BPM is an approach to improving a company's business processes in a systematic manner. e.g., a BPM application could monitor receiving systems for missing items, or walk an employee through steps to troubleshoot why an order did not arrive. It is the first technology that fosters ongoing collaboration between IT and business users to jointly build applications that effectively integrate people, process and information.
BPM gives an organization the ability to define, execute, manage and refine processes that:
- involve human interaction
- work with multiple applications
- handle dynamic process rules and changes, not just simple, static flows
Important components include process modeling, a graphical depiction of a process that becomes part of the application and governs how the business process performs when you run the application, and Web and systems integration technologies, which include displaying and retrieving data via a Web browser and which enable you to orchestrate the necessary people and legacy applications into your processes. Another important component is business activity monitoring, which gives reports on exactly how and how well the business processes and flow are working.