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Solutions: BizPartner™ Overview
“BPM tools provide both an analysis of how processes are executed as well as a blueprint to ensure new initiatives are efficiently processed…they also aid in the implementation of package applications by easing re-engineering efforts, and by efficiently ‘documenting’ employee roles.” - Gartner Group
BizPartner™ is an integrated solution, built on the Microsoft .NET framework, which provides design, development, and deployment of applications that automate people intensive processes.
BizPartner™ orchestrates both complex people-to-system interactions, and intensive people-to-people relationships. BizPartner™ is the platform where these crucial relationships are optimized, monitored and controlled.
BizPartner™’s Process Modeler allows non-technical users to participate in process design and modification, while application developers and network administrators drive the application development, deployment, integration and adherence to standards. The benefits of this approach are twofold: the organization moves beyond pre-packaged solutions that claim “best practices” to instead reflect its particular strengths, and it ensures that applications stay closely aligned with business requirements.
BizPartner™’s flexibility enables process originators to routinely incorporate process feedback from within and beyond the enterprise with minimal interruption of process flow. Because of its capability for rapid application development, BizPartner™ allows continuous improvement of processes in accordance with changing business requirements.
For developers, BizPartner™ offers a technologically superior application interface. The BizPartner™ engine functionality is exposed as a .NET API that enables developers to customize the application output. The engine also includes a central web service that manages interactions with external systems. Data can be consumed directly through the web service or using BizPartner™'s remote thin client.
BizPartner™ is an extension of enterprise applications and acts as a fourth layer in enterprise architecture, with traditional data, application and presentation layers representing the other three. While the latter has become a set of commodities, BizPartner™ is the layer that defines organizational uniqueness. As a result, it allows organizations to derive the value they expected from data-centric existing systems. BizPartner™ manages relationships between those applications and across company boundaries by extending them with process flow, integration, and user interaction.
The BizPartner™ Solution Platform
The best and most comprehensive BizPartner™ platforms consist of the following five phases of implementation.
1) Process Design and Simulation
BizPartner™'s process modeler (BizPartner™ Process Publisher) is designed for business managers as well as business analysts and application developers. With minimal training, managers can graphically represent their ideal process, including initial interface requirements for data gathering, the definition of roles and responsibilities, and documentation of integration requirements. At any time during the process creation, the Process Publisher provides the manager with the capabilities of publishing the process to the application server for testing, initial deployment, or live process redefinition. The Process Publisher generates the necessary workflow application code based on the graphical map and deploys the output to the server. This allows the business manager to simulate their design for performance and resource availability, and refine as necessary until a satisfactory design is achieved.
BizPartner™ also provides a central repository for storing process models. The repository provides version control and process roll back capabilities. Using the engine's web service, managers can also pull down any version of a published process from any machine with the Process Publisher installed.
2) Process Development and Application Integration
Developers take the ideal model (created by managers or analysts) from the central repository and, using the Process Publisher, add the required application integration, enhanced interface designs and refined role definitions. Developers can create forms with the editor of their choice and graphically link the forms to the process model. BizPartner™ also provides developers the tools to establish connectivity with enterprise directories, links to databases, other BizPartner™ solutions, or third party applications, such as security systems or document repositories. Typical application development time ranges from a few days to a few weeks.
3) Process Deployment
BizPartner™ provides all the necessary tools for making process deployment a minimal effort. Processes are published to the BizPartner™ server with a single click of the mouse. Additional web interfaces are provided for extending processes that require more complicated interactions such as remote databases or data translation services.
4) User Interaction
In this functional phase, BizPartner™ applications manage process flow, user access and interaction, and third-party integrations. Other components provide services and integration with existing infrastructures such as web servers, databases, messaging systems, portals and other client access options.
5) Process Maintenance and Administration
Once deployed, BizPartner™ solutions generate information about the performance and content of the automated process through management reports and consoles. This instant feedback enables process adjustment according to changing environmental conditions. Administrative components allow for maintenance and housekeeping tasks such as adding users, re-assigning folders, or suspending or deleting processes.
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