Perbedaan Workflow dan BPM

Tulisan ini dicuplik dari salah satu kumpulan artikel lama yang pernah disimpan dari situs majalah Transform (transformmag.com) yang dirilis pada bulan Desember tahun 2003. Menurut artikel tersebut, secara umum Workflow lebih mengarah pada urutan aktivitas yang didefinisikan dalam sekumpulan instruksi pada suatu aplikasi tertentu. Sementara BPM berkenaan dengan eksekusi dan pengelolaan proses yang secara mandiri didefinisikan oleh suatu aplikasi. Dalam atikel tersebut pakar Delphi menyebutkan perbedaan itu sebagaimana ditulis dibawah ini.

Nathaniel Palmer, Vice President & Chief Analyst, Delphi Group, Boston

While often treated synonymously, BPM and workflow are, in fact, two distinct and separate entities whose differences are more than academic.

Workflow is concerned with the application-specific sequencing of activities via predefined instruction sets, involving either or both automated procedures (software-based) and manual activities (people work).

BPM is concerned with the definition, execution and management of business processes defined independently of any single application. BPM is a superset of workflow, further differentiated by the ability to coordinate activities across multiple applications with fine grain control.

Integration between workflow systems and externalities are comparatively limited, often only allowing the retrieval of documents or data variables, and only as a pass-through with no awareness of content.

BPM systems allow both the capture and introspection of external documents and data, presenting a closed-loop process for validating the integrity of transactions, data and content, as well as the initiation of compensating activities when necessary. BPM processes separate execution instructions from process flows; thus, routing can be tied to process outcomes and milestones. As workflow processes are tied to single applications, process flow is hardwired and does accommodate alternative means for reaching the same task or goal.

Distilled into single-word definitions, workflow is about repetition and BPM is about coordination (also automation and orchestration, respectively).