Exploring the Impact of Workflow Engines on Business Process Management in Enterprise Applications. A case-study: Camunda

Enterprise applications must be able nowadays to handle complex business processes efficiently and effectively. The use of workflow engines enables the automation of business processes and provide a mechanism to define, manage and execute workflows, enabling enterprises to adapt faster to changing business requirements and facilitating the modification of business processes without requiring significant changes to the underlying software code, which can help enterprises to stay competitive in a constantly evolving business landscape. In this paper, an analysis of the impact of using workflow engines on business process management in enterprise applications is presented. The research investigates several benefits which are brought to enterprise applications, such as improved productivity by reducing the dependency on manual intervention, increased efficiency and flexibility. The analysis is done on a case-study application that uses Camunda open-source workflow engine in comparison with Java driven workflow; based on this, the present study also addresses both the advantages and the limitations of Camunda with respect to the possibility of creating flexible development and execution of models and processes in enterprise applications.