BEA to launch interactive business-process management tool

Computerworld - BEA Systems Inc. today will unveil plans to enter the market for people-based business process management for the first time, with a new version of a tool that will allow companies to build and manage collaborative business processes.
AquaLogic Interaction Process 1.5 is designed to extend to users through a portal the business process management (BPM) that BEA traditionally has focused on back-end systems, said Christine Wan, BEA's director of product marketing. The tool is built from software gained from the company's acquisition of Plumtree Software,
BEA's previous BPM efforts have focused on tools to allow companies to tie together business processes from existing back-end systems with Web services to build new composite applications, she said. This new release is designed to allow users to interact with processes, she added.
The software, formerly known as Plumtree Process Server, can attach collaboration documents to work items, map a business process to a collaboration project and allow users to participate in threaded discussions within a process. Potential use cases include expense approval, benefits administration, customer management, field service management, inventory management and sales cycle management, she added.
"It is the first time that BEA is addressing the human workflow side," she said. "Ultimately, it is those end users who are doing the work, who are struggling with paper-based processes and trying to tie together and aggregate data from the various back-end systems."
The new tool includes a process designer to allow business analysts to model and design a business process and to designate the roles for participants in a process. The designer also allows the user to simulate a business process as it would behave in production and allocate potential costs to each point of the process, Wan said.
The new software also includes a process execution engine that orchestrates the activities of users and their roles with the back-end system, and it notifies users when they have a task that needs to be performed.
Version 1.5 also integrates with BEA's AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration product so users can share documents with others who need to work with a process by checking documents in and out.
Andrew Reid, vice president of software development at Red Bank, N.J.-based home builder K. Hovnanian Homes, said his company plans to use the updated BEA tool to help it automate paper-based processes for employees to get supervisor approval to access certain applications or data that require security clearance.
The software will make the process of moving requests through supervisors and district managers more efficient, and it will allow