Model-driven business process integration and management: A case study with the Bank SinoPac regional service platform

IBM Journal of Research and Development, Sep-Nov 2004 by Zhu, J, Tian, Z, Li, T, Sun, W, Et al

A transformation engine is provided to transform the Business View model into an initial skeleton of the IT View model (as illustrated in Figure 7), to which detailed implementation requirements can be added later by IT architects and designers. Starting from the root, the tree progressively shows how the process is decomposed into more manageable or understandable pieces, which can be sublogic nodes that represent factoring of the model or action nodes that represent the implementation of various facets of the model. Different levels and aspects of the tree presentation enable the business analyst and application developer to access and update the corresponding information they care about. The information about program interfaces, input/output parameters, skills required, and major processing logic can be exported as a development task guideline document and then delivered to developers or vendors as a clear description of the development tasks.

The business process flow composition logic captured in the tree structure can easily be adapted. The leaf nodes can easily be re-bound to another tree or executable software artifact, as illustrated in Figure 8. An Action Registry is implemented to maintain and reuse the interface definition of executable software artifacts. With the help of integrated tooling, one can easily perform interface definition import/export with Java source code. The structured logic representation also makes it easy to extract part of the function and implement it with another mechanism. For example, we can extract a subtree and transform it into another flow representation (i.e., WBI Collaboration); the change is localized. The IT View also supports the debugging and simulation of the business process flow application. This capability can verify the function of an application more easily, shortening the design-to-deployment cycle.

3. Case study with Bank SinoPac

Bank SinoPac profile

Bank SinoPac is a Taiwan-based commercial bank that was founded in 1992 with the corporate mission of becoming a trusted financial institution of the Pacific Rim. In the past ten years, it has been able to achieve the best asset quality among commercial banks in Taiwan and a financial network spanning the Pacific. Despite its moderate size, Bank SinoPac has received awards such as "Best Corporate Governance Company in Taiwan" from Euromoney [17], "2003 Bank of the Year in Taiwan" from The Banker [18], and "Best Corporate/Institutional Internet Bank in Taiwan" from Global Finance [19]. In 2002, it was merged with National Security Corporation to form SinoPac Holding, which now owns a client base of more than 1,000,000.

Bank SinoPac's current operation includes 19 business units at the company headquarters, 44 branch offices throughout Taiwan, an offshore banking unit, one branch in Los Angeles and one in Hong Kong, one liaison office in Vietnam, and an affiliated bank in the United States, Far East National Bank, with a fifteen-branch network and a Beijing representative office. To provide an integrated financial service solution, Bank SinoPac has invested heavily in financial peripheral business, including a finance company, a leasing company, and financial consultation.