microsoft biztalk server and october 2002 universal...

Enabling best-practice,cross-application businessprocess integrationthrough best-of-breedtechnologies

Microsoft® BizTalk® ServerandUniversal ApplicationNetwork

October 2002

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AbstractAbstractAbstractAbstractAbstract

This paper is written for IT professionals and technical decision makers who are familiar with

enterprise software and integration technologies. It provides an overview of Microsoft® BizTalk®

Server’s support for Universal Application Network, Siebel’s standards-based solution for cross-

application integration. By leveraging the power of Universal Application Network, BizTalk Server

provides rapid and flexible implementation of integrated business processes with scalable, reliable,

and secure execution.

The latest information on Microsoft BizTalk Server is available at

http://www.microsoft.com/BizTalk/

The latest information on Universal Application Network is available at

http://www.siebel.com/products/application_network/

This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the software described herein.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft mustrespond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any informationpresented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in orintroduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the expresswritten permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided inany written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places and events depicted herein are fictitious, and noassociation with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place or event is intended or should be inferred.

© 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft and BizTalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Microsoft® BizTalk® Server & Universal Application Network

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In addition to enjoying a streamlined, automated process, the company can use XML Web Servicesthrough BizTalk Server to display statistics in Microsoft® Excel, such as the real-time status of allorders in the system (Figure 9).

Figure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk Server

Benefits

This solution enables the company to eliminate a large portion of the custom approach by leveragingprebuilt business process flows, common objects, transformation maps, and the Web servicesframework for BizTalk Server connectivity. The company was able to deploy a mission-critical, enterprisebusiness process at a substantially lower cost, and in less time, than a custom implementation.

CONCLUSION

The Microsoft® BizTalk® Server and Universal Application Network from Siebel Systems are based ona common vision of process automation and systems integration through standards-based imple-mentations. Siebel Systems’ knowledge of best-practice, customer-driven business processes, capturedin Universal Application Network-specified designs and implemented with BizTalk Server, providescompanies with the capabilities needed to leverage legacy technology assets and new systemimplementations without being locked into functional silos. BizTalk Server provides a unified tool fordesign through the deployment of end-to-end, industry-specific business processes while reducingthe cost, complexity, and time of cross-application integration.

By combining the deep customer business process knowledge captured in Universal Application Networkwith the technical capabilities of BizTalk Server, companies will gain the ability to implement, modify, andextend business processes gaining competitive advantage through increased customer satisfaction.

" Application integration isone of the top challengesfor CIOs--a fact I canvalidate here at the newHP," said HP President,Michael D. Capellas. "Universal ApplicationNetwork, combiningprepackaged businessprocesses from SiebelSystems based on bestpractices in sales,marketing, and service,and Microsoft's BizTalkServer, provides acomprehensive businessprocess integration solutionfor companies like HP withthousands of applicationsin operation. UniversalApplication Network willreduce our overallintegration efforts and helpto ensure the success ofour IT integration."

Introduction

One of the most significant IT challenges today is the design and deployment of automated business

processes that span multiple applications. In order to enable the deployment of these enterprise

business processes, organizations need to integrate the disparate applications with each other.

According to CIO Magazine, integration is the leading IT priority for today’s CIOs.1

Universal Application Network, launched by Siebel Systems, is a standards-based solution for

cross-application integration that has broad support from the leading integration server vendors

and systems integrators. The next release of Microsoft® BizTalk® Server supports this offering by

providing a standards-based business process design tool and execution engine.

With Universal Application Network, leveraging Siebel business processes and BizTalk Server technology,

organizations can finally realize the strategic benefits of intra- and interenterprise cross-application

integration at dramatically reduced cost, complexity, and time to deployment. This combined solution

enables an organization to move from being a product-centric enterprise to a truly customer-driven

enterprise. This paper presents the following:

• Current business challenges faced by companies and the factors required to build a customer-

centric enterprise

• Universal Application Network: the Siebel solution for building an integrated customer-centric

enterprise and how BizTalk Server effectively supports the implementation of Universal Application

Network business processes

• A practical example of how BizTalk Server and Universal Application Network can work to deploy

best-practice business processes for a manufacturer

1 CIO Magazine, March 1, 2002


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The Solution

The manufacturer decided to automate its Quote to Cash business process to address theseproblems. It company evaluated a custom, point-to-point integration approach to building the businessprocess flows and the transformation maps between and among the five applications. Using thisapproach, the company would also need to build a custom adapter to its legacy procurementsystem, which would incur significant implementation costs. Additionally, such a custom implementationwould be difficult to upgrade as the underlying applications could go through substantial datamodel changes and create the need to rebuild the integrations. This customization would result inhigh ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs.

Instead, the company implemented the faster, lower-cost Universal Application Network with theMicrosoft BizTalk Server running best-practice business processes from Siebel.

Using BizTalk Server to execute the Universal Application Network, the company followed four simplesteps to provide a fully working integration that meets all business needs. First, the company selectedthe prepackaged, manufacturing-specific Quote to Cash business process from the UniversalApplication Network business process library. The system analysts were able to extend and modifythis business process as needed by using BizTalk Orchestration Designer.

Figure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for Manufacturing

The developers used BizTalk Editor and BizTalk Mapper to select the appropriate Universal ApplicationNetwork common objects and transformation maps. And, finally, they used the .NET-based BizTalkServer adapter framework and Web services to connect the business applications to the UniversalApplication Network.


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Building a Customer-centric Enterprise

Before discussing the technologies and processes that create a fully integrated organization, it isimportant to understand the underlying business needs at work. Today’s business organizationsincreasingly recognize that to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, they must become evenmore customer-driven. Business processes must be designed with the customer in mind, making iteasy for customers to do business with the organization across any communication channel—callcenter, Web, face-to-face, and third-party sales and service partners.

Business processes need to become more customer-driven, and businesses have become keenlyaware that their customers do not consistently receive exceptional customer service. For example,at many financial services companies, long-standing customers in one line of business—checkingaccounts, for instance—might not be recognized when they contact the mortgage-lending departmentto apply for a home loan. The bank is not able to provide the personalized service customers expect;instead, customers must go through the tedious process of reidentifying themselves, filling outmultiple forms to provide information that the bank should already have. Customers becomefrustrated, and the bank loses the opportunity to seamlessly offer higher margin services to itsexisting customers. Because acquiring new customers is more expensive, this increases the totalcustomer acquisition cost for the bank’s various lines of business.

Success Factors

Four key factors are necessary to ensure an optimal customer experience:

Information Availability—When customer data is scattered throughout the organization in informationsilos based on product, line of business, or communication channel, companies are left with ahighly fragmented and incomplete view of their customers. By coordinating customer interactionsacross these silos, workers throughout a company can conduct a personalized, ongoing dialog withits customers.

