Foreword
Jon Pyke, Staffware Plc., United Kingdom
Chairman, Workflow Management Coalition
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this new edition of the WfMC Official Handbook for 2001. I have been involved with the WfMC since its very first meeting in San Diego way back in 1993. Since that meeting, when the Coalition was little more than a collection of company representatives, trying to decide if the idea was viable and what it should be called, workflow technology has come of age — and never has the need for standards been more apparent than it is now.
The WfMC has grown to become more than just a collection of vendors. It is now the globally recognized body for the advancement of workflow management technology and its use in industry.
This latest edition of the Handbook will provide you with valuable insights into the revolution in business process management and the attendant benefits currently underway as the e-Business opportunity takes hold.
e-Business is the conducting of business over networks — typically the Internet. The current rush to adopt e-Business models is having a profound impact on organizations throughout the world. It is affecting not only how they do business with their customers, partners, suppliers, distributors and other trading partners; it is directly affect-ing how they manage their businesses internally.
Workflow technology has come of age.
Companies embracing this rapid change are facing unprecedented opportunities as they define new markets, new revenue opportunities and new levels of efficiency, customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. And new business applications such as mCommerce (mobile commerce), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), e-Commerce and Application Service Provision (ASP) have transformed the way companies interact with one another, throughout the value chain.
Never has the time been more opportune to define and manage the business processes within and beyond and organization through the use of workflow.
The accelerating adoption of new technologies such as the Internet is causing shifts in the way people work and in their working environment. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) is chartered with keeping pace with these advances and you will see a number of these issues addressed in this book.
The WfMC has worked strenuously for the adoption of standards throughout the industry. So, where, in this rapidly expanding market, do industry standards fit in?
Standards allow organizations that have more than one workflow system to connect them easily. They provide a fertile environment for workflow component development to grow and flourish, providing a rich array of options for user organizations. Most importantly, standards provide an infrastructure for inter-organizational process automation. The term ‘inter-workflow’ was first used by a working party in the Japan Standards Association to describe this scenario.
Since its formation, the WfMC has made significant progress in establishing vendor-independent workflow standards. In addition to a Glossary (available in English, German, French and Japanese), with standard terminology to describe workflow systems and their envi-ronment, the Coalition initially devised a framework called the ‘Reference Model.’
This includes five categories (or interfaces) of interoperability and communication standards that allow multiple workflow products and related business process modeling tools to coexist and interoperate across the enterprise and within a user’s environment.
To date, standards have been published for interfaces 1, 2, 4, and 5 with a draft available for 3. In addition to several demonstrations by vendors of prototypes and products based on these interfaces, a number of WfMC members have successfully demonstrated the interoperability specification (interface 4) using workflow products from five different vendors. A significant number of vendors has already pledged support for the published standards, and has or is planning to incorporate them in their products.
With such a broad range of applicability, it is easy to understand why the WfMC membership comprises a highly diverse group of workflow product vendors, analysts, universities, government organizations and corporations all touched by workflow technology. For the same reasons, it should not be surprising that different approaches are chosen for managing workflow. Combined with the e-Business revo-lution currently underway, workflow is rapidly becoming a rich and diverse technology.
The members of the Workflow Management Coalition hope you enjoy the latest edition of the Workflow Handbook and that you will find it useful as you explore workflow and its many diverse benefits.
