# Business process management (BPM)

> Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of designing, running, measuring and improving how work flows through a company.

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.

Page: https://easy.wf/glossary/business-process-management