Today, with the tide of Enterprise Informatization, most enterprises, especially those with a certain scale, have carried out informatization construction, such as the sales system, SCM, MRP, financial system,
Office automation OA system. However, such systems often
LimitedTo solve specific internal transaction problems of an enterprise, it is oriented to internal functions of the enterprise, rather than the market-oriented and customer-oriented systems. Its development mode is usually to hard-code the business process to the overall structure of the application system, each business flow modification may cause a significant change in the program structure. Its rigid architecture increases system complexity and hinders system flexibility. For end users, changes to business processes have severely affected the market response speed and lost market opportunities. However, for system integrators and software developers, business processes are constantly changing, this makes it even more difficult to develop and maintain systems. To survive in such a competitive and changing external environment, enterprises must constantly adjust and optimize various business processes and reconstruct the processes as needed. We urgently need a software tool that supports business process automation (BPA) to meet the needs of enterprise process management.
Workflow Management SystemIt is born in line with this demand. It is a basic middleware platform for workflow modeling, execution, monitoring, analysis, measurement, and optimization. As a key infrastructure for process management and workflow implementation, the workflow management system must have the following key features: [J1]: A visual process design tool to accelerate process modeling; support process logic structures such as serial, parallel, branch, confluence, loop, synchronization, and sub-flow to meet the needs of various complex process modeling; ø electronic form design tools to quickly display activity content; the distributed workflow engine enables multi-process collaboration and automation across departments, enterprises, and regions. The powerful application integration service, seamless integration and interoperability between workflows and existing applications of enterprises with "Information silos"; Graphical process monitoring tools, real-time and dynamic monitoring and tracking of process execution status and related data.
At present, the enterprise information management system has been widely recognized in the business world since its initial file system-based application and office automation OA system application to its current database-based application, many enterprises have developed their own enterprise application systems based on database management systems, and many professional companies have developed a series of Mature database application systems for the majority of users, such as ERP, SCM, CRM, PDM, and CPC. Although these database application systems have been applied to some extent, there are few successful cases for large-scale management systems such as ERP systems. Analyzing these failed cases, in addition to the limitation of Enterprise computer application level and management level, these computer application system design has inherent defects, it also directly causes the failure of these database-based information system applications. The information management system is a process of collecting, storing, processing, transferring, and releasing information. The database management system is suitable for information collection, storage, and retrieval, A large amount of work in a complex information management system is the process of information processing, transfer and publishing. The database management system cannot process, transfer, and publish information. To solve the preceding problems, the application system is not only based on the database [J2] management system, but also an integrated development platform consisting of DBMS, workflow management system [J3], and general report system. DBMS is responsible for information storage and retrieval, workflow management system is responsible for information flow, general report system is responsible for displaying and collecting information in the form of information publishing, and application system is responsible for information processing, this modular architecture separates information collection, storage, processing, transfer, and publishing, ensuring system reliability and system flexibility and scalability. The most direct purpose of the workflow management system is to combine the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) technology with the Business Process Reengineering (Business Process Reengineering) technology to manage various processes of the enterprise and automate the process of the enterprise. Re-think and thoroughly design the core processes in the enterprise process, this allows dramatic improvements in the existing key aspects of measuring enterprise performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed. Many enterprises have reorganized their processes and achieved great results. For example, through the implementation of process restructuring by IBM credit companies, the period for providing financing services to customers was reduced by 90% (from the original 7 days to 4 hours); Kodak implemented a process restructuring for new product development, as a result, the development time required for a 35mm focal length one-time camera from conceptual design to production was reduced by 50%, from 38 weeks to 19 weeks. The workflow management system provides a series of software tools for automatic process execution, statistical analysis, real-time instance monitoring and tracking, and other functions. On the one hand, it realizes automatic process on the computer, this greatly shortens the life cycle of the process and improves the work and production efficiency of the enterprise. On the other hand, it also allows users to easily analyze the business process of the enterprise and identify unreasonable points, quickly describe the process reengineering solution. Therefore, workflow is the implementation and extension of the Business Process Reconstruction Technology. But OA and other systems do not reach this point. Because the process of enterprise informatization is a step-by-step process, many old application systems exist in enterprises. In addition, enterprises often choose their own application systems based on their own needs. The differences between application systems between enterprises are even greater. Therefore, effective information exchange cannot be conducted between internal and inter-enterprise application systems, there are many "information islands" between the enterprise and the Enterprise ". To eliminate islands, many information integration frameworks have been proposed, such as XML-based Information Integration Frameworks and step-based engineering information integration frameworks, they are mostly limited to the definition of static information exchange formats, but there are few considerations for the mutual collaboration between application systems to complete a task, in this case, multiple application systems are required to work collaboratively according to the structured or unstructured process, activate different application systems at different times of the task, and pass corresponding parameters to the application system,
The workflow management system meets this requirement.. The workflow management system can activate the corresponding application system at the appropriate time according to the definition of the process, pass the corresponding parameters to the application system, and obtain the processing result of the application system, transfer it to the next application to integrate the application system. [J1] Lotus Notes does not have these key features. [J2] Notes is a non-relational database. [J3] workflow systems are based on relational databases, such as SQL and Oracle.