Best-Practice Business Processes—Best-practice business processes are designed with customerneeds and preferences in mind and enable an organization to serve its customers the way they wantto be served. For example, a telecommunications firm might design its billing cycle to increasecustomers’ ease of doing business with the company while optimizing billing office efficiency.Instead of invoicing and requiring a payment according to dates solely driven by system processing,the company can customize billing cycles according to individual customer preferences and applybest practices for billing.

Cross-Application Business Processes—Most enterprise business processes interact with multipleapplications. Historically, because of the cost and complexity of enterprise application integration,companies have been unable to deploy business processes that seamlessly span multiple applica-tions. Overcoming these barriers by integrating existing applications can deliver tangible benefits,including increased order accuracy, faster delivery, and integrated service, resulting in highercustomer satisfaction.

Real-Time Intelligence—Companies require real-time intelligence about their customers’ preferences,requirements, operational performance, and market conditions. Armed with this information, theorganization can swiftly respond to changes in customer behavior and market trends. This respon-siveness results in satisfied customers and a sustainable competitive edge in the marketplace.

Success Factors forEnsuring the Best PossibleCustomer Experience

•Availability of customerinformation throughoutthe organization

•Best-practice businessprocesses that reflectcustomer needs

•Business processes thatspan business units andorganizations

•Real-time intelligence,about customers’ prefer-ences, requirements,operational performance,and market conditions


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Business Process Integration Scenario

A leading climate-control equipment manufacturer produces multimillion-dollar heating, ventilation,and air-conditioning systems. The company currently employs a manual process for managing a neworder from Quote to Cash. The process includes the following steps for the manufacturer:

1. Create and Approve Quote

2. Create and Approve Order

3. Pick/Pack and Ship Order

4. Invoice Order

5. Assign Asset

6. Receive Payment

The Quote to Cash business process interacts with five different functional applications includingcall center, procurement, manufacturing, finance, and shipping. These applications were notintegrated, and so the company had to rely on disjointed methods of communication such as filetransfers and e-mail notifications among these five applications. This kind of quote-to-cash processresulted in cycle times in excess of 90 days from the time a quote is issued to the time the companyreceives payment for the order. The company found that almost 40 percent of all calls to its callcenter were inquiries from customers regarding the status of their orders. Unfortunately, the callcenter representatives could not answer these queries immediately because they did not haveaccess to the order fulfillment system. The delays plus the inability of call center representativesto give adequate responses to customers led to a decline in customer satisfaction.


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Management Console

The BizTalk Server execution engine provides complete manageability, control, auditing, and post-process analysis. The BizTalk Server management console provides administrative and controlcapabilities. In addition, full integration with Microsoft Operations Manager allows for effectiveadministration in a managed IT environment, including alerts, monitoring dashboard capabilities,and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) message generation. By storing process stateinformation in an accessible repository, BizTalk Server can perform real-time process monitoring,post-process auditing, and aggregate-process auditing. These capabilities let companies optimizeprocesses to ensure business value has been maximized.

Scalability, Availability, and Security

The BizTalk Server execution engine allows for clustering to “scale out” by adding additional serversand “scale up” by adding additional processors to the existing hardware configuration. In addition,processing components can be spread across servers to optimize the workload and ensure maximumthroughput. Through clustering, passive nodes can remain on standby to ensure high availability inthe event that a server goes down, or peaks in message volume require extra processing capabilities.By creating a virtual processing hub, users receive all the benefits of a central management systemand the scalability of a distributed architecture.

BizTalk Server uses standards-based security—such as PKI, SSL, and S/MIME —for securing datawith a “configure not code” approach.

BizTalk Server is built on the same fundamental integration concepts as Universal Application Network.Because both are built on open XML-based integration, BizTalk Server design tools can create andextend Universal Application Network business process libraries, and the BizTalk Server executionengine runs these processes with the performance and reliability needed for mission-criticalenterprise processes. BizTalk Server provides an ideal toolset and engine to deliver positivebusiness results with Universal Application Network. To better illustrate this synergy, following is anintegration example, based on a scenario from the manufacturing industry.


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CRM best practices derived from more than3,500 customer deployments.

100’s of CRM best practices20 vertical product lines3,200 pre-configured views8 horizontal product lines

Track business performance

Seamless application integration

Delivering an Optimal Customer Experience

Siebel eBusiness Applications enable companies to deploy an integrated set of customer-drivenbest practices across sales, marketing, and customer service. Derived from experience with morethan 3,500 customer deployments and nearly 10 years of customer relationship management(CRM) product development and investment, Siebel Systems has documented hundreds of bestpractices for every aspect of CRM and embedded the practices directly into the functionality ofSiebel eBusiness Applications.

BizTalk Server provides the technology to execute Siebel’s prepackaged, industry-specific, best-practice business processes, while reducing the cost, complexity, and time necessary to completethe integration.

Figure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric Enterprise

Eric Austvold and Joanie RufoAMR Research

“Universal ApplicationNetwork brings a newapproach to integration byembedding industry-specificcustomer business processes,gained from Siebel’s 3,500customer implementations,in layers on top of industry-standard technology. It letsorganizations implement andmaintain business processesfrom a central standpointwhile also eliminating theneed to write and maintainhundreds of point-to-pointintegrations betweenapplications.”


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Understanding Best-Practice Business Processes

Leveraging its industry-leading expertise in CRM, Siebel Systems has modeled a comprehensiveset of cross-industry and industry-specific business processes. Siebel Systems also has extensiveproducts that embody industry-specific, customer-oriented processes for more than 20 industrysegments—including high technology, automotive, retail banking, insurance, telecommunications,consumer goods, and pharmaceuticals.

These processes reflect the unique customer-facing requirements for each industry or segment.By providing prebuilt support for best-practice processes, Siebel eBusiness Applications enableorganizations to accelerate their deployment and reduce total cost of ownership. The followingsection illustrates how an insurance company can achieve improved close rates, facilitate cross-sells,and enhance customer satisfaction using best-practice business processes.

Example: Best-Practice Business Process for Insurance

When a customer contacts the call center to buy a new insurance policy, the ensuing process canbe complex. For most insurers, this process involves several manual steps and takes many days tocomplete. Typically, the insurer mails forms to the customer, creating considerable lag time betweeninitial contact and completion of the process. Consequently, many customers lose interest and donot return the application, resulting in lost sales for the insurer.

