IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management, Version 11.3

Creating business processes

Creating a business process is the accumulation of the understanding of how the business wants to perform this process and the set of use cases that define what they do in our system. A business process always has a defined starting and ending point, and may have multiple starting or ending points dependent on the process.

About this task

Unlike use cases, business processes have a definite time flow, and show the users how they should be performing their functions. Every step in a process has a performer and a well defined task, whether they are performing an action or making a decision. In our example, the solution helps the client to identify the steps that the buyer must go through to purchase inventory and enter it into the system.

Business process for a clothing store

One of the main goals of a clothing store is to buy merchandise. A clothing store's business process is to make available its buying organization to buy more effectively. The store has a buyer with a budget to use to buy the merchandise to be sold in the store. The buyer purchases the merchandise from the suppliers and must specify what was bought to track inventory.

This example shows how the solution architect must model the process of purchasing inventory and adding it to a tracking system to steps in a workflow.

Last updated: 8 Mar 2016