Without naming names, I've come across a couple of folks recently who said they were the first to use the term "business process management (BPM)." But while everyone credits MIT professor Michael Hammer for inventing the term "business process re-engineering (BPR)," I can't find anyone that clearly claims a similar distinction when it comes to BPM.
Uncharacteristically, no one claims it on Wikipedia. It’s not indexed in my “Using SAP R/3, Third Edition (but BPR is of course; Hammer made the SAP guys wealthy men). It probably has some workflow roots but could go all the way back to the WWII-era term, “operations research (OR).”
When did you first hear the term BPM used? Who used it? I am not saying when the unnamed claimed to have first used BPM so as to get a little debate going. Let me know what you think?
(As an aside, you do have that problem that BPM means “business performance measurement” to some people. But I’m looking for consultants or companies first to use BPM my way.)
-- Dennis Byron
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