Business Process Modeling vs Enterprise Data Modeling

[Former Member]

Hi BPM Gurus,

Can some one explain the difference between Enterprise Data Modeling and Business Process Modeling as in both the cases, processes, business rules, Governance etc are involved? I am not sure if all of you have heard of Enterprise Data Modeling before though you must have heard of data modeling.

[Former Member]

These are some of my thoughts on BPM vs. EDM:

<i>Firstly, EDM succeeds BPM, and a good EDM always stems from a solid BPM.</i>

<b>Business Process Modeling</b> involves modeling the various business processes that govern the various units of supply chain, value chain, and the whole business. You have a business process model for production creation, one for each of the supply chain subsytems (material management, order entry, deliver, purchase order, etc.), a business model for enterprise finance, marketing, sales, etc. You can have a business process mdoel for information management strategy, one for enterprise communication strategy, so on and so forth.

The key contribution of a BPM is to represent the involved business process in an intuitive visual form, (using a common format that is easy to understand for analysts, developers, and upper management). A BPM also depicts the key boundary elements of the business process, feedback/feedforward stimulation/inhibitions, and the external and internal participants of the process.

<b>Enterprise Data Modeling</b> starts by understanding the BPM(s) at high level to get an overview of the subject areas and the entities within them. This leads to the conceptual model (step 1 of EDM). Then, you further dig through and understand the business entities and elements of these subject areas, and their interaction among themselves as well as with other business entities. This leads to Logical Model (step 2 of EDM). Step 3 of EDM, which is Physical model is a function of implementation platforms technology, performance criterial, pragmatic approach to make customers happy, among others. <u>And for an EDM, the physical model would potentially be different platforms for different subject areas.</u>

<i>I personally found that understanding the governing business process (BPM), at least at a high level, is a key success factor even if you are modeling one subject area of the EDM.</i>

Hope this helps

[Former Member]

I agree with Savitri. I just want to add that SAP enerprise architecture framework supports both BPM and information conceptual and logical models (both by methodology and ARIS models.

we also distinguish between business capabilities (what the enterprise is doing) and business processes (how the enterprise is doing capabilities). those two concepts also support by ARIS model in the framework.

[andrea_previati]

Hi

The BPM is the activity of reenginering of business processes. For instance you could design with diagrams the different phases of HR budget processes or the different phases of purchase order processe.

With Enterprise Data modeling you can intend the design of the different datamart for reporting purpose.

in the example the enterprise data modeling of hr could be the analysis phase of all databases concerning HR data - payroll systems, headcount systems etc.

For instance, in a SAP BW project the enterprise data modeling could be the design of infoproviders (infocubes, ods) necessary to store all the relevant HR data

Hope it helps

Ciao

Andrea

[Former Member]

Hi,

As I understand the BPM and EDM, it mainly differes from the which perspective, one looks at it.

EDM, more focussed/concerns on the data flow or information flow within the enterprise across various silos.

Whereas BPM, focuses/concerns on the series of tasks/activities performed in the enterprise, to fulfill a specific business requirement.

One model of BPM, might use/come across different EDM models to complete the end-to-end process.

Hope, I shed some light on the subject.

HTH,

regards,

Nataraj.