What is business process management, after all? A new concept for a new context

Abstract

Business processes result in products or services being delivered by organizations. Their importance results from the fact that they integrate different activities that are developed in distinct functional areas, involving workers, customers and business partners with a common objective. However, many organizations are structured and guided by specific functions, which makes it difficult for this thorough understanding of processes to be developed. In addition to that, Information Technology tools have historically been based on a data management perspective and not a business process one. Business Process Management (BPM) tries to bring together IT concepts and management theories that deal with managing the life cycle of processes, enabling the design, execution, control, monitoring and analysis of processes by means of methodologies and technologies that can be adapted to change situations in a diligent way, making the objectives of the business more tangible to all those involved. BPM uses concepts that had previously been developed and made popular in business administration, such as reengineering and total quality management, and technologies such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and workflow, in addition to new concepts that are integrated to the organization’s IT structure, such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). This paper presents such concepts and explains how they are directly or indirectly related to BPM, so that the academic and professional communities can better understand their importance.