Socially networked businesses
Businesses and organisations quickly embraced the World Wide Web once it became established in 1989. However, customers and service users have come to expect to be able to interact with organisations in a participatory social media-style. Enabling businesses to offer and develop systems in that style was the aim of the BPM4PEOPLE project. The 6-member consortium ran for 2 years up to August 2013, with almost EUR 1 million in EU funding. The project aimed to design and market innovative software tools and methodologies that enable social business processes. The project's business process management (BPM) software products would integrate the design and analysis of business processes with social networking functions. These would allow flexible exploitation of the opportunities arising from social networking. The developed tools would be implemented on top of existing social networking platforms. The project commenced with a study of the BPM platform field. Next, BPM4PEOPLE specified the concept and requirements of social BPM. In addition, the project detailed its proposed SocialBPM extension to business process management, notation and a new standard for Interaction Flow Modelling Language. Next, the project successfully implemented business logic components as extensions of WebRatio, and designed implementation tools as a component of the designs. The resulting designs were tested and proven as a set of business case studies. Furthermore, the project designed and implemented a crowd computer able to run crowd-sourced business processes. The project created an implementation methodology, including a continuous improvement process, plus a methodology for market penetration. Dissemination activities included various technical and popular publications, plus presentations about the project at numerous workshops, conferences and other gatherings. In addition, the project created a relevant online community, and in general raised awareness about its work. The main beneficiaries of BPM4PEOPLE's work will be European small and medium-sized enterprises. They will now find it easier to adopt and use social BPM, and thus more readily reap the benefits of such systems. The project's work will also benefit European public authorities wishing to offer services complying with legislative requirements for customer feedback.
Keywords
Social media, networking, business process management, crowd-sourced business process
