Business process management (BPM)

Business process management (BPM) can be applied to various organizational procedures, such as customer service, supply chain management, and human resources. For example:

• In customer service, BPM can be used to manage customer inquiries and complaints more efficiently, creating a better customer experience.
• In supply chain management, BPM can be used to optimize the flow of goods and services, reducing overhead and improving time to market. 
• In human resources, BPM can be used to streamline the recruitment and onboarding process to create an optimal candidate experience. 

Most often, a business process flow is a graphical representation that models a business process in your application by using graphical shapes and connectors to define a sequence of events. It consists of a series of tasks or steps that visualize a set of actions within a stage. 

For example, with Pega case management, you can create a sequential process that is a basic set of tasks, and for each stage, you can create multiple processes. By creating multiple processes, you group tasks into logical phases, instead of having a list of tasks that might seem to be loosely connected. For example, for the Submission stage of a recruitment process, you can add processes for “Collect personal information” and “Collect documents.” By adding multiple processes, you also model the order in which case workers complete tasks because a case moves to the next process when all the steps from the previous process are complete. To speed up case processing, you can also create parallel processes that can involve more case workers simultaneously.

BPM refers to managing and improving processes and workflows in an organization, while business process outsourcing (BPO) is the practice of contracting a specific business task or process to a third-party service provider. The provider is responsible for managing and completing the task or process on behalf of the contracting organization. In other words, BPM is a management approach to improve business processes, while BPO is a business strategy to outsource specific processes to a third-party provider.

The main goal of business process management is to optimize an organization's business operations to enhance efficiency, improve performance, foster innovation, and create adaptability to change, ultimately leading to better business outcomes and increased customer satisfaction.

Yes, BPM is almost always a part of CRM (customer relationship management). For example, in the context of the Pega customer relationship management suite of applications, BPM is used to manage and optimize customer interactions and workflows.