BPM
Business Process Management or BPM is the combined focus of process improvement efforts, and business management. The BPM field focuses on aligning organizations with the desires of the client. BPM promotes efficiency and effective approaches that allow organizations to stay on the cutting edge of technology. BPM hopes to continually improve processes through analytics, tools, and old fashioned trial and error with internal processes.
Like all modern process improvement efforts, BPM has a major IT component that is utilizes to more quickly and effectively manage business processes.
Six Sigma
A particular business management strategy used by many organizations is Six Sigma. The Six Sigma methodology and strategy was first implemented by Motorola and is now wide spread across the world today. The focus of Six Sigma as a process improvement and business process management effort is to identify the weakest links or defect causing steps in any business process.
While some business process management efforts are customized by each organization, any group that is following six sigma approaches to improve business processes is done through the set and strict collection of steps. These steps are structured in a way that help organizations reduce financial input and risk with the output of increased profitability.
Continual Process Improvement
Process improvement initiatives are not something that are complete. In fact,any true process improvement export will tell you that increasing the productivity of processes is an ongoing and continual effort. Business process management is behind ensuring that process improvement efforts continue from one project to the next. The management of business processes is implemented to ensure that one process improvement project leads quickly and smoothly into the next.
If you’re seeking process improvement jobs, including those around BPM efforts, be sure to be able to talk to the continual nature of process improvement. Other articles and links on this site will help you identify ways to capitalize and communicate to potential hiring managers your understanding of the impact that continual process improvement intiatives can have on an organization.
BPM & IT
As process improvement tools mature, many software companies have designed tools to assist with BPM efforts. Through coordination with IT departments and having skilled employees around using IT to assist with BPM efforts, process improvement can be a continual theme of an organization. IT and BPM are increasingly being used together to decrease an organizations costs and increase their profitability.
