What is business process management, after all? A new concept for a new context Afinal, o que é Business Process Management (BPM)? Um novo conceito para um novo contexto

Business processes result in products or services being delivered by organizations. Their importance results from the fact that they integrate different activities that are developed in distinct functional areas, involving workers, customers and business partners with a common objective. However, many organizations are structured and guided by specific functions, which makes it difficult for this thorough understanding of processes to be developed. In addition to that, Information Technology tools have historically been based on a data management perspective and not a business process one. Business Process Management (BPM) tries to bring together IT concepts and management theories that deal with managing the life cycle of processes, enabling the design, execution, control, monitoring and analysis of processes by means of methodologies and technologies that can be adapted to change situations in a diligent way, making the objectives of the business more tangible to all those involved. BPM uses concepts that had previously been developed and made popular in business administration, such as reengineering and total quality management, and technologies such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and workflow, in addition to new concepts that are integrated to the organization’s IT structure, such as SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). This paper presents such concepts and explains how they are directly or indirectly related to BPM, so that the academic and professional communities can better understand their importance. Processos de negócios resultam em produtos ou servi os entregues pelas empresas. Sua importancia nas organiza es se mostra principalmente por integrarem diferentes atividades em áreas funcionais distintas, envolvendo funcionários, clientes e parceiros de negócios, com objetivo único. No entanto, muitas organiza es s o estruturadas e orientadas por fun es específicas, o que acaba dificultando esta vis o unificada dos processos. Além disso, historicamente as ferramentas de Tecnologia da Informa o (TI) têm sido desenvolvidas e implantadas baseadas no gerenciamento dos dados e n o dos processos de negócios. O Business Process Management (BPM) é uma jun o entre as teorias de gest o e TI que provê o gerenciamento do ciclo de vida dos processos, facilitando a descoberta, projeto, execu o, controle, monitoramento e análise dos processos através de metodologia e tecnologias que possam se adaptar às situa es de mudan a mais rapidamente e tornar os objetivos de negócios mais palpáveis. O BPM se utiliza de conceitos anteriormente popularizados na