In December 2011, the BPMInstitute participated in a Forrester research report entitled “The Forrester Wave: BPM Training And Certification Programs, Q2 2012” (May 2012) of the training and certification programs offered in business process management. BPMInstitute.org has made the report available to our readers, for a limited time. This article provides additional comments on the topics presented in the Forrester report. The report’s research findings agree with our own research into our student’s objectives for taking BPM training.
Many companies that attend our training are seeking to transform themselves into process-centric organizations and consider this transformation to be critical to the company’s future success. Those enterprises agree that effectively architecting and managing a process-driven enterprise requires strategic planning of business goals, identification of mission-critical business processes and specification of desired process improvement outcomes – and these efforts must be completed before serious investments in technology are made.
Our research has identified the following strategies common to enterprises currently achieving the greatest return from their BPM initiatives:
- Identify high-value business processes in areas such as compliance and risk management, customer service, and supply chain operations
- Develop metrics for achieving measurable, quantifiable results through improvements in operational efficiency, process visibility and control, and business agility
- Establish long-term goals to evolve from process improvement to process excellence
Our training provides the information and techniques required to enable companies to implement those strategies.
We at BPMInstitute.org found that the Forrester Research regarding the importance of developing T-shaped skills agrees with our own. Forrester defines these as “deep skills in specific process improvement methods and techniques and broad skills across core BPM concepts such as process analysis, process modeling, and process architecture.” We offer a total of sixteen courses to address these two dimensions. We define BPM as a discipline comprised of practice areas and provide a curriculum to teach them:
- Aligning Processes with Business Strategy
- Discovering and Modeling Processes
- Analyzing and Benchmarking Processes
- Harvesting Policies and Rules
- Continually Improve Processes (using specific methodologies)
- Re-engineering Processes
- Managing Changing of a Culture
- Governance – decision making
- Deploying Technology
There are three important points about a discipline. First, the broad understanding of a discipline is how it is applied to a specific branch of knowledge. Second, the definition of a discipline captures the idea of following a pattern of behavior (not specific steps as with a methodology) but belief that there must exist some form of control, compliance, and order. Third, the definition of a discipline complements that of a methodology by stating that a discipline embraces a set of rules or methods. Our courses provide instruction in both the discipline of process thinking and the methodology for process improvement.
Our training is intended to help companies realize the following promise. We believe that BPM represents a natural convergence of methodologies and technologies providing an architecture that enables faster responses to changes in business strategy. It enables a holistic, 360 degree approach to process collaboration and management throughout the value chain. When properly implemented, it can enable the continuous alignment of processes with business objectives. BPM is about efficiency: Doing more with current investments and economically connecting those investments with the business processes that they support. BPM is also about innovation: providing a structured approach to keep the business constantly engaged in an evolutionary process of exploration, experimentation and education toward business operations excellence.
