Business Process Management (also known as BPM) refers to a set of tools and services to integrate, monitor, and improve an array of inter-related business processes. Processes include any executable tasks essential to the operation of your business--hiring, billing, tracking benefits, and so on. BPM takes into account that all business processes have a lifecycle, and assumes that lifecycle to have four parts: building, driving, monitoring, and optimizing. A combination of software and staff support are needed to use a BMP solution.

The benefits are immediate and obvious. A solid BPM package will help you standardize operations, maintain records, be prepared for audits, assure compliance with federal regulations, and respond to a changing market as quickly and smoothly as possible. An IT staff must collaborate with your business or HR staff in order to make sure that software is supported and is capable of fulfilling the needs of management.

Phases of BPM

During the building phase, you will collaborate to define the goal and create a plan for personnel and software to meet it. The drive phase begins once the processes are being used in daily operations. The drive phase should execute the plan from the build phase with a provision for flagging IT or business staff when exceptions to the expected patterns occur. Monitoring is a particularly important function of BPM software--it is the process by which the design and performance of the processes are evaluated.

In order for your business to grow and succeed, during the fourth and final phase of optimization you must make the most of the data you've gathered through monitoring. Intelligent software can make some automatic adjustments, or give suggestions for improvement which can be reviewed by personnel. One of the primary concerns in selecting a BPM software package is determining which options come from a company that can also provide consulting on how to make the most of the software itself, and the motoring results in particular.