Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives

3.4. CASE STUDY: SOA VALUE PROPOSITION

Taking a look at our Return Handling and Expense Approval case studies outlined earlier, we can better understand the SOA value proposition within a real-world context.

SOA Value for theReturn Handling Case Study

Service orientation holds value for MO1, our mail-order company, by reducing the cost and hurdles associated with system integration and by introducing business agility and an opportunity to optimize and automate existing business processes. For example, if a product has been returned because it was damaged during shipping, an electronic business process orchestration will automatically ask the shipping carrier service to file a claim. The orchestration knows the context (the original order placed by the customer) and is able to automatically fetch all the information required by the shipping carrier, such as the waybill number and the account number, through a well-defined service interface. Additionally, in the event that this process must change or new systems must be brought online, these changes can be quickly and easily absorbed into the current service-oriented enterprise via updates to services, processes, or both.

SOA ValueExpense Approval Case Study

HighTree, our IT training company, is currently dependent on multiple human activities to handle expense claims. In addition to the inherent bottlenecks that are present, there is no tracking mechanism and no means of escalating expense claims to another person in order to move ...