Key Concepts and Definitions

Business Process
Any process related to a company's or firm's line of business. Processes are usually well or loosely defined, involve multiple steps, and are meant to be repeatable.

Workflow
The workflow defines the ordering of the steps in a process. Sometimes steps run sequentially (one after another), or simultaneously (in parallel). In addition, workflow may change based on a particular instance of a process or by manual intervention. Workflow defines what happens at each step of a process, who is responsible for that action, and how long that action can take.

Process Participants
The process participants are the actual people who interact with the process. The participants can be made up of employees at a company, outside vendors or contractors, or customers and end-users. In many cases individual participants are assigned roles which allow for easier task assignment to various groups of people. A participant can play many roles in a process.

Tasks
Tasks are the manual intervention steps in a process. Tasks are assigned to either a group of participants or to an individual. Tasks allow a participant to interact with relevant process data and take a course of action based on that person's knowledge and experience.

Data Elements
Each process instance contains information or data specific to that instance of the process. Data elements may be made up of names, addresses, dollar amounts, dates, textual information, and even documents or pictures. Process participants interact or update data at various stages of a process's workflow. Only relevant data is available at each step in a process.

Task Consolidation
One of the main benefits of process automation is the ability to group and organize tasks relevant to a person's role in an organization. Each process participant is presented with their own personal view of tasks that are available or assigned to them. Tasks can be assigned to a group of participants or to a role. This allows for load or work balancing as any available process participant in a role can begin working on a task.