Business Process Management (BPM) was unheard of just a few years ago, but it has burst onto the global scene to become the hottest business and technology management trend of the decade. If you’re in any business or industry — public or private — you’ve probably heard of the movement toward process, or about things like process management or process improvement. You may know about process improvement methods like Lean and Six Sigma or about new technologies like Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) or Service- Oriented Architectures (SOA). BPM represents a culmination of all the collective experience, thinking, and professional development in business management over the past several decades. It’s customer first. It’s business focused. It empowers people in all corners of a business to be more successful. It brings people and systems together. BPM is where all the lofty goals and best strategies are coming home to roost. You stir all these things together and it can start sounding pretty confusing. But really, BPM is very simple. It’s a set of methods, tools, and technologies used to design, enact, analyze, and control operational business processes; a processcentric approach for improving performance that combines information technologies with process methodologies.