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Menu News & Events   Which BPM? July 9th 2007 Since launching this site I have had some great feedback (thanks!) and discussions on 'process'. Some of those discussions have interestingly led back to the definition of what "BPM" actually is. A quick review of the internet will confirm not only the variety of views amongst those who are clearly competitors in the same market/discipline, but also the presence of distinct and different disciplines that use the term or acronym as an abbreviation of their scope. This continually causes confusion amongst practitioners and professionals which must translate into poor customer/client perceptions about the space. There are four dominant site types that will be returned on a search of "BPM" or "business process management". Business Process Management - BProcM (People and Change focus/driven) This is what I would expect from a search on the topic - sites related to the management discipline on focusing the management (identification, design, development, operation, and improvement) of business processes. Interestingly, there are too few sites fitting this description even though it seems to be the broad definition that even the technology-focused use. Business Performance Management - BPerfM A parallel field of interest focused on the processes, analysis and forecasting techniques and technology used to manage the performance of companies. They too seem to suffer the "is it a technology" or is it a "management discipline" ambiguity and according to Wikipaedia are being confused with Business Process Management! Business Process Management - BProcM (Technology focus/driven) These are perhaps the most prevalent sites driven by process technology vendors and consultants offering technology architecture services and/or software suites and development. Workflow tools, SOA solutions, BPM 'engines', Enterprise Architecture, ...the list goes on. Business Process Improvement (PI) Consistent with how many organisations become aware of 'process thinking' and indeed how most BPM deployments start are the sites dedicated to Process Improvement methods and services. It is good to see more being written about the difference between BPM and PI - for my views please see the 3-part article set on BPM and PI: Business Performance Partners. All of which is to say that we need to be clear on the basic definitions of scope in what we do. I encourage you to look at the commonalities and synergies between the various definitions and evolve your own definition of the scope of BPM (or whatever you prefer to call it). Let me know if you are aware of a site that you feel encapsulates the term most effectively.

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