Business processes underlie all organizational efforts, and the effectiveness with which they are carried out contributes directly to critical business goals such as customer retention, length of time it takes to fulfill a product order or service, or regulatory compliance.

Business process management (BPM) is a management discipline that combines a process-centric and cross-functional approach to improving how organizations achieve their business goals. A BPM solution provides the tools that help make these processes explicit, as well as the functionality to help business managers control and change both manual and automated workflows. Although early implementations of BPM have unfolded in large enterprises, managing business processes is critical for any size of organization that would benefit from greater visibility into and control over the processes that support their business goals.

Business process management has its origins in total quality management and business process reengineering. While it adds to these a technological framework, it is more than just the combination of these disciplines. BPM is an IT enabled management discipline that promotes organizational agility and supports the efforts of people to drive process change and rapid innovation. As such, BPM supports the alignment of IT and business activities both within the organization and with business partners and suppliers.