BPM is an operational discipline and technology for the provision of end-to-end visibility and control over long-lived, multistep information requests, workflows, or transactions that span multiple applications and people within and between one or more organizations.

As a discipline, BPM supports the definition and execution of business processes. Business processes are customer-centric because all processes start (customer requirements) and end (customer deliverables) with customers.

As a technology, BPM adds a layer of design time and runtime control to application, data management, document management and content management environments. BPM supports business strategy by encapsulating business strategy inside executable business process models.

BPM vs. Workflow Management

Workflows are often a component of BPM, but are not synonymous with it. Unlike workflow management, BPM:

• Does not assume human interaction
• Supports collaboration between processes
• Views tasks and documents as implementation details rather than core elements of the model

BPM vs. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

BPM and SOA are converging as organizations recognize their mutual benefits:

• BPM - Processes are composed of services, which are composed and then called to produce outputs for customers. Processes support the orchestration and late binding of services.
• SOA - Services provide the granularity processes need, and without BPM to provide a business focus, it's hard to know what services to implement or how they should be designed.

History

BPM technology and products evolved from workflow and application integration (EAI) technologies and products. Comprehensive BPM suites generally reflect a workflow or an application integration heritage. These two approaches to business processes are slowly converging.