In contrast, the best practice is “one and done”—that is, the process is completed during a singlecall (Figure 2). Using this best practice, the service agent qualifies the prospect using risk data,analyzes the insurance needs, and generates a quote using the rate-calculation engine. Once thecustomer agrees to the quote, the agent completes the administrative details and issues the policy.All these steps are completed during a single customer interaction. The customer feels exceptionallywell served, and the company has higher conversion rates.

Figure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer Satisfaction


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Figure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline Designer

Adapter Framework

BizTalk Server provides an advanced adapter framework that allows for custom and packagedsystem interfaces to be integrated into the BizTalk Server environment. Using XML Web Services asthe standard interface mechanism—and adding common configuration metadata, user interfacecomponents, and management interfaces—adapters to complex proprietary systems appear asnative BizTalk Server XML Web Service interfaces.

Siebel eBusiness applications include the Application Service Interface (ASI) framework. Thedefinitions for an ASI are expressed as WSDL services. BizTalk Server’s adapter framework directlyinteracts with Siebel ASIs to provide quick integration. Also, BizTalk Server’s comprehensive libraryof adapters for popular applications and technologies ensures rapid integration with virtually anyapplication or technology.


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Another best practice embedded in this process is needs analysis. The service agent uses anautomated tool to guide the customer through a needs evaluation to generate a personalizedcoverage recommendation. This evaluation may suggest that by combining auto and home insurancepolicies with the insurer, the customer can buy increased coverage for the same cost. The solutionautomatically prompts the agent to cross-sell such relevant offers based on the customer’spurchase decision; thus delivering additional value to the customer.

In order for the above process to be completed in a single interaction, real-time integration withmultiple systems—including risk scoring and rating calculation—is needed. Universal ApplicationNetwork provides this real-time, cross-application business processes and BizTalk Server providesthe unified tool for design and deployment of the solution.

Solving the Challenge of Cross-Application Integration

Application integration represents a major challenge and expense for organizations, accounting forup to 35 percent of the overall cost of a typical IT implementation. Universal Application Network isa customer-centric solution from Siebel Systems that solves the complex, cross-application integrationproblem within and across the enterprise in a highly cost-effective way. Microsoft brings years ofinfrastructure knowledge encapsulated in the robustness and scalability of BizTalk Server to providea complementary, best-of-breed solution. Using BizTalk Server to implement the Universal ApplicationNetwork, companies can rapidly design, deploy, and optimize cross-application best-practice businessprocesses, while reducing their total cost of ownership and increasing their return on investment.

Universal Application Network is based on XML and Web services standards, including WSDL (WebServices Description Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and BPEL4WS (BusinessProcess Execution Language for Web Services). Universal Application Network solves the integrationproblem by providing:

• A solution based on Web services and XML standards, for defining business processes that canbe executed on any standards-compliant integration technology platform, and

• A library of prepackaged, industry-specific business processes based on best practices. Thesebusiness processes include the data transformations and common objects required for applicationswith different data models to interoperate with each other.

Microsoft BizTalk Server provides a platform for designing, customizing, and executing thesebusiness processes. With BizTalk Server technology and Universal Application Network, organizationscan finally realize the strategic benefits of intra- and interenterprise cross-application integration atdramatically reduced cost, complexity, and time to deployment. They can move from being a product-centric enterprise to a truly customer-driven enterprise.

Martin Walmsley e-BusinessDevelopment Manager LloydsTSB Commercial Finance

“We see Web serviceschanging the way that LloydsTSB Commercial Financedoes business…BizTalk Serverenabled us to create theFirstCheck solution quicklyand easily. Now, not only arewe able to give our customersreal-time credit references,we are also lowering ourcosts for these credit checks,as well as providing a servicethat has already begun toincrease our customer base.Our initial experience withBizTalk Server has encouragedus to look into using BizTalkServer to orchestrate otherWeb services applications inthe future.


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The BizTalk Mapper natively supports mapping and transformation capabilities required for theUniversal Application Network, including direct, isomorphic, and semantic mapping in addition tostructural transformation, dynamic and static cross-referencing, and default-value setting. TheBizTalk Mapper’s power, flexibility, and ease of use enables rapid productivity in creating complexmappings to and from external systems and Universal Application Network common objects.

Executing the Universal Application Network Business Processwith BizTalk Server

A Universal Application Network integration server coordinates communication between and amongapplications. BizTalk Server’s robust architecture allows for a highly functional, scalable, andreliable implementation of the Universal Application Network integration server requirements asshown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration Server

By abstracting the physical connections from the process flow, business processes can be implementedefficiently and modified with a high degree of flexibly to meet changing business needs. Thefollowing components and capabilities meet these Universal Application Network requirements.

BizTalk Pipeline Designer

Pipelines are used to create the base processing required to interface with specific source andtarget systems. Document parsing/serializing, transport specification, security authorization/identification, encryption/decryption, and custom pre-/postprocessing are handled in the pipelineprocessing. This capability enables endpoints to be abstracted from the business process modeland aligns with the the common services interface concept in the Universal Application Networkarchitecture. Figure 7 illustrates the BizTalk Pipeline Designer components.

Benefit summary

BizTalk Server

•Rapid implementation

•Rapid orchestration ofcomplex businessprocesses

•Maximum flexibility

•Extensive standards-basedintegration

•Reliable, secure documentdelivery

•Effective standards-basedsecurity


Universal ApplicationNetwork IntegrationServer Requirements

•Transport layer to providequeuing, deliver messages,and support synchronousand asynchronousmessaging

•Adapter to connectapplications to thetransport layer

•Common object modelsupport that is extensibleand supports customer-developed objects

•Transformation layer, whichexecutes transformationsat run time

•Business process controllerthat executes a businessprocess, supports long-running transactions anderror handling, and monitorsthe status of processes

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Universal Application Network and BizTalk Server:A Best-of-Breed Solution

BizTalk Server is designed to support the same fundamental integration concepts as UniversalApplication Network. Because both are built on open XML standards, BizTalk Server design toolscan create and extend Universal Application Network business processes. The BizTalk Serverexecution engine runs these business processes with the performance and reliability needed formission-critical enterprise processes. Figure 3 illustrates how BizTalk Server supports the UniversalApplication Network implementation.

Figure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application Network

Universal Application Network includes three primary components, which BizTalk Server can support:

• Best-Practice Business Process Library—A library of prepackaged, industry-specific businessprocesses based on best practices. These pre-built, quality-assured business processes can beexecuted across multiple applications, departments, organizations, and enterprises.

• Business Process Design Tool—Integration scenarios are best facilitated with a graphical tool fordeveloping and configuring business process solutions. BizTalk Orchestration Designer is used tomodel and configure existing business processes and create new ones.

