Post on 17-May-2023
M.M. Cruz-Cunha et al. (Eds.): CENTERIS 2011, Part I, CCIS 219, pp. 380–389, 2011.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business
Process Managers
Anca Draghici1, Marian Mocan
1, and George Draghici
2
1 “Politehnica“ University of Timisoara,
Faculty of Management in Production and Transportation,
14 Remus str., 300191 Timisoara, Romania 2 “Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Mechanical Engineering Faculty,
1 Mihai Viteazu Bd., 300222 Timisoara, Romania
{adraghici,gdraghici}@eng.upt.ro,
mmocan@expertconsulting.ro
Abstract. The aim of this paper is to present an opportunity for improving
business process management (BPM) by skills and competencies development.
Trainees will know how to better identify, document, management, measure,
analyze, implement, optimize, automate, maintain business processes in their
companies as a part of their life-long learning and in the context of continuous
improvement processes by using the facilities created on a e-learning platform
for training and certification processes. The proposed approach is linked with
the pedagogical materials development in the field of Business Process
Management (together with the certification procedure using European
Certification and Qualification Association schema) in accordance with the
market needs identification using a marketing survey (applied for companies of
the West part of Romania for new competencies identification). The expected
research results consist of the Business Process Management certification and
qualification program sustained by an e-learning platform.
Keywords: e-learning platform, business process management, skills, certification.
1 Introduction
In the Global Knowledge - TechRepublic 2010 Salary Survey, one of the questionnaire
questions was "What skill set will your company be looking to add in 2010?" The skills
listed by respondents were (related to the information technologies practice
development): project manager, IT security professional, network administration,
specialist on virtualization and cloud computing, business analyst, business process
improvement specialist, web developer, database manager, windows administration
specialist, and desktop support personnel. With project management and business
analysis skills appearing in this skills list, it is no surprise that skills related to business
process improvement are also there [2]. Business process improvement and business
analysis go together when they act in practice. Business analysts identify areas for
improvements to business processes, while business process improvement or
management use specific methods, tools, techniques and technologies to help
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business Process Managers 381
companies optimize their business processes [1], [5]. In addition, specialists from the
Aberdeen Group argue that the top reasons business is driving BPM activity is the need
to reduce operating costs and to improve cash flow [6]. The main barrier for the
Business Process Management (BPM) adoptions and implementation was the lack of
knowledge about the concept. The main constrains of the business dynamics are related
to companies need for real-time insights and faster decision making (based
on a powerful information technology solution) to adapt to new business
patterns. According to Gartner Inc. specialists (http://www.gartner.com), among the
competencies required for successful BPM initiatives include process skills, tools and
process assets, and transformation skills.
Business Process Management (BPM) represents a holistic management approach
based on continuous improvement processes, change management theories, and
support by modern information and communication technologies/systems. This
approach aim to attend an optimal balance between organization’s external
environment dynamics and its internal processes functionalities based on innovation,
flexibility and agility [1]. Agile BPM helps organizations achieve business results by
addressing requirements for continuous process optimization, collaborative process
workflows to support team-based initiatives, and to extend business processes beyond
the enterprise. BPM Institute and the Association of BPM Professionals agree on a
common definition of the concept and its relation with the continuous improvement
process [11]. Figure 1 shows the diversity and the complexity of the BPM (process
phases and factors). Wolf and Harmon describe BPM current market situation and
tendencies [10].
Fig. 1. A Business Process Management Framework (adapted from Treat, 2006).
Romanian companies of all sizes need constantly improve their BPM by
optimizing costs, improving efficiency and achieving greater business agility. In the
context of this paper, a possible approach for the BPM development in a company by
382 A. Draghici, M. Mocan, and G. Draghici
taken the advantages of a specific training program in the field (increasing human
resources performance) will be presented [3].
