Business Process Management (BPM) includes Business Process Automation (BPA) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) aiming at elevating of efficiency and effectiveness of business process employed within and across the enterprises. Many organizations will conduct automation and re-engineering at the same exercise; it not only standardizes the business process, but also optimizes the output.

BPM is always linked with workflow applications; in fact, workflow is one of the key component technologies in implementing a BPM solution. Workflow mostly deals with a particular application which sits on an independent platform whereas a BPM solution will implement a SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) incorporating a workflow engine to power all enterprise systems that require workflow functionality. Hence, the enterprise-wide process rules and access control can be centrally managed and deployed effectively.