Business process management

For related subjects, see Process management (disambiguation).

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Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes.[1][2] Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business processes is BPM.[3] Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used with BPM.[1]

As an approach, BPM sees processes as important assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and developed to announce and deliver value-added products and services to clients or customers. This approach closely resembles other total quality management or continual improvement process methodologies.

ISO 9000:2015 promotes the process approach to managing an organization.

...promotes the adoption of a process approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness of a quality management system, to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements.[4]

BPM proponents also claim that this approach can be supported, or enabled, through technology.[5] As such, many BPM articles and scholars frequently discuss BPM from one of two viewpoints: people and/or technology.

BPM streamlines business processing by automating workflows; while RPA automates tasks by recording a set of repetitive activities performed by humans. Organizations maximize their business automation leveraging both technologies to achieve better results.

  1. ^ a b Jeston, John; Nelis, Johan (21 January 2014). Business Process Management. Routledge. ISBN 9781136172984.
  2. ^ Theodore Panagacos (25 September 2012). The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Management: Everything You Need to Know and How to Apply It to Your Organization. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-1-4774-8613-9.
  3. ^ Palmer, Nathaniel. "What Is BPM". bpm.com. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  4. ^ Source: clause 0.2 of ISO 9001:2000
  5. ^ Managing Performance Through Business Processes, Dominique Thiault, ISBN 978-1-4680-2890-4