typically driven by underlying business processes, each referring to a set of activities that are coordinated to achieve a certain business goal. Although there are various definitions for business processes, three keywords have been widely used: tasks, flow, and business goal. A business process always implies an integration of sub-processes, or so-called tasks, each being fulfilled by individual business entities or role players. These tasks are usually organized in an activity flow that specifies a specific integration order for the tasks, either parallel or sequential, guarded by particular conditions and rules. Above all, all tasks and the activity flows serve the same business goal for the entire business process. Summarizing these key points, we define a business process as a structured and measurable set of activities that consume certain resources and are designed to produce the specified output for a particular business requirement.