Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of treating a company's recurring work as processes that can be designed, run, measured and improved. It is usually described as a cycle: identify and map the process, run it, monitor how it performs, and improve it.
The term covers both the management practice and the software. A BPM suite (sometimes called a BPMS) lets teams model processes, often in BPMN, a standard diagram notation, and execute them with branches, parallel paths, integrations and rules.
Why it matters
Processes exist whether anyone manages them or not. BPM makes them explicit, so a company can see where work waits, where it is done twice, and where it depends on one person, and then fix those things on purpose.
Heavy and light BPM
Large organizations often need full BPM suites, with modeling teams and complex integrations. Small and mid-sized teams usually get more from a lighter approach: a handful of key processes written down, run in a workflow tool, and reviewed regularly.
Example
An 80-person company picks five processes to start with (illustrative): purchases, invoices, onboarding, offboarding and IT access. It documents how each one works today, runs them in a workflow tool, and reviews lead times and late steps once a month.
Common pitfalls
- Modeling everything before running anything.
- Buying a suite for a problem a checklist would solve.
- No owner for each process.
- Measuring nothing, so improvement is a matter of opinion.
Easyflow sits at the light end on purpose: linear processes with conditions, without parallel branches or diagram modeling.