Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions from Tibco, webMethods, and IBM have helped IT groups establish a reliable infrastructure for enabling system-to-system communication. Whether implemented using Web services or reliable message queues, these EAI solutions now provide a standard, manageable platform for accessing data and submitting transactions.

EAI applications, however, do not provide integrated capabilities for orchestrating rich human workflow or event-driven interactions. As a result, many IT groups are deploying BPM today as an orchestration layer on top of their EAI infrastructure.

BPM Opportunity

Having an EAI layer in place helps speed the deployment of process-centric solutions by providing reliable, standards-based access to existing data and systems. This frees development teams to deliver solutions that leverage the unique benefits of a leading BPM platform:

• Make human interactions more effective. Guided user interactions help standardize best practices and speed decisions by consolidating information from many sources.
• Real-time control over processes. Give managers the ability to understand where the process bottlenecks lie and the control to make adjustments in real-time (e.g. raise approval threshold).
• Orchestrate resolution to business events — not just notification. Model and execute processes that detect business events and orchestrate resolution involving humans, systems and other events.
• Enable collaborative solution development. A collaborative design environment facilitates shared understanding of process requirements across business and IT users — a critical elements of deployment success.
• Faster Solution Delivery. Leverage the built-in human interaction capabilities of BPM tools to deploy process-centric solutions faster than custom development with EAI.

Lombardi In Action

To improve its product shipment process, one global manufacturer used Lombardi's BPM platform to reduce the number of products that were sent back to the company after being shipped. Through direct integration to an EAI hub, Lombardi detects return or distressed shipping events and orchestrates efforts by customer care and shipping representatives to avoid an unintentional product return. Successful first-time product deliveries are now consistently above 90% and the company saves several million dollars per quarter in saved deliveries.