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Our series reacting to Professor Yvonne Antonucci’s survey of 146 companies that showed strong desire for -- but rampant confusion over -- BPM training continues with Terry Schurter, CIO of BPM Group.

Schurter, who co-developed the Group’s “Elements of BPM Practice” online course started by breaking training into three categories:

--Training in software tools, mostly provided by BPM software vendors

While tool-based training continues to draw IT staffers, Schurter notes that more business siders – particularly business analysts – are entering that sphere as well, especially as an increasing number of BPM tools are now focused more towards the business use than traditional programming IT type of use.

-- A second, very prescriptive approach to modeling or articulating the business processes by going through a step-by-step methodology and produce a business process.

“We’re looking at  is the prescriptive creation of business process that tends to be business analysts -- folks who have been doing business analysis for a very long time don’t really feel a need to change what they’re doing very significantly, just to add to that.

-- A third, even more adaptive type that in Schurter’s words, “allows people to unleash their innovation and creativity within the context of their own organization and the business problems or opportunities that they have in their world.

“We know that lots of change is going on and we know that one size doesn’t fit all, so we need to provide training that allows people to actually figure out, “Wow, this is the way I could go and create success in my organization,’” he added.

It also attracts a dramatically different mix of staffers. “We see folks always from the CEO or even the board level of organizations all the way down to the people participating in the process, getting involved in the training and they each have their own agenda. The board level or CEO level -- that’s a very strategic focus when you get down to specific process,” Schuter noted.

All of the training programs that the BPM Group has developed come from the perspective that there are strategy, people, process and systems that are intricately involved in doing business process management.

“And you can imagine that touches everyone, from guys doing strategic planning and visioning down to the folks who are actually in charge of operations and making sure that flows through the organization properly, all the way down to IT supporting services and software and, of course, the front-line folks who are actually doing work,” Schurter said. “And that gets everyone into a place where they can see, “Wow, I see the bigger picture but I also see exactly where I fit in business process management and how I can help my business achieve success.”

Online vs. Offline Training and Certification

Schurter went on to describe the advantages of online and in-person training. The former pluses includes access from anywhere, consumption on a structured basis.

 “In many cases, it’s hard to block out three, four, five days for an in-house or in-person training program,” Schuter notes. “In-person training program has greater depth, and a lot more interaction and tactile touchy-feely type stuff; with business process management it really gets you there. There’s no way that the virtual world and the online training kind of thing can take it to that level. However, the disadvantages are you have to be there in person, you have to be there for a specific length of time that is continuous.

Another key factor is certification, which Schurter feels is in many case a misnomer.

“It’s a very hot topic in this industry,” Schuter said. “You can claim certification on any training or from any organization for any reason, but the reality is, that real certification comes from a validating body that has the credibility and expertise to say, “Yes, this actually has a high-quality structure and content to it.”

“In the case of the BPM Group we took that latter route with our in-person training and we actually went through a two-year very rigorous and laborious process to have our in-person training certified from one of the largest accrediting organizations in the world. They accredit courses in 114 countries,” Schurter said. “So, we went through that process to make sure that we were providing a validated resource to the community at large.”

“In the case of The Elements of BPM Practice, what we did is that we took experience and we applied the certification concepts that we learned there to that training, so we felt that again validated the quality and value of the product to the end user,” Schurter said.

“When you get accreditation at what is effectively the master level at what is in effect the level of university study, that is a very high bar and it does tell us a lot about the quality of the product,” he added. “At least that proves that the organization offering the online training took the time and effort -- and it’s a lot -- to actually validate against a well-known authority that their training does meet quality and content standards.”

What certification doesn’t reveal relevance and ROI and Schurter cited companies’ desire for confidentiality as precluding an indepth discussion.

“What we find is that many organizations get this training. They go out, they put it to use; the success is so strong that they immediately move to an enterprise-wide and in many cases global rollout of this training because it’s making a huge difference… it goes in orders of magnitude from hundreds of thousands, to millions to hundreds of millions dollars in net result to the business,”  

A Moore’s Law of Training

“The rate of growth in training that we’re seeing right now is literally doubling every six months. And most of that growth, or I should say that half of that growth is from organizations wanting to train more people. You’ve got 50 percent of the growth coming in from folks that are just going into the BPM training paths and then 50 percent of that growth comes from folks that have had some training and now they want a lot more for a lot more of their people.

There’s also a next level of training that Schurter and his colleague, BPM Group CEO Steve Towers presented an introduction to at the Gartner BPM Summit and are will be doing a few seminars on in the U.S. and UK later this year.

For more information, readers can listen to the entire 17:06 podcast above or go to BPMG.org.

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