Introduction

The acronym BPM is often mistaken, especially by those in the IT industry, to mean Business Process Management. So it is often more prudent to use the alternatives such as CPM (Corporate Performance Management) or EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) to distinguish it. However, the two are often used interchangeably by a majority of business managers due to its association with metrics.

Consider the definition: Business Performance Management (BPM) is a management culture that aids enterprises in optimising business performance through the analysis of business processes and the provision of forecasting tools and performance analysis. This appears to imply that business performance management software would provide a suite of tools necessary to collect and analyse data generated by the organizations business processes. Is that right?

Here is another from Wikipedia: Business Performance Management (BPM) is a set of processes that help organizations optimize their business performance. It goes on to say that it is a framework for organizing, automating and analyzing business methodologies, metrics, processes and systems that drive business performance.

So is it a management culture, a set of processes or a framework?

BPM forum puts it in a clearer perspective by stating that advancing performance accountability across the organization is one of the most pressing strategic imperatives and topics of concern in executive office suites, boardrooms, regulatory groups and financial institutions.

So Business Performance Management is the practice of enabling organizations to translate strategies into plans, monitor execution and provide insight into improving financial and operational performance. Given the emerging spotlight on environmental practices and corporate social responsibility (CSR), the scope of Business Performance Management enlarges to accountability for financial performance, environmental practices and CSR - now commonly referred to as the "triple bottom line".