Business Process Management (BPM) is a business management philosophy. Furthermore, BPM is a knowledge area consolidating business processes and information technology by means of using various methods and techniques for creating, managing and analysing working processes which include people, organizations, applications, documents and various other information as integral parts of any given business process. That is a managerial discipline which includes methodology and process-oriented culture exposed to interdependence of all members of the process chain, as well as a series of activities important for different life stages of a business process. It includes not only software applications but also people, process owners, analysts, IT designers and business users with different skills.
Business is a system of integrated processes. Understanding the way business and business communication works between employees, partners, customers and suppliers is a critical competitive business advantage. Business processes which have a lifecycle can be documented and automated using information technology, and thus directly influence cost reduction.
Nowadays both IT and business experts agree that a successful system starts with a thorough understanding of organization business processes: business processes model, and that business processes are a key factor in organizational integration. The development of business process management technologies enables managers to isolate process flows and business rules from applications in the background and infrastructure, as well as related changes.
The goal of BPM is not only to copy the existing business processes to the information system, but also to improve them with what information technology has to offer.
BPM solutions enable supervision of business processes execution in real-time and this significantly facilitates work and considerably decreases response time in critical situations.
BPM solutions activities can roughly be divided into three parts:
- Business processes design
- Business processes execution
- Business processes supervision
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