How to Manage Business Process as Knowledge Assets based on Ontological Approach: Focusing on Sales Order Process

Considering our increasingly interconnected organizations heavily relying on business processes and the growing need for timely accurate knowledge to achieve greater agility in the enterprise, the idea of looking at business processes as a knowledge object is gaining momentum. Business process information is knowledge and should consequently be managed as a valuable organizational asset, particularly because organizations need to react in near real time to environmental changes and events. This paper provides an overview of the situation in this field arguing for a better definition of the intersections between knowledge and business process management. When business process is seen as knowledge, it should be managed as such. We assess and discuss some of the resulting benefits and considering the need for greater dynamic integration between the two domains, we look at ontologies as an interesting technical approach to bridging this gap showing an example for an ontology based sales order process.