A Rules Based Approach to Business Process Management.

�Business Processes are critical assets of any organiza-�tion; they are their core competencies. Business Processes �are the fundamental ways in which a company achieves �their goals. Decisions, resulting in actions, need to be made �during the lifetime of a process. Business Process Man-�agement (BPM) involves designing, automating, analyzing �and improving processes. Data exchanged between systems �is being standardized by the eXtensible Markup Language �(XML) specification. In this paper, we outline the XML-�based Expert System Shell (X-ESS) used to construct the rulesets for making decisions based on XML instance docu-�ments and how this functionality can be integrated into the BPM architecture. BPM technology leverages the emerg-�ing process-oriented protocols allowing inter- and intra-�enterprise collaboration. 1.