What is a Business Process?:

One formal definition of a business process is:

A business process is a logical, related, sequential set of activities that takes an input from a supplier, adds value to it, and produces an output to a customer.

I prefer my definition, which is anything that you habitually do becomes your process at home or at work. For example, if you always pay your bills two days before they are due, that is your process. It may be good if you are using online bill payment or it may be bad if you are mailing your bills and they don’t get there in time. The value of the process is in context to everything else occurring around it.

An example of a business process would be the steps you take to get a customer order, enter it into your system (does not have to be a major computer system), build it, ship or deliver it to the customer and invoice the customer. How long does this take? How often are all steps done correctly? How many people does it take to complete these steps?