Drupal BPM

This working group is intended to attract visionaries, end users, process evangelists and any one else interested in promoting BPM as an approach to automating cross-functional processes that support business operations on Drupal.

Please join and help move Drupal BPM forward! With Drupal 8 being all about Web Services, who's going to orchestrate them? It's time to focus on the process :)

ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.... all talk about automating and supporting operational processes across entire organisations and external parties. SCM (Supply Chain Management) evolved in the 1980's and was replaced by CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in the 1990's. In the early 2000's Gartner reported that ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) would probably supersede CRM rather than replace it, and CRM is now commonly seen as being addressed within the bounds of ERP.

These [methodologies / initiatives / market trends / concepts] all tend to speak about 'busting silos' and providing a single view of an organisation, however they do not address the truly generic opportunities which are raised by BPM (Business Process Management).

BPM strives to see an organisation from the 'process perspective' and use the 'process paradigm' to manage their operations and support constant change (Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans). BPM tries to enforce a continuous improvement culture in organisations by looking at and innovating their processes rather than focusing on content and presentation.

Six sigma and other performance improvement methodologies are used to measure quality and ensure strategic vision is mapped to what's happening on the ground. The result of a good BPM implementation is the generation of these measure as part of the BPMS, rather than adding another layer of bureaucracy that gets in the way of people 'doing what they need to do'.

Drupal can do anything. It is a truly generic solution that provides any organisation the ability to manage content, taxonomy and presentation. This makes it ripe to be a core operational support system for organisations to run their day-to-day operations. For this reason, many different modules and projects have emerged which attempt to provide functionality to support this. However, some of these projects have stalled, some have become less generic than intended, and some have branched off completely (e.g. Aquia and Drupal Commerce).

Although this working group has been sponsored and initiated by enCircle (Who are vendors of a BPEL process engine) it is intended to be independent and support key standards such as BPEL, BPMN and WSDLs to ensure no vendor lock-in - Promoting the vision of a truly open and semantic cloud of web services.

Please join and help move Drupal BPM forward! With Drupal 8 being all about Web Services, who's going to orchestrate them? It's time to focus on the process :)