Business process modeling (BPM) in systems engineering and software engineering is the activity of representing processes of an enterprise, so that the current process may be analyzed and improved. BPM is typically performed by business analysts and managers who are seeking to improve process efficiency and quality. The process improvements identified by BPM may or may not require Information Technology involvement, although that is a common driver for the need to model a business process, by creating a process master.
Change management programs are typically involved to put the improved business processes into practice. With advances in technology from large platform vendors, the vision of BPM models becoming fully executable (and capable of simulations and round-trip engineering) is coming closer to reality every day.
Overview
Business process modeling plays an important role in the business process management (BPM) discipline. Since both business process modeling and business process management share the same abbreviation (BPM), these activities are sometimes confused with each other.
BPM addresses the process aspects of a business architecture, leading to an all encompassing enterprise architecture. The relationships of business processes in the context of the rest of the enterprise systems (e.g., data architecture, organizational structure, strategies, etc.) create greater capabilities when analyzing and planning enterprise changes. For example, during a corporate merger it is important to understand the processes of both companies in detail so that management can correctly and efficiently identify and eliminate redundancies in operations
The graphical representation of business process information has proven effective for presenting it to business stakeholders, including business analysts and system developers. Visual modeling languages used to represent business processes include Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Business process modeling has always been a key aspect of business process reengineering (BPR) and continuous improvement approaches, such as Six Sigma. For routine business activities, BPM tools such as Provision, Intalio,
History
Techniques to model business process such as the flow chart, functional flow block diagram, control flow diagram, Gantt chart, PERT diagram, and IDEF have emerged since the beginning of the 20th century. The Gantt chart were among the first to arrive around 1900, the flow charts in the 1920s, Functional Flow Block Diagram and PERT in the 1950s, Data Flow Diagrams and IDEF in the 1970s. Among the modern methods are Unified Modeling Language and Business Process Modeling Notation. Still these represent just a fraction of the methodologies used over the years to document business processes. The term "business process modeling" itself was coined in the 1960s in the field of systems engineering by S. Williams in his 1967 article "Business Process Modeling Improves Administrative Control". His idea was that techniques for obtaining a better understanding of physical control systems could be used in a similar way for business processes. It took until the 1990s before the term became popular.
In the 1990s the term "process" became a new productivity paradigm. Companies were encouraged to think in processes instead of functions and procedures. Process thinking looks at the chain of events in the company from purchase to supply, from order retrieval to sales etc. The traditional modeling tools were developed to picture time and costs, while modern methods focus on cross-function activities. These cross-functional activities have increased severely in number and importance due to the growth of complexity and dependencies. New methodologies such as business process redesign, business process innovation, business process management, integrated business planning among others all "aiming at improving processes across the traditional functions that comprise a company".
In the field of software engineering the term "business process modeling" opposed the common software process modeling, aiming to focus more on the state of the practice during software development. In that time early 1990s all existing and new modeling techniques to picture business processes were considered and called "business process modeling languages." In the Object Oriented approach, it was considered to be an essential step in the specification of Business Application Systems. Business process modeling became the base of new methodologies, that for example also supported data collection, data flow analysis, process flow diagrams and reporting facilities. Around 1995 the first visually oriented tools for business process modeling and implementation were being presented.