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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Business process management (BPM) is the ongoing practice of understanding, managing and improving end-to-end work so it delivers value for an organization and its customers. It covers the people, decisions, handoffs, information and systems involved—not just the software used to automate a task. By making work visible and giving it clear ownership and measures, BPM can help an organization adapt more coherently, though BPM alone does not guarantee enterprise agility.
What is business process management (BPM)?
BPM is a discipline for managing work from its starting point to its intended result. A process might cross departments, employees, software systems and documents. The focus is on whether the entire flow achieves a useful outcome, not whether each isolated task is completed.
A BPM effort begins with an outcome and examines how work actually proceeds: its trigger, steps, decision points, handoffs, exceptions, controls and participants. Teams can then decide what to change, such as removing unnecessary steps, clarifying responsibility, improving an exception path or automating a suitable activity. IEEE describes BPM as end-to-end process management and continuous improvement; Microsoft’s overview describes analysis, design, execution, monitoring and optimization of repeatable work.
BPM is broader than automation
Automation performs or routes selected tasks. BPM asks whether the whole process is well designed, aligned with goals, measurable and open to improvement. As researcher and author Tom Davenport put it in a July 12, 2024 interview with the BPM Institute: “But the key is this: you still need that disciplined process thinking if you’re going to get value out of any technology”.
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What are the stages of BPM?
There is no single required stage count. A common five-stage version is design, model, execute, monitor and optimize. In practice, a useful cycle makes selection and definition explicit and treats improvement as recurring work rather than a one-time rollout.
- Select and define: Choose a process tied to a strategic, customer or operational outcome. Set its boundaries and name an owner.
- Understand and model: Map the current flow, including roles, systems, decisions, handoffs, exceptions and controls. Validate the map with people who do the work.
- Redesign: Identify avoidable delay, errors, rework or confusion. Define a target flow that accounts for customer needs, risk, cost and compliance.
- Implement: Make the necessary changes to roles, policies, systems or automation. Avoid automating a process that is not yet understood.
- Monitor: Track a small set of measures that reflect the intended outcome. Depending on the process, that could include cycle time, error or rework rate, cost, service quality or compliance exceptions.
- Improve: Review results with process participants and owners, then adjust the process when evidence or circumstances change.
Use the process’s own baseline and goals to judge whether a change helped. Generic benchmarks may not fit its volume, risk or service requirements.
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What is an example of BPM?
Consider a retailer’s refund process. The work may include receiving a request, checking eligibility, deciding whether approval is needed, issuing a refund and notifying the customer. A BPM effort would map the full flow, locate delays or unclear decisions, define a better process, and then decide whether routing approvals automatically is appropriate. The team could monitor timelines and errors after implementation.
Microsoft uses a retailer refund workflow to illustrate BPM. It is an illustrative vendor example, not an independently tested result or a guarantee that automation will reduce delays.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesWhat kinds of business processes can BPM address?
Microsoft groups common BPM needs into three patterns. A single process can combine more than one, so these categories are best treated as lenses rather than exclusive types.
- Human-centric: Work that depends on people’s judgment, such as escalating a customer-service issue.
- Integration-centric: Work that moves information between systems, such as synchronizing customer and financial records.
- Document-centric: Work that routes or manages documents, such as handling a contract or invoice.
When assessing a process or possible tool, start with the work to be done. Consider its scope and handoffs, the outcome for customers or other stakeholders, time and quality needs, costs, controls, exception handling, human decisions, system integrations, document handling, auditability, and the organization’s ability to maintain the workflow and its governance. Tool choice should follow those requirements, not dictate them.
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What is enterprise agility, and how can BPM support it?
Enterprise agility is the ability to adapt across an organization while still turning strategy into useful results. Project Management Institute’s Disciplined Agile page defines it as “the timely realization of business value predictably, sustainably and with high quality.” Agility therefore means more than making decisions quickly: an organization also needs to direct resources deliberately and keep execution aligned as conditions change.
BPM can support that ability by making work and handoffs visible, clarifying process ownership and decision rights, connecting measures to outcomes, and creating a controlled way to change workflows. It is an enabling discipline, not a guarantee of agility or financial improvement.
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A 2023 peer-reviewed article by Ronaldo Bernardo Junior and Silvia Ines Dallavalle de Padua proposed “Agile BPM” as “the promotion of BPM in which practitioners stimulate change quickly and flexibly in order to meet organizational demands with compliance and provide a better customer experience”. This is the authors’ proposed definition, not a universal standard.
What the PMI figures do—and do not—show
In a March 2026 press release, PMI reported that 85% of C-suite executives in its research recognized enterprise agility as critical or very important, while 65% said it had been implemented only to a limited extent or not at all. PMI says its manifesto research included two global C-suite surveys with more than 700 responses, interviews with more than 30 C-suite leaders, and a practitioner survey of more than 70 people. These are findings reported by PMI, not universal rates for all executives or organizations.
PMI also reported that 93% of CEOs said they must rethink and challenge assumptions about their operating model or business approach at least every five years. Its manifesto page says 87% identified senior-leadership mindset or resistance as a key barrier, 35% named a disconnect between planning and execution as their top challenge, and 43% said leadership alignment and empowerment would accelerate execution. The material reporting these figures does not provide a full survey instrument or detailed sample breakdown alongside each figure, so they should be read as PMI-reported survey findings rather than causal proof that a particular BPM method produces agility.
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