Papers and reports:
1999 Business Process and WorkFlow Conference Brussels, Conference report
The papers presented fell into 2 categories:
1) overviews on the workflow market, its technologies including e-commerce
and standards (WfMC and EAN.UCC) and
2) applications of the above. The latter covered very different types
of organisations like automotive, aerospace, telecommunication, banks,
process industries (oil and brewing), European Commission and last but
not least consultants. Applications are mainly on administrative processes
like order processing, finance and maintenance support.
Representing a very advanced approach in business process modelling, the paper by Bombardier Aerospace, Canada on their business process modelling application was one of the highlights of the conference. Bombardier appears to be one of the few organisations using business process models for process monitoring and decision support. They have linked the FirstSTEP business process model to Lotos Notes. Lotos Notes acts as a workflow application which is based on the FirstSTEP model. Operational data collected in Lotos Notes are transferred back into FirstSTEP for process analysis. The conference was attended by an international audience of about 150 people with IT background mostly from industry. The conference was organised by the Giga Information Group and papers were mostly on e-commerce and workflow applications. Paper sessions alternated with Technology Test Labs in which 6 software vendors presented relevant solutions. Vendors present: Hewlett Packard, Interfacing Technology, ITT (In Tactical Technologies), Microsoft/Compaq, ProActivity, Staffware.
HP presented its Changengine, a software solution which is aimed on e-commerce applications. It allows to model the processes supporting e-commerce and connects those processes to the order web page. The process model is rather simple identifying process activities, the control flow, resources and responsibilities. Negotiations with other model providers are underway. ProActivity is a US based company represented in Belgium and The Netherlands. It allows process model creation from textual input, with support for model consistency. A graphical representation of the model is created by the tool. The software is linked to workflow engines for real life implementation. Interfacing Technology presented their Tool Suite with FirstSTEP Designer, Viewer, Charter for Visio and Unicenter TNG and its range of applications in enterprise modelling.