Business Process Management Gets Social

By Dave Watson

Clay Richardson of Forrester Research describes social business process management (BPM) as combining Web 2.0 and social tools with BPM “to facilitate bi-directional communication and collaboration for process improvement.” We see great social networking tools based on Facebook and Twitter models – such as Salesforce Chatter – that are cropping up for the business environment. Now that such tools exist and are being used, the challenge is integrating them into existing business processes and applications. This is a concept that Michael Vizard covered very well in his article, “Social Networking Meets BPM.”

In this two-part series, I will explore how solutions from iWay Software can help organizations achieve this integration. This first article focuses on the plumbing and tooling, while next month’s article tackles the semantic side of the issue.

iWay is well known for products that enable application-to-application (A2A) integration and ensure data consistency between those applications. With graphical user interface (GUI) tools that do not require expertise with end applications or coding of Java™ and XSLT transformations, iWay solutions can typically perform A2A integration in a matter of minutes.

In the example below, iWay tooling allows a user to browse standard and custom Salesforce objects and generate interfaces, which include metadata generation as well as the code for inbound (service) and outbound (event) interactions. The interfaces also feature create, retrieve, update, delete, and batch operations in both push and pull modes. The same GUI tool is used to browse and generate interfaces for PeopleSoft.

Configuring a service to create a Salesforce account.

The next step consists of simple mapping to configure process flow. The PeopleSoft event is transformed, and sends the required request to the Salesforce service. Other matters, such as error handling, retry logic, and monitoring are handled automatically.

Mapping to configure process flow.

Finally, a drag-and-drop transformation tool is used to map the XML payload from the PeopleSoft event to the Salesforce XML payload.

A drag-and-drop transformation tool is used to map the PeopleSoft XML payload to the Salesforce XML payload.

Using the same tooling, customer synchronization such as this can be performed in the reverse direction. Additional graphical components can be used to enrich, standardize, and improve data quality in this process.

This is an example of integrating a PeopleSoft business domain (customer) with an existing Salesforce domain (account), a common scenario for the deployment of Salesforce CRM. iWay can also connect to other applications like SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, JD Edwards, Lawson, Clarify, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, and many others. Just as importantly, it can connect to homegrown applications on AS/400 and mainframes with interfaces to RPG programs, 5250 and 3270 data screens, DB2/400 databases, COBOL programs, Natural programs, CICS transactions, IMS/TM transactions, APPC transactions, IMS/DB databases, Adabas databases, and many others.

Inside and Outside Chatter

With the advent of Salesforce Chatter, we now encounter a new paradigm. Chatter users want to follow business events that are external to Salesforce. Objects that reside in external applications (e.g., purchase and sales orders, HR employee records, and more) need to be integrated with Salesforce Chatter, but there are no standard Salesforce objects for these external applications. This makes the integration requirement a bit different.

First, we must create a custom object in a Salesforce Cloud that maps to the external object. The example below shows the browse capabilities in an SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that enable a purchase order event and a purchase order object to be created in the Salesforce system.

Browse capabilities in an SAP ERP system enable a purchase order event and object to be created in Salesforce.

This is accomplished via a GUI and the user doesn’t require domain expertise in either SAP ERP (ABAP, BAPI, RFC, IDOC, Business Object Repository etc) or Force.com environments (i.e. APEX APIs). The same process can be used to map Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, CICS transactions, RPG programs, and more.

Force.com administrators can deploy the purchase order object and enable the Chatter object. Once this is done the integration is complete, and users can publish events from the external system – SAP in this example – to Chatter. Standard Force.com development tools can now be used to create Chatter web pages for rendering custom objects and integrating workflow actions with the iWay adapters.

Force.com administrators deploy a purchase order object and enable the Chatter object, completing the integration.

Users can publish events from external systems – such as SAP – to Chatter.

These tools can be used with any application, database, or legacy system: for example, when mapping an employee from an HR system to a Force.com custom object. iWay rapidly integrates any application or database with Salesforce, creating standard or custom objects for CRMs or Chatter that enable external transactions and workflows.

Improved productivity is the business driver, boosting the efficiency of processes such as hiring and on-ramping new employees, or tracking the approval process for a purchase order. Proven social networking concepts make rich collaboration possible between users who may be in different departments, organizations, or countries. Staff members are no longer forced to rely on search engines or portals to find information; they can follow specific business events that are relevant to their job function. With iWay, the process can be a closed loop, so that users can collaborate within Chatter on business processes and workflows.

Next month, I will talk about adding business rules to the integration process to allow dynamic filtering, aggregation, and routing of business events to a Salesforce Chatter system. For example, purchase orders may be dynamically routed to a CFO based on one rule and to a line of business manager using a different rule.

About Dave Watson
iWay Software Vice President Dave Watson is responsible for the development, delivery, and support of iWay's integration products. Joining Information Builders in 2001, Mr. Watson holds a Computer Systems Engineering degree from the University of Bristol.