Business Process Management focuses on the alignment of various interrelated tasks that aim to efficiently deliver and satisfy the needs and wants of customers and/or clients. These sets of activities can be grouped into five different categories and these are the following: (a) Design; (b) Modeling; (c) Execution; (d) Monitoring; and (e) Optimization.
Process design can be compared to an architectural design of a house, wherein it encompasses all activities involved during the planning and development stage of a business process. It may include the creation of process maps, alerts, standard operating procedures and service level agreements to make up a theoretically efficient design process.
Process modeling focuses on the introduction of different resource, cost and other constraint scenarios derived from the design process to realize how it will run under various operating circumstances.
Process execution is the integration of human intervention to software applications to carry out the required steps for a business process.
Process monitoring involves tracking of individual processes to determine progress on each level and come up with statistical data on the performance of one or more processes. The degree of monitoring depends on the management itself as to what particular constructs are to be measured and evaluated through real-time or ad-hoc monitoring.
Process optimization is all about process improvement. After the information regarding process performance from the early phases of the cycle has been determined, the next step is to evaluate and identify the potential aspects of the business process that can make room for cost savings and other improvements. In addition, potential threats on the system are also determined to continuously develop a more stable business process in the future.