The proposed approach core is linked with the BPM multimedia training materials
development (together with the certification procedure using European Certification
and Qualification Association schema – e-learning facilities) in accordance with the
specific market needs identification (marketing survey applied for companies of the
West part of Romania for the new competencies identification). BPM knowledge
(incorporated in the CertiBPM training program) is not country-dependent, but it is
developing at a global scale. Many European companies train people in various
methodologies of business process management. Existing university and market
courses of this knowledge area are not directly comparable, because they cover
different knowledge areas. The availability of an independent European certification
and self-assessment system, will give the possibility to assess if one meets a certain
level of expertise and competencies that can be used in every EU country.
2 The CertiBPM Skills Development Process
The motivation for the CertiBPM project lies on the Romanian market training needs
satisfaction in BPM. The competencies improving processes for the employees of
Romanian companies will have a positive impact upon their results. One of the steps
to this improvement is to educate employees, industry representatives in the BPM
field of knowledge. Various BPM courses, books and literature from different vendors
exists, which show different aspects BPM, but there is no coherent course for the
specific Romanian market. The proposed approach is related to the transfer of
innovation process from SI and AT to RO. It consists of: Transfer of Education,
Training and Certification concept of ECQA into the university and manufacturing
domain in Romania. Aspects of the project impact are: (1) CertiBPM will build on
BPM knowledge and competencies in different industrial sectors, which are
represented by the consortium members due to their activities with national and
international enterprises; (2) Transfer of the ECQA concept and platform into the
Romania. (3) Implementing the CertiBPM job-role and examination committees for
certifying training bodies and exam tools in multilingual environment. (4) The
important knowledge of CertiBPM and the important system of an uniform European
certification will be very useful for Romanian manufacturing industry, especially for
automotive and telecommunication industries [3].
The core of the results envisaged is a skill set which clearly fit the competencies
required for becoming a BPM specialist (basic level and advanced level). For all the
skill elements training material will be provided in several languages (English,
Slovenian, Romanian, and Austrian) and will be upload on an e-learning system. A
pool of test questions will be defined, which provides the basis for the trainees’
certification process.
The CertiBPM qualification and certification addresses itself to employees from
companies departments related to: Quality management (as TQM), CRM (Customer
Relationship Management), ERP (enterprise Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business Process Managers 383
Management), and enterprise information system’s specialists etc. who want to
complement and/or certify their advanced BPM skills. The target group typically has
abilities for self-development and self-learning, creativity, innovative initiatives etc.
One of the biggest challenges is to conceive a training program that covers the
complete skills set that better satisfy the target group specific needs. Table 1 shows
the adopted working procedure for the establishment of the CertiBPM skill card and
Figure 2 shows a knowledge map of the skill set which provides the basis for the
future research and development activities (the training materials development). It is
the result of an initial consolidation of our experiences in research, education, as well
as in collaboration with industrial partners, and other business organizations
(e.g. Chamber of Commerce, students’ organizations, clusters in the business
environment etc.).
Table 1. CertiBPM skill card establishment methodology
No. Stage of work (research developed) Results / Time / Responsibility of
1. CertiBPM specific procedure for transfer
of innovation (from SI to RO)
Kick-off meeting in Timisoara, January
2011 (duty of all partners)
2. Translation of the existing materials from
SI into English; Recommended relevant
references; Collecting and processing
training feed-back on SI market
Preliminary training materials; Training
feed-back report; February – June 2011
(duty of SI partners)
3 Reference collecting; Information about
existing training programs and BPM
organization in RO
Reference data base report; Report
regarding the BPM state in RO February
– April 2011 (duty of RO partners)
4 Training needs identification
(observations, interviews and marketing
research)
The marketing niche definition and
characterization; Project advertizing in
RO; February – April 2011 (duty of RO
partners)
5 Skill card definition: units; elements;
performance criteria
Preliminary definition of the CertiBPM
skill card, May 2011 (duty of all partners)
- Virtual meetings
6 Complete skill card definition and
content description; harmonization of the
partners’ involvement.
