What do we mean by BPM?

I came across an interesting discussion on one of the LinkedIn discussion groups; BPM Guru, which asks What do we mean by BPM.

Greater minds than I have contributed some excellent posts to the discussion, but here is my attempt at answering the question:

BPM is a management discipline that treats process as an asset, where the asset if properly managed ensures that an enterprise aligns its business processes to its business strategy; leading to effective overall company performance through improvements in specific activities/tasks, either within a specific department or across the enterprise.


It presumes that business performance can be improved by assessing the performance of these assets. Makes improvements to these assets based on the assessment and by deploying these improvements with effective change management, ensuring therefore that the business makes the best possible use of the ‘process’ asset.

It measures the effectiveness of the asset in achieving improved business performance, and finally seeks to consider/make further improvements, based upon the outcome from the performance measurement activity.