ABSTRACT
Many people find the term business process management (BPM) a mystery. There is no one definition among the experts, and management sometimes wonder if it is yet another three-letter acronym or management fad that will disappear in the next few years. This chapter explains the history of BPM and some of the realities of it. The road to BPM has been a difficult one that was developed from the successes and failures of various other attempts at achieving process-based organizational efficiency. It has only been in the last several years that BPM has started to gain significant momentum in many organizations around the world. The concept of process thinking originated at least as far back as Frederick Taylor in the early twentieth century. BPM is not a simple concept, nor is it simple to implement—it is extremely complex and difficult, and yet absolutely achievable when approached in the right way.
