Merging Human, System-Centric Tools In BPM Is The Way Forward

In a conversation with Biztech2.com, Dhruv Singhal, Senior Director - Fusion Middleware Sales and Consulting, Oracle India talks about the inclusion of Social Computing in Oracle BPM Suite 11g and its enhanced set of features.

Oracle BPM Suite 11g has included social BPM interaction. Please shed more light on this.

The intent with social BPM interaction is to encourage collaboration. With this, we have made changes where people can collaborate to model a particular process.

In the past, the medium for such communication was e-mail. What we are offering is an up to date and structured way to be able to talk with each other for sharing information. Functionalities of the tool include, chat and the ability to create a project where information can be exchanged by a particular user group. This information can be modified as per the need, irrespective of where the member of the user group is located.

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For instance, a requirement by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), where inviting suggestions from a score of executives to decide on including a company for stock listing is required, then this tool can come in handy. Social networking tools in BPM can prove to be extremely handy in similar business processes.

Apart from the social Networking aspect, what makes Oracle BPM Suite 11g stand out?

This is the first time that Oracle has introduced a BPM tool that has packed human-centric and system-centric tools together. Earlier, the BPM tool had a very document-centric workflow with two separate tools for handling human and system-centric transactions.

A system-centric transaction means that there is no human intervention required to complete it except in certain cases, whereas a human-centric transaction involves active human intervention in terms of processing documents or any other purpose.

For example, a typical event of share purchase is a completely system-centric transaction where multiple accounts have to be credited and debited to complete the transaction. The respective authority will only come into play in case of any conditions not being met. However, opening a demat account is a human-centric transaction where the information of the potential account holder is fed into the system only after he submits certain required documents and they are ascertained as authentic by the required authorities.

Previous experiences convey that these two set of tools have to be merged. Previously, if the demat account holder was short of funds, he had to be dealt with on the human-centric tool after beginning on the system-centric part, which was a cumbersome process of moving from one tool to the other.

How has Oracle BPM Suite 11g been enhanced based on feedback and previous experience?

The merging of the customer and system-centric requirements in the Oracle BPM suite 11g tool is the result of feedback from customers that they would not like separate tools for different workflow requirements.

Secondly, there has been a consensus in the industry and among the end customers about following a common standard for BPM tools. Oracle suite 11g follows the BPMN 2.0 standard.

Thirdly, we have made arrangements in the tool that reduces the gap between the developers and business analysts. Earlier, the tool was modeled and developed in a different environment and the execution was in a separate environment. However, in 11g we have integrated both the platforms. It helps business analysts and developers because both of them are looking at the same platform.

Developers can make the required changes after getting necessary suggestions from the users and both parties can share the same window of the business process.