Business Process Management (BPM) is the discipline of modeling, automating, managing and optimizing business processes to increase profitability. By addressing end-to-end business processes, BPM cuts across departments, applications, and users. It runs inside and outside corporations, touching not only employees, but customers, partners and suppliers. A BPM focus delivers not just increased ROI, but new levels of visibility, accountability, and predictability for the business. With this foundation, everything happens faster and easier with less wasted time and money.

Managing business processes can be complex. A business process is a sequence of structured or semi-structured tasks performed in series or in parallel by two or more individuals or applications to reach a common goal. Behind this simple definition lie a wide variety of routing rules, exception handling procedures, data and document requirements, and other considerations. When a process is automated, all of these issues need to be addressed in ways that encourage use (it’s got to be easy) and works consistently. In addition, even the best-laid plans of process designers are thrown out the window when people take vacations, change responsibilities, or discover new rules.