Active Journal of Business Process Management

ERP and BPM: Evolution and Integration

Regardless of whether your company works in microchip processing or the utility industry, the lessons learned through ERP (enterprise resource planning) are essential to the integration of BPM (business process management). The organizational management learning that was provided by ERP was built upon the shoulders of, in fact, nearly a century of thought focused on how to better optimize workflow.

Although there are both popular trends in the business world indicate that BPM software is going to far exceed ERP in its implementation, it is highly important to understand how BPM was shaped out of ERP and, furthermore, how it can be integrated into a company’s existing organizational architecture. Despite the fact that ERP can involve intense training and installation periods—perhaps one of its greatest disadvantages—ERP has nevertheless provided a strong evolutionary foundation for BPM technology.

At this point, however, it should be stated briefly that another major downside of ERP software was the way in which it has been applied. Despite being an inspiration of business leaders and managers, its set up was typically relegated to the IT departments. ERP was therefore often applied in ways that made it much less unifying that its promoters had hoped for. In fact, there are many instances in which the application of ERP worsens the existing constraints and lack of unification among business processes.

Nevertheless, this technology was able to take a firm grip on features of flow control. And, interestingly enough, ERP is now often required in order to ensure that companies comply with government regulations such as the 2002 Sarbanes Oxley Act and others. Indeed, these are the applications which depend heavily on enterprise resource planning.

The true ERP success stories come from when companies that subscribe to ERP management plans actually come to realize that stability—above all—is the most important feature. Forget customization options, because they can only jam up the flow of business processes. Instead focus on creating and maintaining a simple enterprise resource planning solution.

Along with simplification, business owners are naturally leaning towards the consolidation of their business process flows. This industry trend is pushed along by the lessons learned with the advanced utility of learned database solutions, storage systems and software design for ERP. Within the constraints of ERP, the ideal workflow database technology is able to effectively merge purchasing, supply chain, entry of orders, accounting, and customer relationship management (CRM) into a single instance.

Of course, some analysts will contend th at such an approach eliminates the need for hosted ERP or BPM solutions, while others see these two trends moving into cohesion and cooperation. Some of those on the very fringe even forecast a direct competition between ERP and BPM. Yet whether or not this is the case, it is important to understand that the makers of BPM are only moving forward to strengthen their product by making various features more profoundly functional and beneficial to their customers.

One of the best features of BPM software is its ability to integrate to ERP. In fact, many automated workflow systems actually come with specific code designed to straddle an existing ERP infrastructure and bring it up to date. BPM, after all, is the best solution yet. It is far more comprehensive than ERP, but does not eschew the real benefits of the latter technology.