• Integration Server—The integration server must coordinate communication between and amongapplications. BizTalk Server is used to execute business processes and coordinate interapplicationcommunication.


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XML document requirements—such as grouping, nested hierarchies, and namespace support—areprovided using a toolset optimized for these constructs. BizTalk Editor supports migration from earlierdocument type definition (DTD) and XML-Data Reduced (XDR) specifications, as well as flat-file anddelimited message type support. Core capabilities of BizTalk Editor include hierarchical documentview, document validation, instance generation, schema testing, and schema import/export. Inaddition, the toolset can be extended (by custom development or third-party offerings) to supportother document types and standards.

BizTalk Editor supports the creation of Universal Application Network common objects. With BizTalkMapper, these schemas can be mapped to the specific structures of the source and target systems.

Figure 5 shows how BizTalk Mapper allows document specifications to be mapped and transformedusing standards-based XSLT maps. The intuitive visual interface supports 1:N, N:1, and N:N mappingwith support for rich transformation operations that range from text conversions, mathematicalcomputations, database look-ups, and function calls to external components. Source and targetspecifications are represented in a common fashion so that the documents—whether XML, flat file,or other—can be mapped using the same visual interface.

Figure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk Mapper


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The following sections discuss these three key components and how Siebel and Microsoft havejointly created a best-of-breed solution to address the challenges of cross-application integrationthat exist within today’s dynamic enterprises.

Business Process Library

Siebel Systems provides the business process library, which is a collection of best-practice businessprocesses—such as Customer Creation or Quote to Cash—that can be configured and executed acrossmultiple systems. Universal Application Network supports a nested business process model throughthe use of smaller subprocesses coordinated with, and subordinate to, larger business processes.In the Quote to Cash business process, for example, the order creation step uses several subprocessessuch as Check Availability, Check Credit and Calculate Tax.

The business processes are extensible, upgradeable, and supported by Siebel Systems, allowingcompanies to quickly and easily customize the best practices to meet their unique needs while loweringupgrade, maintenance, and support costs. Table 1 provides a summary of just a few of the industry-specific best-practice business processes that are supported by Siebel eBusiness Applications.

Table 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry Processes

Energy

• Adjust invoice

• Manage payments

• Manage trouble tickets

• Dispatch field service

• Quote to order

• Create new premises

Finance

• Process trade order

• Service casemanagement

• Account origination

• Retail financemarketing

• Manage call reports

• Create customerfinancial plan

Communications

• Create and validateorder

• Process order

• Invoice to cash

• Resolve bill inquiry


• Suspend service

• Change service

• Disconnect service

Consumer sector

• Manage tradepromotions

• Manage trade funds

• Plan sales volume

• Manage assortmentplans

• Manage retailexecution

• Conduct van sales

• Manage deductions

Business processes consist of three components: business process flows, common objects, andtransformation maps.

Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business process flows orchestrate a sequence of steps across multipleapplications to achieve a business objective. They are defined using an industry-leading specificationsuch as BPEL4WS, based on Web services standards.

Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common objects are a composite of application data models. They comply withindustry-specific standards. Because each application has a unique data model, the use ofcommon objects eliminates the need to map the data models of different applications directly toone another; instead, each data model is mapped to common objects. In fact, the resultingcommon objects are not a superset of the various application data models. Only the data fieldsrelevant to the business process library are represented in the common objects. Siebel Systemsprovides a set of common objects needed for the business processes. Some examples of commonobjects are listed in Table 2.


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BizTalk Server represents these processes using the BPEL4WS standard to ensure interoperabilitywith other automated processes.

Figure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration Designer

Using the BizTalk Orchestration Designer’s comprehensive visual tools, business analysts can quicklydefine, design, and deploy automated business processes that span applications, organizations,and time. Also, complete XML Web Services processes can be quickly assembled, managed, anddynamically updated. You can build distributed systems that seamlessly aggregate XML WebServices and applications running anywhere, from within the enterprise to across multiple tradingpartners via the Internet.

Transformation Modeler: BizTalk Editor and BizTalk Mapper

For Universal Application Network, a transformation modeler is used to define transformation maps,which describe mappings between common objects and application-specific objects. You can dragand drop fields and choose available functions libraries to define transformations. A transformationmodeler can also be used to define custom transformations. It must accept and produce XSDschemas and XSLT-based transformations.

BizTalk Server fulfills the transformation modeler requirements with the BizTalk Editor and BizTalkMapper tools. BizTalk Server natively supports XSD schema creation, editing, and transformationusing XSLT processing. Because it was built from the ground up on these XML standards, BizTalkServer offers robust capability and support with high performance transformation capabilities.


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Business Process Flow Modeler: BizTalk Orchestration Designer

For the Universal Application Network, the business process flow modeler enables the user to describebusiness processes at various levels of abstraction. A business analyst uses the modeler to describethe business process independent of the underlying applications. A developer can then further refinethe description by providing process flows that indicate how a specific application accomplishes thesteps in the process.

A business process flow modeler also provides visual representation of error conditions, transactionalboundaries, and compensating transactions. The modeler must accept and produce XML WebServices–based representations of the defined processes.

As shown in Figure 4, BizTalk Server supports the process flow modeling requirement with BizTalkOrchestration Designer. With BizTalk Orchestration Designer, you can define a complete businessprocess at a conceptual level and then bind the implementation to specific services and components.

BizTalk Orchestration Designer offers the following capabilities to support business processflow modeling:

• Abstraction of external services and data sources

• Complex business rule support

• Transaction boundary definition with compensating process support

• Time-out and listener functions

• Branching, parallel execution, joining, and correlations of tasks and message flows


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The Universal Application Network common object model is defined using the XSD standard,making it easier and more flexible to describe, exchange, and validate business information.

Table 2 Sample Universal Application Network Common ObjectsTable 2 Sample Universal Application Network Common ObjectsTable 2 Sample Universal Application Network Common ObjectsTable 2 Sample Universal Application Network Common ObjectsTable 2 Sample Universal Application Network Common Objects

Transformation Maps—Transformation Maps—Transformation Maps—Transformation Maps—Transformation Maps—Based on XSLT standards, these provide mappings between the applicationdata models and the common objects, and application-specific objects. For example, in SiebeleBusiness Applications, Country might be represented as “U.S.” and be mapped to Country incommon objects as “United States.” Siebel Systems provides prebuilt transformation maps to popularapplications, such as Siebel, SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and JDE. Universal Application Network reducesthe total number of transformations by mapping an application’s data model to a common objectmodel instead of directly to another application’s data model.

