Process Engine primerUnderstanding the Business Interaction
viax's Business Interaction concept is foundational to the Process Engine and essential to understanding. It is the blueprint for the “process” being executed by the engine. The Business Interaction aims to model end-to-end processes specific to your business needs and unify capabilities to orchestrate data to any party regardless of channel.
They also allow for an innovative and efficient approach to requirements gathering and delivery by providing a framework for getting everyone on the same page and speaking the same language — tech teams, business stakeholders, subject matter experts, partners, sales, etc.
Furthermore, our Business Interaction Modeler tool allows business analysts and subject experts to model and visualize their interactions. The best part being an API-First SaaS engine, your interactions can be used from anywhere and by anyone you choose — existing systems, ERP, Legacy, CMS tools, commerce platforms, etc.… Providing businesses the ability to unify their experiences.
A Simple Example
Let's look at an example of an end-to-end process that would typically be spread across disparate systems and/or ones restricted to particular roles. The example illustrates how Business Interactions have related to interactions. Related interactions can provide a restricted view for a particular Party or Role.
A Request For Quote Interaction generates a Sales Order Interaction, ultimately with Subscription Contracts Interactions, Invoices, and Deliveries with the Related Parties. Each of these is modeled as a Business Interaction in the Process Engine, each potentially with its lifecycle and workflow.
The journey begins with an Customer coming to our site to buy a complex piece of heavy equipment.
You will begin to appreciate the advantages and liberty that Business Interactions offer. It is unnecessary to mention any specific channel or point solution tool, as these interactions can be used anywhere. In the aforementioned example, all processes are modeled within the Process Engine. However, it is feasible to involve multiple systems with the engine functioning as an orchestrator as needed.
Methodology & Requirements Gathering Tool
You can start seeing the “building blocks” used in our workshops to describe a business case and build requirements. Speaking in these human and business terms is extremely effective in breaking down silos between stakeholders. Read more about the viax Business Interaction Workshops here.
We’ll dive a little deeper below —
The Process Definition
This is where we begin to define the basics of the Business Interaction, things like its name and what we are trying to accomplish for our business case. Recuring Orders?
Transaction Types
It could be Products, Documents, or whatever Transaction Type you model in the engine. You’re not restricted by simply “Products”, or a single type. Mix types to meet the use case needs; such as Products (Physical/Digital), associated Services, etc…
Actors / Documents
Who are the different Parties that will “interact” throughout the lifecycle of the interaction and their associated documents? Parties are typically associated with the interaction via related interactions, e.g., Bill-To via an Invoice.
Capabilities
What capabilities do we want to expose on this interaction — and to whom? Level the playing field by giving everyone access to the same sophisticated tools to shorten cycles. These could be capabilities provided by the viax engine, such as Guided Selling or Product Configuration models, or capabilities already within your ecosystem.
Workflow, Events, Integration, and Orchestration
Our workflow service allows you to model steps and actions specific to business needs. Our Event-Driven architecture allows for listening to any event through the system and deciding how to react to events. Our process orchestration engine is a powerful tool for distributed processes, such as communicating with multiple systems synchronously or asynchronously.
The Business Interaction Modeler
Our Business Interaction Modeler UI tool allows users to model, configure, and visualize the interaction. The tool frees business analysts and subject matter experts from relying on developers. Instead, developers only need to populate key lifecycle areas, such as workflow actions or serverless functions for handling events. This prescribes a much cleaner approach to requirements and development while shortening cycles and drastically increasing time-to-market.
A quick note on the screens below: The viax Digital Business Suite (DBS), our front-end UI, is geared towards the needs of business users. The DBS is extensible and customizable, colors, logos, etc… In the screens below, the DBS is branded to our example business, Tracterra. It can quickly be adapted to your branding.)
Here, we can see a listing of current interactions that have been created in the Process Engine. Users can manage existing interactions or create new ones. Business Interactions are versioned and can be worked on without affecting currently executing interactions.
Let’s create a brand new Business Interaction give it some meta-data. Once we’re ready here and click save, the viax Process Engine will create all the required entities and relationships to get you up and running.
Here we can define the Primary Party of this interaction. What we typically consider a Sold-To doesn’t always best describe the specific party type. viax allows you to model parties more effectively in the business case. Related parties can be added through related interactions.
Model complex workflows to genuinely support the business case. You can also see configurable actions such as “Confirm Price”. Actions can be as complex as process orchestrations with external systems, e.g. ERP, WMS, and so on.
You can also configure when things like Determination Models execute, Pricing Models, Sales Team Determination Models, and Product Restriction Models are examples.
After we’ve defined our interaction, we can build the visual interface for the business users who will be interacting over our interactions. Sales Team, CSR, and Third-Party, can all have interfaces specific to their role.
We can now begin to populate the role’s interface with javascript components from the viax library or build your own to suit the role’s needs.
In Closing
You should start seeing the power of the viax Business Interaction and the range of processes you can model. CPQ, Commerce, Distributor Portals, that unique process you’ve struggled to execute with traditional legacy systems — can now be modeled within a single Process Engine.
Doing so unlocks the new potential to level the playing field across channels and allow everyone to operate over the same process, capabilities, and data.
The metric data on the interactions is also endless, find out where bottlenecks are, see what steps are taking the longest, — with our event-driven architecture each minute change can be tracked.
Feel free to reach out and learn more about the viax Process Engine and Business Interactions.