A business process is an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific organizational goal. Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving those processes.
The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), a non-profit organization, exists to promote the standardization of common business processes, as a means of furthering development of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN). Both languages were created to facilitate communication between IT and line-of-business (LOB).