Business process management (BPM) is a leading concept in the field of work organization and process technologies - a field strewn with three-letter acronyms like TQM, TPS, and BPA. While all these other concepts definitely have their applications, BPM is generally a broader concept, and can actually be used as an underlying foundation to these other processes.
BPM brings together a number of work process technologies. The main advantage of BPM as a management tool is that it includes not only process improvements, but also process automation. It can be scaled to fit the need, whether that's within a single department, throughout a business unit, within a supply chain, or throughout an entire organization. The Main Functions of BPM What do you "get" when you implement BPM? That depends heavily on what you want it to do, but in general, there are several types of BPM functions: • Planning and modeling • Automation • Execution • Control • Measurement and monitoring • Optimization These functions may be combined in any number of ways, though there are some common sense orders to the combinations. For example, measurement should precede optimization, because you need metrics to know what and how to improve. Modeling comes before automation and/or execution, just as you wouldn't start building a house without blueprints. BPM Can Work With Processes of Any Type Some work processes take place mostly within someone's head. For example, coming up with tagline ideas or outlining a report is a process, most of which happens inside someone's mind before they record the results in a document of some kind. Other processes are discrete steps performed by designated people: one person machines the part, another inspects it, and a third packs it for shipment. Still, other processes are accomplished by computers. Batch data analysis may be an important part of a particular workflow, and BPM could, for example, automate the initiation of the analysis and automatically notify relevant personnel when it's done. BPM can be applied to any of these processes because it's about identifying the steps in a process and optimizing them, which can be done for any process from writing an annual report to assigning tools to work crews. You may be familiar with process-based disciplines, like 6Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM). These are process-based management disciplines, and they may or may not incorporate tasks like automation, and they may not be appropriate for different scopes. For example, 6Sigma has more of a departmental scope, while TQM has an enterprise-wide scope.
