Recently, there have been many attempts at defining BPM.
As with most words or expressions, over time BPM has picked up connotations [an associated
or secondary meaning] that imply complexity. In reality, BPM is not about complexity. It
is not about software. And, it is not about SOA [service oriented architecture].
A process can be defined as a collection of related, structured activities [a chain of
events] that produce goods or services. If you were to 'manage' your business processes,
you would to take charge or take care of them. Historical note - the beginnings of BPM
were focused on Business Process Reengineering.
BPM can simply be defined as the art or science of managing business processes. If you think about it, most business processes come into being almost by accident. A new company that wants to produce goods or services will come up with a plan to accomplish that feat. That plan will likely identify the steps of a process. Over time, those involved in the production of goods and services will modify the plan - change, add or remove steps.
I see three different complexity levels for BPM implementations.
Manage Business Processes - Document a process and improve that process by removing the non value added steps, improving steps or activities, and improving customer touch points. This is an oversimplification, but you can easily make process improvements without the use of software.
Manage Business Processes with Software - Adding software to the mix provides control and
visibility. It can add a time discipline to the process. It provides visibility into the state of a process. Add these together and you can really shorten process turnaround times. And, you can reduce human errors.
Business Process Automation - Allow the software to perform mundane manual tasks that it is
able to perform. This will further shorten cycle times that will provide more time to accomplish more tasks. Automating steps may involve reading/writing into other enterprise software [this is where SOA could come in to play].
In today's economy, we are all looking at ways to cut costs. So even if you can't get capital for software - It is the right time to manage your business processes to reduce costs.
Scott, I like your comment about most business processes come into being almost by accident. I think that sometimes people forget that, and its ancillary that about 80% of business processes are unstructured (or ad-hoc, human-centric). The BPM tooling and technology focus around structured processes is good - as long as people understand they are looking at only the tip of the business process iceberg.
http://blog.actionbase.com/unstructured-semi-structured-and-structured-processes
"And, it is not about SOA [service oriented architecture]" - it depends...
95% of all 'business processes' in an organisation are nothing more than procedural implementation of the fundamental business services defined in the organisation business model. Service orientation (not SOA)is perfectly applicable methodology for describing Business Architecture via services and their realisation via processes that, in turn, use other services as implementation of their Actions.
I do not argue that there is an element of art in the management but I think that changing a point of view from looking into a miracle' to 'looking into a structure[of services]' can simplify process management significantly
(http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/service_oriented/2009/04/do_we_really_really_have_to_deal_with_bpm_and_processes.php)