The history of business process management can be traced back to
the early days of office automation in the 1980s when personal
computers became available for businesses to use in everyday
office computing. While it is debatable which year should be
marked as the start of personal computing, the early 80s saw
many inventions of personal computing including the VisiCalc
Spreadsheet software and the WordStar software for word
processing in 1978, IBM PCs in 1981, and Apple Lisa Computer
with a graphical user interface in 1983, and the Microsoft
Windows software in 1985. These inventions made it possible for
businesses to process a lot of information quickly and cheaply
and led to the dramatic increase of company sizes because
computers made it possible to coordinate large and complex
business operations on a global scale. The office automation in
the 80s also sparked the boom of local area networks based on
the invention by Robert Metcalfe in 1973. With the ability to
send information via networks and the comput