Improving Business Processes Through BPM Techniques: Experiences From A Real Case Study

A company can reach its business goals in an efficient and effective manner only if people and other enterprise resources, such as the information system, play together well. Business processes and their management are important concepts to facilitating this effective collaboration, and to help the company to promptly react to changing market conditions. However, if the underlying IT systems, that have to support the business, cannot evolve in a timely or cost-effective enough way, the business itself may get stuck. Service oriented architectures can offer flexibility as business needs change. Thus, a combined BPM-SOA approach provides for the ability to have real business policy statements automatically translating into outcomes delivered by IT systems. In this paper we present a real case study where these techniques have been exploited to improve and reorganize the business processes of a private company. The company is going through a reorganization due to changes in the local regulations, so business flexibility is a crucial point for reducing costs and sustaining the competitiveness in the market.