Complete skill card definition with brief
description of the components (project
meeting in Maribor SI) – June 2011
As it can be seen in Figure 2, the skill card is represented by a map (using the
MindManager software) with the main branches consists of the skill units and the
second branches that are the correspondent skill elements. The third braches are
allocated to the performance criteria of each element (that are in direct relation with
the questions that shall be settled for the examination process related to the
certification of the job role). This representation of the skill card allowed an optimal
visualization of the completely developed work (in different project stages) and the
harmonization and integration of the partners for attending the project objectives. The
skill set map was a good tool of communication between the partners and the
information technology specialists involved in the project, too.
384 A. Draghici, M. Mocan, and G. Draghici
Fig. 2. CertiBPM skill set map
3 BPM Training Need Identification – The Case of Romanian
Companies
The aim of this chapter is to present the research methodology and results for the
BPM training needs identification by considering a sample consists of companies
from different industries located in the West part of Romania (Table 2 shows the
research sample structure). Small and medium size enterprises and big companies
were considered for the research sample. Companies were selected randomly and for
each of them one executive was interviewed together with other middle and low-level
managers. 24 organizations were interviewed but 102 questionnaires fill-up were
received and process (sample size n=102). The telephone, e-mail and face-to-face
structured interview method were adopted to obtain responses to the study’s survey
instrument. Although it was a resource intensive option, it was chosen over the
standard methods of administrating paper or online surveys for various reasons: (1) to
be able to clarify respondents’ queries; (2) to avoid the situation whereby a busy
executive or senior manager delegated the task of fill-up the survey to a secretary; and
(3) to ensure that most of the responses collected were complete and usable for data
analysis. The research was developed from September to December 2010 and it is
consider as a preliminary one. Other companies will be included in the research
sample. From this research sample, we expect to form the group of trainees to be
included in the proposed CertiBPM training program.
For the structured interview method approach a questionnaire has been developed.
The questionnaire structure follows the first draft of the CertiBPM skill set (Figure 2,
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business Process Managers 385
Table 2. The research sample structure
Field of economic sector or industry No of companies
% No. of respondents
%
1. Automotive 6 25 28 27
2. Telecommuni-cations, Electronics, Energetic
4 16.67 18 18
3. Manufacturing Machinery 4 16.33 13 13
4. IT and software developers 5 21 22 22
5. Logistics Distributions 5 21 21 20
TOTAL 24 100 102 100
as described in the project proposal). In the beginning of the questionnaire, the
research aims and a brief introduction in BPM (based on references) have been
explained. The items considered for the BPM analyst and expert (second branches in
Figure 2) were detailed and then the respondent has to answer the following question:
Do you consider an opportunity for your organization to be involved in a training
program related to …? All questions on BPM training needs identification were
measured on a six point Likert scale (1=”fully disagree” – 6=”fully agree”). In order
to facilitate interpretation, scores were aggregated after data collection as follows:
score 1 or 2 = “Disagree”, score 3 or 4 = “Neither agree nor disagree” and score 5 or 6
= “Agree”. Figure 3 shows a part of the knowledge map developed for building the
questionnaire used in the research.
The research methodology allows a depth analysis of the skills needed to be
trained in a BPM training program (skills analysis method [4]). Table 3 is the skill
matrix build as a quick and effective way of identifying the BPM training needs. For
the results’ presentation there have been consider the respondent structure by their
industry/economic field as shown in Table 2. The survey results have defined the
companies’ needs for specific topics of BPM (in accordance with their practical needs
and their business development) that were expressed as skills need for their
employees. The skills matrix (Table 3) was built by cumulating the responds per each
economic sector (the vertical columns data). As it can be seen companies from
logistics, distribution (total score 11) expressed their total need for the debate subjects
related to the BPM training program. Also, representatives of IT and software
developers companies (total score 9) and from the automotive industry (total score 8)
expressed their training need more related to the BPM Expert. In addition, the skills
matrix has offered information about the training needs related to each
subject/question. The results shown that manufacturing and logistics companies are
interested in BPM Analyst module, but all the companies need training for
maintaining the business processes (A3). The most needed training modules from the
BPM Expert are E1 (BPM project management), E2 (Human aspects of BPM) and E7
(information technology in BPM).
