Background Job: execute steps in sequence from another system

Dear Experts,

Let's say that I have a background job with 3 steps:

- first step is to run a program in ECC

- second step is to run the program in CRM

- third step is to run a program in ECC

How to do this, that the 2nd step in CRM will be triggered once the 1st step in ECC is finished, and so is the 3rd step?

I'm thinking of using RFC that ECC will call a RFC enabled FM in CRM which will execute the second step program. But I'm not sure if this is a good solution since if the program runs for a long time, then the connection will stay open and we might need to increase the RFC time out value.

Thank you,

Suwandi C.