Business process integration point classification and the priority evaluation method

Abstract

Business process integration is considered a crucial technique to support interorganisational business interoperability, i.e., integration between collaborative business information systems. However, current researches usually pay the most attention to 'how to integrate' and lack an answer to 'where to integrate'. To address this issue, this paper classifies business process Integration Points (IPs) and presents a priority evaluation method. Based on the concept of 'integration point', four typical atomic integration patterns and some composite patterns are put forward. Then, starting from ultimate goals of business process integration, three metrics to measure the importance of each IP and the corresponding evaluation methods are addressed, and three responsibilities are adopted to calculate the priority of each IP. By using a practical case from a real-life ERP implementation project, the effectiveness of the method is validated. Several key research issues are briefly discussed for future works.