Configuring a Universal Application Network Business Processwith BizTalk Server

In the context of Universal Application Network, integration scenarios need a graphical tool fordeveloping and configuring business process solutions—including business process flows, commonobjects, and transformation maps. Such a design tool must include import and export capabilitiesto read and write definitions of the business process solutions in XML-based standards.

A design tool for Universal Application Network should consist of two components, referred to conceptu-ally as the business process flow modeler and the transformation modeler. BizTalk Server provides away to visually define and build robust, distributed business processes with BizTalk OrchestrationDesigner and with BizTalk Mapper and BizTalk Editor, as explained in the following sections.


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ActivityAddressAR BalanceAssetATP CheckBenefitsBillBill of MaterialBusiness EntityCalendarClass StructureContactContentCost ListCredit CheckCurrency

Currency CodeCurrency ExchangeRateCustomerDepartmentEmployeeEmployee CodesEmployee Life EventEmployee WorkScheduleExchange RateForecastFraud AlertsGL Account CodesHousehold

IndustryInventory TransactionInvoiceLanguageLine PricingJobJob PostingLoyalty/AffinityMarketing Campaign ResponseNews StoryOperating LocationOperating UnitOpportunity

OrderOrder PricingOrganization andDivisionPaymentPerformance Mgmt.Poticy QuotePrice ListPricing RuleProductProduct AttributeProjectProspect SegmentQuoteRate CodeRate List

RevenueSalarySales TaxService OrderService ProfileService RequestShipmentShipment TrackingShopping CartTraining ContentTraining RegistrationTraining Scores

The following sections discuss these three key components and how Siebel and Microsoft havejointly created a best-of-breed solution to address the challenges of cross-application integrationthat exist within today’s dynamic enterprises.

Business Process Library

Siebel Systems provides the business process library, which is a collection of best-practice businessprocesses—such as Customer Creation or Quote to Cash—that can be configured and executed acrossmultiple systems. Universal Application Network supports a nested business process model throughthe use of smaller subprocesses coordinated with, and subordinate to, larger business processes.In the Quote to Cash business process, for example, the order creation step uses several subprocessessuch as Check Availability, Check Credit and Calculate Tax.

The business processes are extensible, upgradeable, and supported by Siebel Systems, allowingcompanies to quickly and easily customize the best practices to meet their unique needs while loweringupgrade, maintenance, and support costs. Table 1 provides a summary of just a few of the industry-specific best-practice business processes that are supported by Siebel eBusiness Applications.

Table 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry ProcessesTable 1 Selected Siebel Industry Processes

Energy

• Adjust invoice

• Manage payments


• Dispatch field service

• Quote to order

• Create new premises

Finance

• Process trade order

• Service casemanagement

• Account origination

• Retail financemarketing

• Manage call reports

• Create customerfinancial plan

Communications

• Create and validateorder

• Process order

• Invoice to cash

• Resolve bill inquiry


• Suspend service

• Change service

• Disconnect service

Consumer sector

• Manage tradepromotions

• Manage trade funds

• Plan sales volume

• Manage assortmentplans

• Manage retailexecution

• Conduct van sales

• Manage deductions

Business processes consist of three components: business process flows, common objects, andtransformation maps.

Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business Process Flows—Business process flows orchestrate a sequence of steps across multipleapplications to achieve a business objective. They are defined using an industry-leading specificationsuch as BPEL4WS, based on Web services standards.

Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common Objects—Common objects are a composite of application data models. They comply withindustry-specific standards. Because each application has a unique data model, the use ofcommon objects eliminates the need to map the data models of different applications directly toone another; instead, each data model is mapped to common objects. In fact, the resultingcommon objects are not a superset of the various application data models. Only the data fieldsrelevant to the business process library are represented in the common objects. Siebel Systemsprovides a set of common objects needed for the business processes. Some examples of commonobjects are listed in Table 2.


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BizTalk Server represents these processes using the BPEL4WS standard to ensure interoperabilitywith other automated processes.

Figure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration DesignerFigure 4 BizTalk Orchestration Designer

Using the BizTalk Orchestration Designer’s comprehensive visual tools, business analysts can quicklydefine, design, and deploy automated business processes that span applications, organizations,and time. Also, complete XML Web Services processes can be quickly assembled, managed, anddynamically updated. You can build distributed systems that seamlessly aggregate XML WebServices and applications running anywhere, from within the enterprise to across multiple tradingpartners via the Internet.

Transformation Modeler: BizTalk Editor and BizTalk Mapper

For Universal Application Network, a transformation modeler is used to define transformation maps,which describe mappings between common objects and application-specific objects. You can dragand drop fields and choose available functions libraries to define transformations. A transformationmodeler can also be used to define custom transformations. It must accept and produce XSDschemas and XSLT-based transformations.

BizTalk Server fulfills the transformation modeler requirements with the BizTalk Editor and BizTalkMapper tools. BizTalk Server natively supports XSD schema creation, editing, and transformationusing XSLT processing. Because it was built from the ground up on these XML standards, BizTalkServer offers robust capability and support with high performance transformation capabilities.


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Universal Application Network and BizTalk Server:A Best-of-Breed Solution

BizTalk Server is designed to support the same fundamental integration concepts as UniversalApplication Network. Because both are built on open XML standards, BizTalk Server design toolscan create and extend Universal Application Network business processes. The BizTalk Serverexecution engine runs these business processes with the performance and reliability needed formission-critical enterprise processes. Figure 3 illustrates how BizTalk Server supports the UniversalApplication Network implementation.

Figure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application NetworkFigure 3 BizTalk Server and Universal Application Network

Universal Application Network includes three primary components, which BizTalk Server can support:

• Best-Practice Business Process Library—A library of prepackaged, industry-specific businessprocesses based on best practices. These pre-built, quality-assured business processes can beexecuted across multiple applications, departments, organizations, and enterprises.

• Business Process Design Tool—Integration scenarios are best facilitated with a graphical tool fordeveloping and configuring business process solutions. BizTalk Orchestration Designer is used tomodel and configure existing business processes and create new ones.

• Integration Server—The integration server must coordinate communication between and amongapplications. BizTalk Server is used to execute business processes and coordinate interapplicationcommunication.


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XML document requirements—such as grouping, nested hierarchies, and namespace support—areprovided using a toolset optimized for these constructs. BizTalk Editor supports migration from earlierdocument type definition (DTD) and XML-Data Reduced (XDR) specifications, as well as flat-file anddelimited message type support. Core capabilities of BizTalk Editor include hierarchical documentview, document validation, instance generation, schema testing, and schema import/export. Inaddition, the toolset can be extended (by custom development or third-party offerings) to supportother document types and standards.

