What is Business Process Management? A business process is a series of interrelated activities that a business organization uses to achieve a specific purpose. Business organizations use numerous business processes to develop, produce and deliver products and services. Each business process involves both human efforts and the use of technology, and it’s often referred to as a socio-technical system. Management is traditionally defined as a process of planning, organizing and controlling activities. Management does not involve actually performing the specific work tasks that produce products and services, but rather enables these tasks to be undertaken in an optimum fashion. Business Process Management (BPM) can thus be viewed as planning, organizing and controlling the network of processes used by an organization. These processes cover management processes such as those needed for strategy development, financial management, human resources, capital investment, technology improvement, information management, and capability improvement. BPM also covers the management of the processes required to produce products and services. Much of the emphasis of BPM has been upon the enterprise-level processes used by senior management to plan, organize and control the business. BPM, however, applies to the management of processes at all levels in the organization, which includes management (planning, organizing and controlling), the processes used by front-line workers. W. Edwards Deming is respected worldwide for his contributions to the improvement of management methods. One factor he emphasized is that, often, front-line workers are criticized for poor performance, when, in fact, individuals are actually performing extremely well and the underlying cause of the poor performance is the process established by the organizational management that the workers are required to follow and not permitted to change.
