In Search of BPX...Realized at EDIFICE

[Former Member]

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Intro

I'm an occasional james.guanzon/blog to SDN's XI (i.e. Process Integration) Process Integration (PI) & SOA Middleware and blogosphere. It's mind boggling how much information is being shared in that specific area of SDN. When I first started working in the SAP Exchange Infrastructure area in 2003, I would have given a king's ransom for the fantastic content you can find today in the SDN XI area.

One other area that I'm hoping to see take off and blossom is the BPX - What is a Business Process Expert, Really? - Community.
This blog is my attempt to add some more fuel to that fire...

EDIFICE

A month ago, in June, I attended the 97th EDIFICE Plenary in Prague, Czech. EDIFICE represents a majority of the European electronics industry. It provides a forum for understanding, adopting, and implementing Business-to-Business (B2B) processes and technologies, with specific focus on UN/EDIFACT for EDI and RosettaNet for B2B.

What I highlight for this blog is the introduction of an EDIFICE concept that I also hope to see in future releases of BPX -- the customer specific implementations, guidelines, and mapping libraries for implementing both business processes and specific technologies with their various trading partners. EDIFICE realizes this concept with the EDIFICE Deployment Matrix.

The first set of Deployment Matrix content is being provided by Texas Instruments (TI). One can learn about the various business processes that have been implemented at TI, in specific areas like inventory visibility, procurement, invoicing, payments, and forecasting and see how each these processes was realized with EDI or RosettaNet XML. Fortunately, most of these business processes can also be executed with SAP software. One doesn't have to look far to find an expert of business processes, technology, and SAP applications, than the EDIFICE community.

Why is this important?

• The EDIFICE Deployment Matrix provides a central reference point for Business Processes and their related B2B messages within a specific community
• The EDIFICE Repository (http://repository.edifice.org) [sorry it's probably password protected...] contains the latest EDIFICE Message Implementation Guides (i.e. the Industry's recommendation)
• The Deployment Matrix (DM - http://dm.edifice.org) shows which B2B messages are enabled by the member companies
• the extension of the DM provides hosted web space to store all the actual guidelines on how the B2B messages have been implemented at each member company
• by showing the message definitions, Trading Partners (TPs) can easily find out what is expected in terms of data exchange for various business processes
• concrete examples of business process deployment

The EDIFICE Plenary provided a great deal of valuable content and industry contacts in the High Tech, Telecom, and Logistics sectors. EDIFICE represents a great source of potential BPX community contributors and members because of their unique mix business process exepertise and technology background. It's my hope that the BPX community, the EDIFICE community and other related but disconnected communities converge and collaborate. Much can be learned and leveraged from these other organizations. It's my hope we communicate the importance of these organizations and attract and engage the members within the BPX to discover, define, and discuss innovative business processes. The BPX is very promising in this area. I can't wait to see what the future holds for BPX.