Structured Communication - Approaching S-BPM with Microsoft Technologies

Many enacted business processes in the field use (more or less intense) communication to forward work to the next participant in an activity chain. Communication can be oral (personal, phone) or technically supported (e-mail, phone). It can be unstructured using natural language—typically text or spoken word—or structured using formal language (business objects) typically stored in systems. Based on decades of research in the domain of the social sciences, we know that an understanding of how organizations work are based on communication and language. Therefore any technology to support the execution of business processes should support communication between process participants. This is the concept of S-BPM. Here, we present the results of work in the field to develop a platform to model and execute business processes as interaction between actors. As process models predefine work we call this way of interaction structured communication (using standard e-mail exchange). To enable also cross-company communication (process orchestrations) we technically implemented the platform as a so-called multi-enterprise business process platform (ME-BPP) using cloud technology. The contribution uses a real-world case to demonstrate the need for a communication-based view on business processes. The case reflects the situation typically for large-scale international companies with world-wide activities and with focus on processes related to order fulfillment, including manufacturing. Further on, an IT architecture to support the enactment of such distributed processes is discussed. The contribution is intended for practitioners with some IT background and/or interests.