“What is business process management?” asks a recent CIO Magazine article.
Their answer: business process management (BPM)—“the practice of discovering and controlling an organization’s processes to align them with business goals as the business evolves”—is “the key to enterprise agility.”
Before we get into why that’s true, let’s start with the basics.
Business processes are the sets of activities that help your organization achieve specific outcomes and goals. Every process typically involves people, technology, rules, and a wide variety of tasks.
When those processes are effective, aligned, and well supported by the right tools (including automation and AI), your organization can:
- Move faster
- Adapt to change
- Improve customer experience
- Grow more efficiently
When they’re not, the opposite happens.
The cost of outdated or ad-hoc processes
For many companies, business processes:
- Were never intentionally designed
- Evolved from “the way things have always been done”
- Are constrained by legacy systems or past software choices
- Have been patched and tweaked over time into a tangled mess
The result is:
- Bottlenecks and confusion
- Redundant work and manual re-entry
- Difficulty adapting in a modern, digital, AI-driven economy
- Lower efficiency, productivity, and profitability
In other words: your processes either power your business—or quietly drag it down.
What is Business Process Management (BPM)?
Business Process Management (BPM) is a structured approach for making sure your operations and processes work smoothly, efficiently, and in alignment with your goals.
BPM can be:
- Broad – addressing an entire system of interdependent processes across the organization
- Targeted – focusing on a specific process that’s high-impact or high-pain
In both cases, BPM centers on automation and optimization to:
- Maximize efficiency
- Increase productivity
- Minimize waste and errors
- Reduce operational costs
Modern BPM is inherently dynamic. It must keep pace with shifting customer expectations, evolving regulations, and rapid changes in technology. At the same time, BPM is amplified by AI, machine learning (ML), and advanced analytics, which make it easier to:
- Monitor processes in real time
- Predict bottlenecks and risks
- Automate decisions and routine work
- Continuously improve based on data
BPM is often a core driver of digital transformation because it connects strategy, people, and technology—including Custom Enterprise Software & AI solutions built around your workflows.
From back office to end-to-end experience
Historically, process improvement was mostly associated with the “back office.”
In the 1990s, a suite of tools (popularized by Gartner and others) brought software into the picture to support these back-end processes.
Today, in a customer experience–driven market, BPM is seen as an overarching discipline that:
- Cuts across front, middle, and back office
- Uses a mix of technologies, tools, and methodologies
- Aims to create end-to-end seamlessness in how work gets done
This often includes a blend of:
- Off-the-shelf platforms
- Workflow and integration tools
- Custom Enterprise Software & AI automation tailored to your specific operations
The BPM lifecycle: a simple, powerful framework
Despite the wide range of tools and techniques, BPM commonly follows a consistent, five-step lifecycle:
- Design / Analyze
- Define how the process should ideally work
- Analyze the current state to identify gaps, pain points, and inefficiencies
- Model
- Create a visual model of the optimal process (tasks, timelines, rules, data flows, handoffs, etc.)
- Consider how the process behaves in different scenarios and edge cases
- Execute
- Implement improvements such as standardization and automation (often using workflow engines, integrations, and AI where appropriate)
- Pilot changes with a limited group, gather feedback, and then roll out more broadly
- Monitor
- Track performance, exceptions, and user experience
- Use data and analytics to understand what’s working—and what isn’t
- Optimize
- Continuously refine the process
- Adapt to new requirements, technologies, customer expectations, and organizational goals
Even with careful management, processes can accumulate complexity over time—especially as new tools, teams, and requirements are layered in. That’s where Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) comes in.
Business Process Re-engineering (BPR): Going deeper when it’s not enough to “tune”
BPR can be thought of as the “sixth step” or a next-level iteration of BPM.
While BPM often focuses on optimizing what exists, BPR:
- Puts current processes under a microscope
- Challenges assumptions about “how we’ve always done it”
- Redesigns processes from the ground up where needed
The goal is to radically improve:
- Efficiency and speed
- Output and quality
- Cost-effectiveness
- Customer and employee experience
All while eliminating waste, redundancies, and unnecessary complexity.
BPR is especially powerful when combined with:
- Modern cloud and integration platforms
- AI and intelligent automation
- Custom-built solutions that fit your business rather than forcing you into someone else’s model
Why a holistic, end-to-end approach matters
Many organizations have felt the pain of a fragmented approach to BPM and BPR—for instance:
- Different consulting firms handling different phases
- Uncoordinated technology decisions
- Localized fixes that never address the whole system
This piecemeal strategy often leads to:
- Misalignment between strategy and execution
- Siloed tools and data
- Improvements in one area that create friction in another
Effective BPM and BPR require a holistic view: start with your values, objectives, and customer experience, and align every process and enabling technology to support them.
How Lukasa helps: Process, software, and AI working together
The veteran business process and technology experts at Lukasa take a partnership approach to every engagement.
We:
- Work side-by-side with your leadership and teams
- Gain a deep understanding of your goals, operations, pain points, and culture
- Analyze and reimagine your business processes as an interconnected whole
- Identify where modernization, Custom Enterprise Software, and AI-driven automation can deliver the most impact
Then we help you:
- Design optimized, scalable processes (BPM)
- Re-engineer critical workflows where a deeper reset is needed (BPR)
- Implement the right mix of platforms, integrations, and custom solutions
- Provide ongoing support to refine and evolve your process ecosystem over time
From strategy through implementation and beyond, Lukasa helps transform your business processes into a powerful engine for agility, growth, and long-term success.
