One of the interesting BPM debates I’ve been following in the past months has been about the relevance of BPM technology standards such as BPMN and BPEL (with some protagonists claiming that BPEL isn’t powerful enough as a modelling or implementation language to express the richness of some processes; and others claiming that in fact it’s just fine – for example, see the online debate between Keith Swenson and Ismael Ghalimi.

Today’s economic pressures are resulting in an increasing scrutiny on IT budgets and how to achieve the best return on investment. IT project portfolios are constantly evaluated by the CIOs in light of new budgets and constraints. Clearly IT spending is on the fall, significant budgets cuts are on way, and new initiatives are impacted. BPM initiatives that had initially made their way into the portfolio are now being re-evaluated given the upfront capital cost of procuring Hardware and software.

As much as business drivers cannot be divorced from an effective and successful supply chain, the same is true for Business Process Management (BPM) that could help raise the bar for supply chain.

Supply chain in Organizations are very complex with numerous distribution types and channels, in house and outsourced factories, third party warehouses, logistics and suppliers with varied contracts, etc. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software enabling supply chains greatly increase the availability of current information.

In the transition from the Information Age to the Process Age, we need new thinking and methods to design products and services for the agile business environment. Processes demand a new paradigm that expects more from managing a business and creating solutions than the current information-oriented paradigm. We need methods that are fit for working with processes to replace our methods for working with information, as they aren’t built on the necessary concepts.

1. INTRODUCTION

 Over time, organizations have been increasing their interest in process management institutionalization. The growing complexity and scope of processes, and the frequency with which process modeling, improvement, deployment, integration and coordination occur require companies to structure in such a way as to manage their processes [2][5]. In such a context, organizations have sought concepts and guidelines towards structuring a process center of excellence [1][3].