Business Process Management Capability Framework (BPM-CF) is a structured collection of business process management practices that help organizations assess and improve their business process management capabilities. It provides a common vocabulary and understanding of capabilities that must be built to achieve effective and systematic management of operational business processes.
The Core Tenets of BPM-CF
- Holistic approach: BPM-CF considers process management capabilities across strategy, governance, methods, people, culture and technology.
- Staged progression: BPM-CF defines capability areas and maturity levels that allow incremental improvement.
- Common language: BPM-CF provides standard terminology for discussing process management capabilities.
- Benchmarking: Organizations can use BPM-CF to compare their capabilities to best practices and other organizations.
Why BPM-CF is important to business consultants
BPM-CF provides business consultants with a comprehensive framework for assessing and improving their clients’ business process management practices. It gives consultants a baseline for gap analysis, benchmarking, and developing roadmaps to strengthen process capabilities in a structured way. BPM-CF breaks down process management into manageable focus areas, maturity levels, and capabilities that consultants can systematically evaluate and address. This helps consultants diagnose capability deficiencies and weaknesses that may be impacting process performance and organizational efficiency. The staged maturity levels enable consultants to chart a progression path for clients to incrementally develop capabilities. As an industry standard, BPM-CF also facilitates understanding, communication and goal alignment between consultants and clients. Its common terminology and benchmarking helps consultants market their expertise and differentiate their services. Overall, BPM-CF is an essential toolkit that enables consultants to provide more thorough and strategic advice on optimizing business processes.
Example of BPM-CF in Use
- A consultant used BPM-CF to assess a client’s current process capabilities across different areas like strategy, methods and technology. This revealed major gaps in process definition, governance and systems. Based on the maturity framework, the consultant recommended initiatives like formalizing process architecture, building a process center of excellence, and implementing new workflow automation tools.
- A company wanted to transform into a process-oriented organization. Consultants guided them through a step-by-step capability improvement roadmap using the BPM-CF maturity levels. Over two years, the company systematically progressed across capability stages to change behaviors, replace legacy systems, and embed process thinking.
- A consultant adopted BPM-CF to standardize how they diagnose and present recommendations to clients. They maintained an organizational BPM-CF assessment repository to quantify capability improvements for clients year-over-year. This provided proof of progress and value.
BPM-CF Synonyms
- Business Process Capability Model: A model that defines capabilities required for effective business process management.
- Process Management Maturity Framework: A framework of maturity levels that determine how well processes are managed in an organization.
- Process Capability Framework: A structured set of process management practices, competencies and maturity levels.
- BPM Maturity Model: A model that allows assessment and improvement of an organization’s business process management maturity.
- BPM Capability Reference Model: A reference model that defines capabilities required for mature business process management.
BPM-CF Antonyms
- Ad hoc processes: Processes that are managed informally without standardized methods.
- Unstructured processes: Processes that lack clearly defined sequence, inputs, outputs, roles and metrics.
- Siloed processes: Processes owned by individual departments without enterprise alignment.
- Static processes: Processes that remain fixed without continuous improvement and optimization.
- Tactical processes: Processes focused on short-term tasks rather than strategic outcomes.
Other Closely-Related Terms
- Process architecture: The structure and relationships between key business processes.
- Process ownership: Assigning accountability for managing and improving specific processes.
- Process metrics: Quantifiable measures used to evaluate process performance.
- Process mining: Analyzing systems data to understand actual process flows.
- Process automation: Using technology to execute steps in a process with minimal human intervention.
