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LARGE COMPANIES CURRENTLY SPEND MORE

than 30 percent of their IT budgets integrating their busi-

ness applications under the banner of enterprise applica-

tion integration (EAI), trying to get their internal act to-

gether for yet another step, business-to-business integra-tion (B2Bi). Why are they going to all this effort and ex-

pense? They are tying together fragments of their

stovepipe applications to create end-to-end, multi-compa-

ny business processesthose activities that bring ulti-

mate value to customers. It is indeed the entire value

chain, not a single company, that delivers the goods or services.

Value chain management is now clearly recognized as the next

frontier for gaining new productivity and competitive advantage. If

end-to-end business processes are the focus of internal and

cross-company integration, why not deal directly with the business

process instead of applications? Past approaches to both human

and application integration have delivered the partially integrated

enterprisea partially satisfying state, ill prepared for the future. To

achieve integration, companies have deployed limited-purpose mid-

dlewarefile transfer, EDI, message queuing, workflow, Internet

business-to-business gateways, direct database access and synchro-

nization, EAI brokers, and custom point-to-point coded interfaces.

This software has delivered important efficiencies, but has also cre-

ated specific pockets of integrated applications across an overall val-

ue chain that remain substantially not integrated and unmanaged.I Correspondingly, internal and cross-company integration initia-

tives must be managed and deployed in a coherent fashion.

www.in terne twor ld .com J U L Y 2 0 0 2 / / I N T E R N E T W O R L D 2524 I N T E R N E T W O R L D / / J U L Y 2 0 0 2 www.in terne twor ld .com

B Y J E A N N E B A K E R , H O W A R D S M I T H , A N D P E T E R F I N G A R

THE BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING

LANGUAGE IS THE NEXT FRONTIER

DESTINED TO GIVE COMPANIES

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

IN MANAGING

THEIR VALUE CHAINRELATIONSHIPS.

HERES WHAT YOU

NEED TO KNOW.

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VALUECHAINS

VALUE CHAIN FEATURE

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