If business process management (BPM) hasn't yet made huge inroads into the realm of finance, endemic confusion about its basic concepts is partly to blame. Sharing an acronym with the more familiar discipline of business performance management certainly doesn't help. But there are more serious roadblocks, too, including the sheer complexity of the discipline and lack of awareness of the value propositions it offers.

In BPM Basics for Dummies, a new book from BPM firm Software AG and Wiley Publishing, authors Kiran K. Garimella, Michael J. Lees, and Bruce D. Williams seek to cut through the confusion and show how companies can benefit from what they describe as "the hottest business and technology trend of the decade."

Defining BPM in a few words is tough, but Garimella, Lees, and Williams take a stab at it as follows: "BPM is a set of methods, tools and technologies used to design, enact, analyze and control operational business processes. BPM is a process-centric approach for improving performance that combines information technologies with process and governance methodologies." They're astute enough to realize that for many readers this definition will seem circular and less than enlightening, and they devote a chapter to unpacking it.

The key to understanding BPM is to realize that, down to its bones, it's a discipline of integration. Businesses are used to thinking in terms of software "solutions" for particular needs, but BPM is something quite different: It's a combination of technologies and continuous process improvement (CPI) methodologies -- Six Sigma and Lean, for example -- that can be applied to just about any of the coordinated tasks and activities that constitute an organization's processes.

BPM offers a wide range of value propositions, the authors note, including increased productivity; faster response time to changes in the business environment; greater visibility into processes and individual transactions; tighter alignment of IT with the business; and even enhanced governance, based on BPM's strong model of management control.

The book describes how a BPM-enhanced order fulfillment process, for instance, might look from the user's point of view. BPM provides visibility into current processes: "You might view the logistics process across your entire global supply chain. You would see status, run-charts, and red flags showing where shipments are delayed," the authors note. The BPM platform would send automatic notifications to trouble-shooters and customers when delays occur.

In a typical, non-BPM order-entry process, a clerk would move back and forth between different sales applications, the finance system, and the ERP system to perform various tasks. With BPM, he or she would "simply see a single view that presents all of the entry fields and notifications needed to complete the order. Each of the existing systems would be updated in the background, but this would not be the concern of the order-entry clerk."

The book explores the nuts and bolts of BPM's business, process, and management architectures as well as the crucial technology component. It also provides a useful list of best practices for a BPM initiative and pitfalls to avoid.

At 60 or so pages, it's a quick read. Anyone who has glanced at a title in the For Dummies series before will be familiar with the layout style and the text icons ("Warning", "Remember" etc.) About the only things missing are the cartoons and the jokey style, but that's probably an improvement.

The complete book is available for download in pdf form from Software AG. Click here [1] (requires free registration).