Definition – A set of one or more linked procedures or activities which collectively realize a business objective or policy goal, normally within the context of an organisational structure defining functional roles and relationships.
A business process is typically associated with operational objectives and business relationships, for example an Invoice Payment Process, or a Request to Drill Process. A process may be wholly contained within a single organisational unit or may span several different organisations, such as in a customer-supplier relationship.
A business process has defined conditions triggering its initiation in each new instance (e.g. the arrival of an invoice) and defined outputs at its completion.
A business process may involve formal or relatively informal interactions between participants; its duration may also vary widely. A business process may consist of automated activities, capable of workflow management, and/or manual activities, which lie outside the scope of workflow management.
Definition – A system that defines, creates and manages the execution of workflows through the
use of software, running on one or more workflow engines, which is able to interpret the process definition, interact with workflow participants and, where required, invoke the use of IT tools and applications
A Workflow Management System consists of software components to store and interpret process definitions, create and manage workflow instances as they are executed, and control their interaction with workflow participants and applications.
Workflow systems also typically provide administrative and supervisory functions, for example to allow work reassignment or escalation, plus audit and management information on the system overall or relating to individual process instances.