LinkedIn: What is your definition of BPM?

<question discussion="Business Process Management Professionals Group">
What is your definition of BPM? Also, who are some of the major players in the BPM space?
My company is looking to offer a BPM solution as part of our software portfolio and I’m just looking for more general information about BPM.
/question>

From my terminology...

business process management, BPM (as discipline)
a discipline, which allows you to model, automate, execute, control, measure and optimize the business processes that span the enterprise’s systems, people, customers and partners within and beyond the corporate boundaries.

Remark: BPM uses the following types of business artefact: events,
processes, rules, activities, roles, objects (data structures), objects (documents), audit trails, performance indicators, services.


business process management system or BPM system
a set of business process of an enterprise as well as practices and tools for governing design, execution and evolution of this set

Remark: Any process-centric enterprise has its own BPM system. That BPM system may not be perfect (e.g. some processes may be only documented on paper, some details are only “located” only in the minds of certain people, etc.), but it does exist.

business process management suite or BPM suite
a coherent set of software tools for facilitating the implementation of BPM systems

Abbreviation BPMS is very confusing because diiferent people use it with different meaning. So, better to avoid it or use it only for "BPM suite".

Thanks,
AS