BizTalk Editor supports the creation of Universal Application Network common objects. With BizTalkMapper, these schemas can be mapped to the specific structures of the source and target systems.

Figure 5 shows how BizTalk Mapper allows document specifications to be mapped and transformedusing standards-based XSLT maps. The intuitive visual interface supports 1:N, N:1, and N:N mappingwith support for rich transformation operations that range from text conversions, mathematicalcomputations, database look-ups, and function calls to external components. Source and targetspecifications are represented in a common fashion so that the documents—whether XML, flat file,or other—can be mapped using the same visual interface.

Figure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk MapperFigure 5 BizTalk Mapper


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Another best practice embedded in this process is needs analysis. The service agent uses anautomated tool to guide the customer through a needs evaluation to generate a personalizedcoverage recommendation. This evaluation may suggest that by combining auto and home insurancepolicies with the insurer, the customer can buy increased coverage for the same cost. The solutionautomatically prompts the agent to cross-sell such relevant offers based on the customer’spurchase decision; thus delivering additional value to the customer.

In order for the above process to be completed in a single interaction, real-time integration withmultiple systems—including risk scoring and rating calculation—is needed. Universal ApplicationNetwork provides this real-time, cross-application business processes and BizTalk Server providesthe unified tool for design and deployment of the solution.

Solving the Challenge of Cross-Application Integration

Application integration represents a major challenge and expense for organizations, accounting forup to 35 percent of the overall cost of a typical IT implementation. Universal Application Network isa customer-centric solution from Siebel Systems that solves the complex, cross-application integrationproblem within and across the enterprise in a highly cost-effective way. Microsoft brings years ofinfrastructure knowledge encapsulated in the robustness and scalability of BizTalk Server to providea complementary, best-of-breed solution. Using BizTalk Server to implement the Universal ApplicationNetwork, companies can rapidly design, deploy, and optimize cross-application best-practice businessprocesses, while reducing their total cost of ownership and increasing their return on investment.

Universal Application Network is based on XML and Web services standards, including WSDL (WebServices Description Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and BPEL4WS (BusinessProcess Execution Language for Web Services). Universal Application Network solves the integrationproblem by providing:

• A solution based on Web services and XML standards, for defining business processes that canbe executed on any standards-compliant integration technology platform, and

• A library of prepackaged, industry-specific business processes based on best practices. Thesebusiness processes include the data transformations and common objects required for applicationswith different data models to interoperate with each other.

Microsoft BizTalk Server provides a platform for designing, customizing, and executing thesebusiness processes. With BizTalk Server technology and Universal Application Network, organizationscan finally realize the strategic benefits of intra- and interenterprise cross-application integration atdramatically reduced cost, complexity, and time to deployment. They can move from being a product-centric enterprise to a truly customer-driven enterprise.

Martin Walmsley e-BusinessDevelopment Manager LloydsTSB Commercial Finance

“We see Web serviceschanging the way that LloydsTSB Commercial Financedoes business…BizTalk Serverenabled us to create theFirstCheck solution quicklyand easily. Now, not only arewe able to give our customersreal-time credit references,we are also lowering ourcosts for these credit checks,as well as providing a servicethat has already begun toincrease our customer base.Our initial experience withBizTalk Server has encouragedus to look into using BizTalkServer to orchestrate otherWeb services applications inthe future.


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The BizTalk Mapper natively supports mapping and transformation capabilities required for theUniversal Application Network, including direct, isomorphic, and semantic mapping in addition tostructural transformation, dynamic and static cross-referencing, and default-value setting. TheBizTalk Mapper’s power, flexibility, and ease of use enables rapid productivity in creating complexmappings to and from external systems and Universal Application Network common objects.

Executing the Universal Application Network Business Processwith BizTalk Server

A Universal Application Network integration server coordinates communication between and amongapplications. BizTalk Server’s robust architecture allows for a highly functional, scalable, andreliable implementation of the Universal Application Network integration server requirements asshown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration ServerFigure 6 Universal Application Network Integration Server

By abstracting the physical connections from the process flow, business processes can be implementedefficiently and modified with a high degree of flexibly to meet changing business needs. Thefollowing components and capabilities meet these Universal Application Network requirements.

BizTalk Pipeline Designer

Pipelines are used to create the base processing required to interface with specific source andtarget systems. Document parsing/serializing, transport specification, security authorization/identification, encryption/decryption, and custom pre-/postprocessing are handled in the pipelineprocessing. This capability enables endpoints to be abstracted from the business process modeland aligns with the the common services interface concept in the Universal Application Networkarchitecture. Figure 7 illustrates the BizTalk Pipeline Designer components.

Benefit summary

BizTalk Server

•Rapid implementation

•Rapid orchestration ofcomplex businessprocesses

•Maximum flexibility

•Extensive standards-basedintegration

•Reliable, secure documentdelivery

•Effective standards-basedsecurity


Universal ApplicationNetwork IntegrationServer Requirements

•Transport layer to providequeuing, deliver messages,and support synchronousand asynchronousmessaging

•Adapter to connectapplications to thetransport layer

•Common object modelsupport that is extensibleand supports customer-developed objects

•Transformation layer, whichexecutes transformationsat run time

•Business process controllerthat executes a businessprocess, supports long-running transactions anderror handling, and monitorsthe status of processes

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Understanding Best-Practice Business Processes

Leveraging its industry-leading expertise in CRM, Siebel Systems has modeled a comprehensiveset of cross-industry and industry-specific business processes. Siebel Systems also has extensiveproducts that embody industry-specific, customer-oriented processes for more than 20 industrysegments—including high technology, automotive, retail banking, insurance, telecommunications,consumer goods, and pharmaceuticals.

These processes reflect the unique customer-facing requirements for each industry or segment.By providing prebuilt support for best-practice processes, Siebel eBusiness Applications enableorganizations to accelerate their deployment and reduce total cost of ownership. The followingsection illustrates how an insurance company can achieve improved close rates, facilitate cross-sells,and enhance customer satisfaction using best-practice business processes.

Example: Best-Practice Business Process for Insurance

When a customer contacts the call center to buy a new insurance policy, the ensuing process canbe complex. For most insurers, this process involves several manual steps and takes many days tocomplete. Typically, the insurer mails forms to the customer, creating considerable lag time betweeninitial contact and completion of the process. Consequently, many customers lose interest and donot return the application, resulting in lost sales for the insurer.

In contrast, the best practice is “one and done”—that is, the process is completed during a singlecall (Figure 2). Using this best practice, the service agent qualifies the prospect using risk data,analyzes the insurance needs, and generates a quote using the rate-calculation engine. Once thecustomer agrees to the quote, the agent completes the administrative details and issues the policy.All these steps are completed during a single customer interaction. The customer feels exceptionallywell served, and the company has higher conversion rates.

