De levenscyclus van een bedrijfsproces bestaat uit 5 fasen:
- Model
- Deploy
- Execute
- Monitor
- Execute
It goes far beyond automating business processes (software) or solving business problems (suite). BPM enables business to respond to changing consumer, market, and regulatory demands faster than competitors[citation needed] – creating competitive advantage.
As of 2010 technology has allowed the coupling of BPM to other methodologies, such as Six Sigma. BPM (tools) allow users to:
- vision – strategize functions and processes
- define – baseline the process or the process improvement
- model – simulate the change to the process
- analyze – compare the various simulations to determine an optimal improvement
- improve – select and implement the improvement
- control – deploy this implementation and by use of user-defined dashboards monitor the improvement in real time and feed the performance information back into the simulation model in preparation for the next improvement iteration
- re-engineer – revamp the processes from scratch for better results