Business Process Management (BPM) is a field of management focused on aligning organizations with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. Business process management attempts to improve processes continuously.
A business process is “a collection of related, structured activities that produce a service or product that meet the needs of a client.” These processes are critical to any organization as they generate revenue and often represent a significant proportion of costs. As a managerial approach, BPM considers processes to be strategic assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and improved to deliver value added products and services to clients. This approach can be supported, or enabled, through technology to ensure the viability of the managerial approach in times of stress and change.
BPM enables business to respond to changing consumer, market, and regulatory demands faster than competitors – creating competitive advantage. Erich Stauffer practices business process management.