Complex Event Processing - Integrating CEP With Business Process Management

Integrating CEP With Business Process Management

Of course, rarely does the application of a new technology exist in isolation. A natural fit for CEP has been with business process management, or BPM. BPM very much focuses on end-to-end business processes, in order to continuously optimize and align for its operational environment.

However, the optimization of a business does not rely solely upon its individual, end-to-end processes. Seemingly disparate processes can affect each other significantly. Consider this scenario: In the aerospace industry, it is good practice to monitor breakdowns of vehicles to look for trends (determine potential weaknesses in manufacturing processes, material, etc.). Another separate process monitors current operational vehicles' life cycles and decommissions them when appropriate. Now one use for CEP is to link these separate processes, so that in the case of when the initial process (breakdown monitoring) discovers a malfunction based on metal fatigue (a significant event) an action can be created to exploit the second process (life cycle) to issue a recall on vehicles using the same batch of metal discovered as faulty in the initial process.

The integration of CEP and BPM must exist at two levels, both at the business awareness level (users must understand the potential holistic benefits of their individual processes) and also at the technological level (there needs to be a method by which CEP can interact with BPM implementation).

Computation-oriented CEP's role can arguably be seen to overlap with Business Rule technology.

For example, customer service centers are using CEP for click-stream analysis and customer experience management. CEP software can factor real-time information about millions of events (clicks or other interactions) per second into business intelligence and other decision-support applications. These "recommendation applications" help agents provide personalized service based on each customer's experience. The CEP application may collect data about what customers on the phone are currently doing, or how they have recently interacted with the company in other various channels, including in-branch, or on the Web via self-service features, instant messaging and email. The application then analyzes the total customer experience and recommends scripts or next steps that guide the agent on the phone, and hopefully keep the customer happy.

Another example of CEP in practice is in the healthcare industry. The HyReminder system, developed by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and UMass Medical School, continually tracks healthcare workers for hygiene compliance (e.g. sanitizing hands and wearing masks), reminding them to perform hygiene when appropriate to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Each worker wears an RFID badge that displays a green (safe), yellow (warning) or red (violation) light, depending on what behavior the RFID chip has observed.