A business process is a recipe for achieving a commercial result. Each business process has inputs, method and outputs. The inputs are a pre-requisite that must be in place before the method can be put into practice. When the method is applied to the inputs then certain outputs will be created.
A business process is a collection of related structural activities that produce a specific outcome for a particular customer.
A business process can be part of a larger, encompassing process and can include other business processes that have to be included in its method.
The business process can be thought of as a cookbook for running a business; "Answer the phone", "place an order", "produce and invoice" might all be examples of a Business Process.
