Changes in BPM[edit]

Roughly speaking, the idea of business process is as traditional as concepts of tasks, department, production, and outputs..[citation needed] The management and improvement approach as of 2010, with formal definitions and technical modeling, has been around since the early 1990s (see business process modeling). Note that the IT community often uses the term "business process" as synonymous with the management of middleware processes; or as synonymous with integrating application software tasks. This viewpoint may be overly restrictive - a limitation to keep in mind when reading software engineering papers that refer to "business processes" or to "business process modeling".
Although BPM initially focused on the automation of business processes with the use of information technology, it has since been extended[by whom?] to integrate human-driven processes in which human interaction takes place in series or parallel with the use of technology. For example (in workflow systems), when individual steps in the business process require deploying human intuition or judgment, these steps are assigned to appropriate members within the organization.
More advanced forms such as "human interaction management"[6][7] are in the complex interaction between human workers in performing a workgroup task. In this case, many people and systems interact in structured, ad hoc, and sometimes completely dynamic ways to complete one to many transactions.
BPM can be used to understand organizations through expanded views that would not otherwise be available to organize and present, such as relationships between processes. When included in a process model, these relationships provide for advanced reporting and analysis. BPM is sometimes regarded as the backbone of enterprise content management.
Because BPM allows organizations to abstract business process from technology infrastructure, it goes far beyond automating business processes (software) or solving business problems (suite). BPM enables business to respond to changing consumer, market, and regulatory demands faster than competitors[citation needed] - creating competitive advantage.
As of 2010 technology has allowed the coupling of BPM to other methodologies, such as Six Sigma. BPM tools allow users to: vision - strategize functions and processes define - define the goal of the change measure - determine the appropriate measure to determine success analyze - compare the various simulations to determine an optimal improvement improve - select and implement the improvement control - deploy this implementation and by use of user-defined dashboards monitor the improvement in real time and feed the performance information back into the simulation model in preparation for the next improvement iteration re-engineer - revamp the processes from scratch for better results
This brings with it the benefit of being able to simulate changes to business processes based on real-life data (not just on assumed knowledge). Also, the coupling of BPM to industry methodologies allows users to continually streamline and optimize the process to ensure that it is tuned to its market need.[8]
As of 2012 research on BPM has paid increasing attention to the compliance of business processes. Although a key aspect of business processes is flexibility, as business processes continuously need to adapt to changes in the environment, compliance with business strategy, policies and government regulations should also be ensured.[9] The compliance aspect in BPM is highly important for governmental organizations. As of 2010 BPM approaches in a governmental context largely focus on operational processes and knowledge representation.[10] Although there have been many technical studies on operational business processes both in the public and in the private sector, researchers have rarely taken legal compliance activities into account, for instance the legal implementation processes in public-administration bodies.