Research And Implementation Of Business Approval System In Multinational Enterprise Based On Rule Engine

With the sustainable deepening of socialist reform and opening up and the acceleration of proceedings of global economic integration, more and more multinational enterprises have set up branches or even regional headquarters in China. Both the geographical diversification of operations and the management mode innovation of these enterprises increase the difficulty in the business management. Particularly, it occurs the needs of approval on business applications among different subsidiaries and departments, such as business trip, reimbursement, leave, training, application of stationary and materials, purchasing and payment etc.The approval system which is designed to consolidate all the business applications has become one of the most important application systems in enterprises. The key of the approval system are those approval rules, together with internal business rules, which will change with the enterprise development and changing market demand. How to change the rules effectively and flexibly has become a very important problem facing the approval systems. Therefore, the proposition of "Rule Engine" can help to solve this problem.Meanwhile, although general rule engines keep coming out and continue being improved, in the practical application, these rule engines can only support the rule definition file in script or XML format, so it's not convenient for the end users.The intention of this paper is to do the research on the approval system which is based on the rule engine that separates the business rules from business logic, according to the principle of concerns separation. The system is designed to take the rule engine as an independent module, in which to complete the visualization definition, maintenance and management, matching and execution of rules, so as to avoid the application modules being affected from running normally when business rules are changed. And all the modification on the business rules could take effect in the application system immediately. Through this system, enterprises can complete the approval tasks smoothly and correctly, even in the complicated and inconstant situations.This paper has given the basic concepts and ideas in the related fields to the readers with the introduction and review of the current research status of domestic and overseas approval systems and rule engines. With the background of the business approval system for international enterprises, this paper also detailed analyzed the business to be approved, designed the modules of business and requirement, and finally proposed a rule engine component which can support visualization rule edition as well as the approval system solution based on this rule engine component. In this solution, it has carried out the research and design on general framework of the approval system, suitable rule engine framework, system functional modules and interface to external systems. Based on these research and design, this system has also been demonstrated and verified in the paper.This paper has demonstrated the analysis and application of the routine business approval system applied in multinational enterprises. The system not only makes the business approval run automatically, standardly and cross-region under the complicated structure, but also makes general staff instead of professionals able to do the immediate operative visualization definition and maintenance on business rules. Meanwhile, this system also has realized to be connected and exchanged data with other systems, such as finance system, payroll system etc. What's more, this system can help get the whole business process automatic, the reports exported from it are also very essential for the enterprise to do the control on daily finance and HR situation, and negotiate price with suppliers, which effectively assist enterprise in the control of operational cost and generate more values for the enterprise.