Features

The CIO.com website defines business process management (BPM) as “a systematic approach to improving an organisation's business processes. BPM activities seek to make business processes more effective, more efficient and more capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment”.

What can be gleaned from the wording of the above is that BPM, contrary to many industry opinions, is a philosophy or methodology and not a point solution. Simply put, what BPM does is allow an organisation to align its resources around business activities and/or processes, and not in traditional departmental fashion. So, for example, an airline would map its ticket booking process from the first customer contact to the point of payment and ticket issue. Once that is mapped, it can ensure that adequate resources are assigned to each step of the process. As such, implementing BPM involves the entire organisation and requires a fundamental shift in company thinking.