ABSTRACT
Business processes are all around us, independent of the market, organization, department or function – whether a telecom operator provid ing an ASDL connection, a bank processing a loan application, an insurance company handling a claim, or a local government organization processing a request for a new passport. It could be argued that any organization is the sum of its business processes. At least, the business process should be considered as a fundamental part of any organization’s infrastructure. In all the above examples, the volume of work and the complexity of the business process demand that organizations look for possible IT applications to sup port and automate their processes. Throughout the years, many companies have invested millions in all sorts of IT solutions. The marketing department has its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, used to inform the consumer of the organization’s products or services. The sales department has a Customer Relation Management (CRM) system to allow the company to up-and cross-sell, and finally the delivery department has an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to process the order and send an invoice. The reality with most organizations today is that these departments operate as independent silos (Figure 7.1).
