Business Process Management (BPM)

Business Process Management (BPM) is a subject that requires any combination of automation, modelling and execution, as well as control, measuring and optimization of the flow of business activities, to support the enterprise's goals and encompasses employees, systems customers, partners and customers across the company boundaries.

BPM aims to decrease errors and miscommunications and help stakeholders focus on the needs of their jobs.?

BPM is an aspect of the infrastructure management area, which is an administrative function that is concerned with managing and optimizing the organisation's core equipment and activities.?

BPM contributes to the value of the business through expansion in performance, enhanced performance, higher efficiency, more effective staff and superior customer service.?

All of these benefits result directly from the improvement of processes.

BPM began to emerge in the latter part of the 1990s as an antidote to the early 1990s concept of business process Re-engineering (BPR) that was inspired by Michael Hammer and James Champy's book Reengineering the Organization A Manifesto to Business Revolution.

The fundamentals of BPR focused on gaining control over processes while eliminating unnecessary resources and waste. "BPR didn't look at whether or not the processes were improved after the company was cleansed of any redundancies or overlaps however, they did look at the massive cost reductions that resulted from these choices," said Clay Richardson who is a senior analyst of Forrester Research Inc.

"It was a means of cutting down." BPM, in contrast to BPR, relies on the human element. Particularly in industries where the supply of services is entirely dependent on human interaction that is more cooperative, the more humans are in their interactions, the higher chances of continuous improvement.

While BPR controlled the process from the top, BPM began the shift of the design of processes to the lower levels.

There are three types of BPM frameworks currently available in the marketplace.

Horizontal frameworks deal with the creation and development of business processes and are typically focused on technology and reuse.

Vertical BPM frameworks focus on a particular set of tasks that are coordinated and come with pre-built templates that are easily configured and used.

Full-service BPM suites include the five components that are essential to their operation:

• Project scoping and process discovery
• Design and modelling of processes
• Business rules engine
• Workflow engine
• Testing and simulation