Business Process Management
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Business Process Management

Business Process Management explained - in one minute 
Business Process Management (BPM) [see note] is the use of a specific type of process automation software, typically within the commercial and administrative operations of an organization.
This software does five main jobs. It:
gives business managers direct control of existing and new application software,

gives them online information on how processes are performing,

helps them act rapidly in case of exceptions and problems,

makes it easier to improve existing processes and create new ones, and

automates processes that run across the entire organization and outside it.

Together, these capabilities allow the organization to respond to changing business demands better and more quickly. It can start to become what some commentators call the real-time enterprise.
Another result is that the organization saves time and money whenever it changes any of its computerized working methods. At the moment, this usually involves an expensive and protracted rigmarole.
As a bonus, the organization becomes better fitted to exploit future business and computing opportunities. These include business process outsourcing (BPO) and Web services.
Sounds like Business Process Re-engineering all over again
You can relax - it's not. Business Process Re-engineering (or Redesign) achieved some good but has had its day. To its credit, BPR popularized process-based thinking and the explicit ownership of processes.
Against Business Process Re-engineering are its association with job losses, skill depletion and factory-style thinking. It was a slash and burn approach. Who wants to work in a field of charred stubble?
Organizations no longer want risky, all-or-nothing approaches. They prefer something more sensitive to the needs of the whole business, that embraces continued change and that consequently has a greater chance of success. Business Process Management offers all these.
The success of BPM depends on how managers introduce and use this new kind of software. It is as much about organizational design, human communication, people's viewpoints and mutual consideration as it is about technology.
BPM is not just a matter of optimizing computer programs. Least of all is it about obliterating anything.
Note:  Like many other computing and business expressions, "Business Process Management" means something different to the sense of its constituent words. Written with leading capital letters, it is as described above. When written all in lower case - "business process management" - it is the everyday activity of managing how an organization goes about its work.
Mastering Your Organization's Processes: A Plain Guide to BPM 
This is the title of my book on BPM, published in January 2006. I wrote it with Jon Pyke, then Chief Technology Officer of Staffware PLC, and John O'Connell, then Staffware's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. (Staffware is now part of TIBCO Software Inc.)
There are extracts from Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here. If you'd like to read the whole chapters, you can download them in Adobe PDF form here and here. The large table that forms part of Chapter 1 is here.
The publisher's pages about the book are here, with links to local ordering details near the top.
Looking askance 
I write an occasional column on BPM for the Business Process Management Group's online newsletter. It is called "Looking Askance" and is aimed, as you would expect, at fellow BPM professionals. The meaning and relevance of what I say might not immediately clear, therefore, unless you too are active in this. You can read the whole set, starting here.
The versions shown are as I wrote them and occasionally diverge from what was published on the BPMG Web site.