Figure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer SatisfactionFigure 2 Best-Practice Business Process: Increase Customer Satisfaction


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Figure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline DesignerFigure 7 BizTalk Pipeline Designer

Adapter Framework

BizTalk Server provides an advanced adapter framework that allows for custom and packagedsystem interfaces to be integrated into the BizTalk Server environment. Using XML Web Services asthe standard interface mechanism—and adding common configuration metadata, user interfacecomponents, and management interfaces—adapters to complex proprietary systems appear asnative BizTalk Server XML Web Service interfaces.

Siebel eBusiness applications include the Application Service Interface (ASI) framework. Thedefinitions for an ASI are expressed as WSDL services. BizTalk Server’s adapter framework directlyinteracts with Siebel ASIs to provide quick integration. Also, BizTalk Server’s comprehensive libraryof adapters for popular applications and technologies ensures rapid integration with virtually anyapplication or technology.


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Management Console

The BizTalk Server execution engine provides complete manageability, control, auditing, and post-process analysis. The BizTalk Server management console provides administrative and controlcapabilities. In addition, full integration with Microsoft Operations Manager allows for effectiveadministration in a managed IT environment, including alerts, monitoring dashboard capabilities,and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) message generation. By storing process stateinformation in an accessible repository, BizTalk Server can perform real-time process monitoring,post-process auditing, and aggregate-process auditing. These capabilities let companies optimizeprocesses to ensure business value has been maximized.

Scalability, Availability, and Security

The BizTalk Server execution engine allows for clustering to “scale out” by adding additional serversand “scale up” by adding additional processors to the existing hardware configuration. In addition,processing components can be spread across servers to optimize the workload and ensure maximumthroughput. Through clustering, passive nodes can remain on standby to ensure high availability inthe event that a server goes down, or peaks in message volume require extra processing capabilities.By creating a virtual processing hub, users receive all the benefits of a central management systemand the scalability of a distributed architecture.

BizTalk Server uses standards-based security—such as PKI, SSL, and S/MIME —for securing datawith a “configure not code” approach.

BizTalk Server is built on the same fundamental integration concepts as Universal Application Network.Because both are built on open XML-based integration, BizTalk Server design tools can create andextend Universal Application Network business process libraries, and the BizTalk Server executionengine runs these processes with the performance and reliability needed for mission-criticalenterprise processes. BizTalk Server provides an ideal toolset and engine to deliver positivebusiness results with Universal Application Network. To better illustrate this synergy, following is anintegration example, based on a scenario from the manufacturing industry.


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CRM best practices derived from more than3,500 customer deployments.

100’s of CRM best practices20 vertical product lines3,200 pre-configured views8 horizontal product lines

Track business performance

Seamless application integration

Delivering an Optimal Customer Experience

Siebel eBusiness Applications enable companies to deploy an integrated set of customer-drivenbest practices across sales, marketing, and customer service. Derived from experience with morethan 3,500 customer deployments and nearly 10 years of customer relationship management(CRM) product development and investment, Siebel Systems has documented hundreds of bestpractices for every aspect of CRM and embedded the practices directly into the functionality ofSiebel eBusiness Applications.

BizTalk Server provides the technology to execute Siebel’s prepackaged, industry-specific, best-practice business processes, while reducing the cost, complexity, and time necessary to completethe integration.

Figure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric EnterpriseFigure 1 The Siebel Solution: Building a Customer-centric Enterprise

Eric Austvold and Joanie RufoAMR Research

“Universal ApplicationNetwork brings a newapproach to integration byembedding industry-specificcustomer business processes,gained from Siebel’s 3,500customer implementations,in layers on top of industry-standard technology. It letsorganizations implement andmaintain business processesfrom a central standpointwhile also eliminating theneed to write and maintainhundreds of point-to-pointintegrations betweenapplications.”


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Building a Customer-centric Enterprise

Before discussing the technologies and processes that create a fully integrated organization, it isimportant to understand the underlying business needs at work. Today’s business organizationsincreasingly recognize that to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, they must become evenmore customer-driven. Business processes must be designed with the customer in mind, making iteasy for customers to do business with the organization across any communication channel—callcenter, Web, face-to-face, and third-party sales and service partners.

Business processes need to become more customer-driven, and businesses have become keenlyaware that their customers do not consistently receive exceptional customer service. For example,at many financial services companies, long-standing customers in one line of business—checkingaccounts, for instance—might not be recognized when they contact the mortgage-lending departmentto apply for a home loan. The bank is not able to provide the personalized service customers expect;instead, customers must go through the tedious process of reidentifying themselves, filling outmultiple forms to provide information that the bank should already have. Customers becomefrustrated, and the bank loses the opportunity to seamlessly offer higher margin services to itsexisting customers. Because acquiring new customers is more expensive, this increases the totalcustomer acquisition cost for the bank’s various lines of business.

Success Factors

Four key factors are necessary to ensure an optimal customer experience:

Information Availability—When customer data is scattered throughout the organization in informationsilos based on product, line of business, or communication channel, companies are left with ahighly fragmented and incomplete view of their customers. By coordinating customer interactionsacross these silos, workers throughout a company can conduct a personalized, ongoing dialog withits customers.

Best-Practice Business Processes—Best-practice business processes are designed with customerneeds and preferences in mind and enable an organization to serve its customers the way they wantto be served. For example, a telecommunications firm might design its billing cycle to increasecustomers’ ease of doing business with the company while optimizing billing office efficiency.Instead of invoicing and requiring a payment according to dates solely driven by system processing,the company can customize billing cycles according to individual customer preferences and applybest practices for billing.

Cross-Application Business Processes—Most enterprise business processes interact with multipleapplications. Historically, because of the cost and complexity of enterprise application integration,companies have been unable to deploy business processes that seamlessly span multiple applica-tions. Overcoming these barriers by integrating existing applications can deliver tangible benefits,including increased order accuracy, faster delivery, and integrated service, resulting in highercustomer satisfaction.

Real-Time Intelligence—Companies require real-time intelligence about their customers’ preferences,requirements, operational performance, and market conditions. Armed with this information, theorganization can swiftly respond to changes in customer behavior and market trends. This respon-siveness results in satisfied customers and a sustainable competitive edge in the marketplace.

