Business process management

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 1 minute to read

    • A business process is an activity or a set of activities that can accomplish a specific organizational goal.

    A business process is anything that happens within your organization and that has a well-defined start and finish. Examples of business processes in the banking industry are the customer onboarding process and the credit check process. Because each business process is unique, they may have different levels of criticality and impact. Business processes must be managed with a comprehensive life cycle. They may also have different risks and different controls that must be identified. With the Quebec release, the creation of a business process is enhanced. As an enterprise architect or a service owner, you can do the following:
    • Define a new business process.
    • Manage the life cycle of the process.
    • Define the owners of the process.
    • Define the relationship of the new process to a specific process, such as if the new process is a parent process or a child process.
    • Define the business impact and the criticality of the process.
    • Review the process periodically for improving efficiency.

    Life cycle of a business process

    The life cycle states of a business process are as follows:
    1. Draft: This state is the default state when a business process is created and its relationship to various risks and controls is defined. If no reviewers are selected to review the process, then the process is directly published.
    2. Review: If reviewers are selected, the process is sent to the reviewers before it is published.
    3. Published: After the review is complete, the process is published.
    4. Retired: The process is no longer required.
      Note:
      Even when a process is Retired, it stays in the system for audit purposes.
    The following image shows an example of how to define a business process, such as employee recruitment. You can define the relationship of the process with the associated risks and controls. You can also determine how associating the risks and controls helps to derive the risk rating of the process.
    Figure 1. Employee recruitment business process
    Business process followed during employee recruitment.