Business process management (BPM), which requires that companies understand, analyze, and optimize their business processes first and then enable those processes through people, systems, and technicians assists companies in making clear and executing business processes. Frequently the first step is to become aware of a problem, but when BPM software is deployed, BPM analyses and a business process expert can work in tandem for visualization, organization, and comprehension of processes that must be repaired or tuned more carefully. In a full-functioned BPM deployment, processes are optimized via BPM software and expertise, and employee efficiency rises. Forerunners to BPM have been business process re-engineering (BPR), enterprise resource planning (ERP), continuous process improvement, and Six Sigma. BPM can enhance the company's ability to handle exceptions, which is a way to increase margins. Today's BPM solutions can provide a way to deploy process solutions so that real working processes, rather than static documents, can improve business results. With full-functioned BPM solutions, a process engine, integration tools/enterprise application integration (EAI), and functionality for monitoring for implementation of business processes in the data center are provided. To eliminate the limitations of workflow servers, BPM also deals with interactions between people, applications, and systems, and the BPM process engine, which tracks and starts steps in a business process, can handle millions of transactions. Although BPM projects are challenging and must take into consideration company culture and politics, the payoff is the simple benefit of knowing what the company does so it can be done better.