Process Management

Process management involves the design, implementation and management of the processes that are part of your day-to-day business.  Whereas, project management deals with a "one time" series of tasks designed to accomplish an objective, process management is used for repetitive work, where the same sequence of tasks are repeated - over and over and over again!

An example is the processing of a customer order, where a standard sequence of tasks must occur to process the order, ship items, update inventory records, send an invoice, and receive payment.

Process management involves:

• A design process to determine the specific tasks and responsibility.
• A system to execute the process - with a process of assigning tasks as they occur in the process.
• A management system - that can measure activity and performance for your processes.

This process approach to business has been undertaken by large corporations that have complex processes that span multiple departments.  Corporations are organized into separate departments for order entry, inventory control, accounting, management, and so on.  Processes which crossed these boundaries were often extremely inefficient, with delays and poor communications between the departments.

The development of new Internet-based capabilities are now bringing the power of process management to small business owners.