BPM System

A Management Practice
Gartner recently broadened the definition of BPM, recasting it as "a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance."¹ This more holistic view offers a structured approach for optimizing processes and takes into account the software tools discussed above as well as an organization's methods, policies, metrics, and management practices.

According to Gartner, BPM is about becoming a process-managed organization, which requires the following disciplines (in addition to Information Technology):

• Expertise and Experience — focus on process-centric skills, training, education, certification, research, business acumen, and intellectual capital
• Organizational Disciplines — adoption of new or improved culture, structure, roles, responsibilities, policies, rules, incentives, and procedures
• Management and Control Activities — improvement of processes by defining, modeling, simulating, deploying, executing, monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing
• Partnership and Services — reliance on partners to provide services such as consulting, implementation, and business process outsourcing

Because this approach to BPM allows organizations to abstract business process from technology infrastructure, it goes far beyond automating business processes (software) or solving business problems (suite) — it enables business to respond to changing consumer, market, and regulatory demands faster than competitors, thereby creating competitive advantage.

Learn About Appian's BPM Software Suite

• Appian BPM Suite
• Appian Anywhere

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