Process monitoring (business process management) is the systematic activity of collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data generated during the execution of business processes to assess their performance, identify deviations, and gain insights into their operational characteristics. This function within business process management (BPM) investigates the actual behavior and outcomes of processes against defined goals, standards, and models. Its significance lies in enabling proactive identification of bottlenecks, errors, and inefficiencies, supporting compliance verification, providing empirical data for process improvement initiatives, and informing real-time decision-making for effective process control and optimization.