Business process management or
BPM is defined as the means used for the identification, change and monitoring of diverse business processes. It stresses on the development, management and overall improvement of processes within the workplace and thus helps to achieve the organisational goals. These methods and technologies help to identify and subsequently change on-going workflow processes and to align them with an improved state of performance. It is a generic term that takes into account the structured methods, techniques and diverse means that are intended to streamline the flow of work tasks and also increase efficiency.
Enterprise content management or
ECM comprises of diverse methods, tools and strategies that are used to manage, preserve, capture, store and at the same time deliver documents and content connected to various organisational processes. The principal task of an ECM system is to manage unstructured information. It is not about a single technology system but takes into account a number of associated technologies.
BPM and ECM systems are closely connected to each other and there are instances when the approaches and the technologies tend to overlap. Both of these are concerned with the proper management of business information. An ECM solution places emphasises on the lifecycle and structure of the content itself whereas a BPM lays emphasis on the fundamental business processes that are related to the content. The majority of the BPM projects call for the implementation of ECM technologies and practices.
Both these systems have certain common features. These include:
Elements of workflow such as tasks, resources and processes
A reputation for generating strong returns on investment
Working on the principal of providing right information to the right individual at the right time
However, there are certain differences between the two systems as well. Apart from workflow, BPM tools are governed by a set of rules. These comprise of:
Rules that include inferences, decisions and constraints
Along with process flows, you can create rules driven interfaces, integration and task assignments
BPM systems directly address complicated cross-repository and inter-application issues. ECM technologies, on the other hand, are self-sufficient and support point-to-point and rather simple integration. BPM takes into account both content driven and data-driven processes.
There are certain points where both the systems appear to overlap or combine with each other. A large number of the ECM systems are equipped with document-driven workflow features and there are vendors who are trying to supersede these and develop a system that has greater BPM features. There has been a raging debate about whether the rules engines and content repositories can become a part of the business process management systems or whether they can be sourced from third party vendors.
A complete BPM system can complement an ECM system as the latter extends the facilities by which you can organise, store and at the same time search the information that you need. Both these systems offer greater business performance. But one thing is for sure, both of these technologies have evolved greatly over the last decade.