Success Factors forEnsuring the Best PossibleCustomer Experience

•Availability of customerinformation throughoutthe organization

•Best-practice businessprocesses that reflectcustomer needs

•Business processes thatspan business units andorganizations

•Real-time intelligence,about customers’ prefer-ences, requirements,operational performance,and market conditions


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Business Process Integration Scenario

A leading climate-control equipment manufacturer produces multimillion-dollar heating, ventilation,and air-conditioning systems. The company currently employs a manual process for managing a neworder from Quote to Cash. The process includes the following steps for the manufacturer:

1. Create and Approve Quote

2. Create and Approve Order

3. Pick/Pack and Ship Order

4. Invoice Order

5. Assign Asset

6. Receive Payment

The Quote to Cash business process interacts with five different functional applications includingcall center, procurement, manufacturing, finance, and shipping. These applications were notintegrated, and so the company had to rely on disjointed methods of communication such as filetransfers and e-mail notifications among these five applications. This kind of quote-to-cash processresulted in cycle times in excess of 90 days from the time a quote is issued to the time the companyreceives payment for the order. The company found that almost 40 percent of all calls to its callcenter were inquiries from customers regarding the status of their orders. Unfortunately, the callcenter representatives could not answer these queries immediately because they did not haveaccess to the order fulfillment system. The delays plus the inability of call center representativesto give adequate responses to customers led to a decline in customer satisfaction.


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Introduction

One of the most significant IT challenges today is the design and deployment of automated business

processes that span multiple applications. In order to enable the deployment of these enterprise

business processes, organizations need to integrate the disparate applications with each other.

According to CIO Magazine, integration is the leading IT priority for today’s CIOs.1

Universal Application Network, launched by Siebel Systems, is a standards-based solution for

cross-application integration that has broad support from the leading integration server vendors

and systems integrators. The next release of Microsoft® BizTalk® Server supports this offering by

providing a standards-based business process design tool and execution engine.

With Universal Application Network, leveraging Siebel business processes and BizTalk Server technology,

organizations can finally realize the strategic benefits of intra- and interenterprise cross-application

integration at dramatically reduced cost, complexity, and time to deployment. This combined solution

enables an organization to move from being a product-centric enterprise to a truly customer-driven

enterprise. This paper presents the following:

• Current business challenges faced by companies and the factors required to build a customer-

centric enterprise

• Universal Application Network: the Siebel solution for building an integrated customer-centric

enterprise and how BizTalk Server effectively supports the implementation of Universal Application

Network business processes

• A practical example of how BizTalk Server and Universal Application Network can work to deploy

best-practice business processes for a manufacturer

1 CIO Magazine, March 1, 2002


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The Solution

The manufacturer decided to automate its Quote to Cash business process to address theseproblems. It company evaluated a custom, point-to-point integration approach to building the businessprocess flows and the transformation maps between and among the five applications. Using thisapproach, the company would also need to build a custom adapter to its legacy procurementsystem, which would incur significant implementation costs. Additionally, such a custom implementationwould be difficult to upgrade as the underlying applications could go through substantial datamodel changes and create the need to rebuild the integrations. This customization would result inhigh ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs.

Instead, the company implemented the faster, lower-cost Universal Application Network with theMicrosoft BizTalk Server running best-practice business processes from Siebel.

Using BizTalk Server to execute the Universal Application Network, the company followed four simplesteps to provide a fully working integration that meets all business needs. First, the company selectedthe prepackaged, manufacturing-specific Quote to Cash business process from the UniversalApplication Network business process library. The system analysts were able to extend and modifythis business process as needed by using BizTalk Orchestration Designer.

Figure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for ManufacturingFigure 8 Quote to Cash Business Process for Manufacturing

The developers used BizTalk Editor and BizTalk Mapper to select the appropriate Universal ApplicationNetwork common objects and transformation maps. And, finally, they used the .NET-based BizTalkServer adapter framework and Web services to connect the business applications to the UniversalApplication Network.


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AbstractAbstractAbstractAbstractAbstract

This paper is written for IT professionals and technical decision makers who are familiar with

enterprise software and integration technologies. It provides an overview of Microsoft® BizTalk®

Server’s support for Universal Application Network, Siebel’s standards-based solution for cross-

application integration. By leveraging the power of Universal Application Network, BizTalk Server

provides rapid and flexible implementation of integrated business processes with scalable, reliable,

and secure execution.

The latest information on Microsoft BizTalk Server is available at

http://www.microsoft.com/BizTalk/

The latest information on Universal Application Network is available at

http://www.siebel.com/products/application_network/

This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the software described herein.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft mustrespond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any informationpresented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in orintroduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the expresswritten permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided inany written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places and events depicted herein are fictitious, and noassociation with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place or event is intended or should be inferred.

© 2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft and BizTalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

M


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In addition to enjoying a streamlined, automated process, the company can use XML Web Servicesthrough BizTalk Server to display statistics in Microsoft® Excel, such as the real-time status of allorders in the system (Figure 9).

Figure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk ServerFigure 9 Process Analysis Displayed in Excel via XML Web Services from BizTalk Server

Benefits

This solution enables the company to eliminate a large portion of the custom approach by leveragingprebuilt business process flows, common objects, transformation maps, and the Web servicesframework for BizTalk Server connectivity. The company was able to deploy a mission-critical, enterprisebusiness process at a substantially lower cost, and in less time, than a custom implementation.

CONCLUSION

The Microsoft® BizTalk® Server and Universal Application Network from Siebel Systems are based ona common vision of process automation and systems integration through standards-based imple-mentations. Siebel Systems’ knowledge of best-practice, customer-driven business processes, capturedin Universal Application Network-specified designs and implemented with BizTalk Server, providescompanies with the capabilities needed to leverage legacy technology assets and new systemimplementations without being locked into functional silos. BizTalk Server provides a unified tool fordesign through the deployment of end-to-end, industry-specific business processes while reducingthe cost, complexity, and time of cross-application integration.

By combining the deep customer business process knowledge captured in Universal Application Networkwith the technical capabilities of BizTalk Server, companies will gain the ability to implement, modify, andextend business processes gaining competitive advantage through increased customer satisfaction.

" Application integration isone of the top challengesfor CIOs--a fact I canvalidate here at the newHP," said HP President,Michael D. Capellas. "Universal ApplicationNetwork, combiningprepackaged businessprocesses from SiebelSystems based on bestpractices in sales,marketing, and service,and Microsoft's BizTalkServer, provides acomprehensive businessprocess integration solutionfor companies like HP withthousands of applicationsin operation. UniversalApplication Network willreduce our overallintegration efforts and helpto ensure the success ofour IT integration."

Enabling best-practice,cross-application businessprocess integrationthrough best-of-breedtechnologies

Microsoft® BizTalk® ServerandUniversal ApplicationNetwork

October 2002

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