Business process management (BPM) is a methodology to manage processes and workflows in an organization. The goal of BPM is to increase efficiency, performance, and agility in the day-to-day operations of a business. BPM has been widely adopted by organizations and is essential for any enterprise businesses that want to be competitive in todayâ??s marketplace. For example, the worldâ??s leading airlines utilize BPM to manage flight schedules and terminal operations.

BPM Methodology

BPM methodology can generally be implemented in the following steps:

Analysis: Comprehensive analysis is done to discover and identify processes that can be created or optimized to meet business requirements or improve performance. Specifications for a design solution can be derived from this analysis.

Design: The design of a process involves workflows that include human-to-human, system-to-system, or human-to-system interactions. The design should aim to reduce errors and maintain relevant standard operating procedures or service level agreements.

Modeling: Once the process design is ready, it can be modeled using varying input values to observe its behavior. If undesirable behavior is observed, design changes can be made iteratively. Software tools are available to effectively model and evaluate processes.

Execution: A process model can be executed using a business rules engine to govern process execution.

Monitoring: During execution, processes can be monitored to collect reporting data for performance, errors, and compliance. Monitoring allows businesses to evaluate executed BPM solutions against corresponding design models and against relevant KPIs. Data collected by real-time or ad-hoc monitoring can also be used by predictive analytics software to anticipate future problems.

Optimization: Data from the modeling and monitoring phases can be used to identify areas of the solution that can be improved to derive higher efficiency and better value.