What is Business Process Management?

According to the free encyclopedia site, Wikipedia, Business Process Management is “a field of knowledge at the intersection between management and information technology, encompassing methods, techniques and tools to design, enact, control, and analyze operational business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.”

Why is the field of Business Process Management important? According to an article on an IT trade site techrepublic.com, the field of Business Process Management will be one of the hottest 10 careers choices in 2008.

For Business managers, like myself, with a background in IT, Business Process Management is an interesting career choice. It combines my passion for management with the latest tools in the field of IT to deliver the best solutions for my client.

From my experience working for various IT companies, some tech managers had difficulty understanding the business process. They would deliver technical solutions that had little or no business value.

I recall working for a firm which went bankrupt due to the CEO although having a heavy background in IT had little knowledge of the business process, and another firm that lost contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and the opportunity to enter a new business market, for the same reason.

So if you are in the field of IT, investing time in learning business and management skills will be time well spent.