386 A. Draghici, M. Mocan, and G. Draghici
Fig. 3. The questionnaire structure used for the training needs identification
Table 3. The skill matrix with gap indication
Sector*/ Questions 1 2 3 4 5 Total score Specific needs**
A1 - - X - X 2 -
A2 - - X - X 2 -
A3 X X X X X 5 2
E1 X X X X X 5 4
E2 X X X X X 5 4
E3 X X X - X 4 4
E4 X - X X X 4 3
E5 - - - X X 2 1
E6 X - X - X 3 2
E7 X X X X X 5 5
E8 X X - - X 3 1
Total score 8 6 9 6 11
Specific needs** 4 4 2 3 4
*) As shown in Table 2.
**) Results from the individual discussions with industrial representatives from each
company (issues that were related to specific gap problems – qualitative expressed
training needs).
4 The ECQA Qualification and Certification IT System
This chapter gives an overview of the system and the platform proposed and
implemented by the European Certification and Qualification Association [7].
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business Process Managers 387
Fig. 4. Integrated European Skills Acquisition System
The European Certification and Qualification Association has set up a partnership
of experienced partners in 18 European countries to create a pool of knowledge for
specific professions. This pool can be extended to further professions. All the
professions that have been configured in this system up to now, are based in the
information and communication technology (ICT) area, and are thus closely related to
Software Development. As the integrated product development, processes are
increasingly related and/or linked to software development, new job role from the
BPM domain will profit from this basis [8]. Figure 4 gives an overview of the
uncomplicated but efficient skill acquisition process supported by the ECQA
platform: If there is a need, a person can attend a course for a specific job role online
through an advanced learning infrastructure as described in the following. The student
starts with a self-assessment against the skills. Then she/he can sign into an online
course. Here she/he is guided by a tutor and does a homework which is corrected by
the tutor. Finally, the homework and the real work done in her/his project are
sufficient to demonstrate the skills. The learning platform is based on the web-based
public domain learning management system Moodle (www.moodle.com). The so-
called Capability Adviser supports the assessment process, which is a web based
assessment portal system with a defined database interface to connect the systems.
Network Quality Assurance NQA is a web based team-working tool, which was
developed in the previous project EU IST 2000 28162. So far, many professions have
been configured in the platform (www.eu-certificates.org).
The European Certification and Qualification Association platform of knowledge
is enhanced on an annual basis. Existing skills sets are being reworked and new skills
sets are added. Joint knowledge is being configured in form of a job role with
standard content structures like skills set, syllabus, learning materials and online
configuration, as well as sets of test questions. So-called Job Role Committees decide
upon the content for a specific skills set. These committees are composed of
academics and industrialists. The job role committee for the Innovation Manager, for
388 A. Draghici, M. Mocan, and G. Draghici
instance, created a skills set of an innovation manager together with a set of online
courses etc. People can register from their work places [7], [8].
Nowadays and according to the Bologna Process, it is very important that training
courses are internationally recognized and those successful course attendees receive
certificates that are valid for all European countries. The EU supported the
establishment of the European Qualification Network (EQN), from which the ECQA
has evolved, with exactly this target in mind. This has resulted in a pool of
professions in which a high level of European comparability has been achieved by a
Europe wide agreed syllabus and skills set, a European test questions pool and exam
systems (computer automated by portals), a common set of certificate levels and a
common process to issue certificates [7], [8], [9]. Quality criteria to accept new job
roles in the ECQA, to accredit training organizations and certify trainers, as well as to
certify attendees have been developed. The existing skills assessment portals (already
used by more than 5000 students in different learning initiatives) are extended to
cover the new requirements of the ISO 17024 (General Requirements for Bodies
operating Certification of Persons) standard. Among the international certification
organizations that provide ECQA - compliant certification is the ISQI (International
Software Quality Institute, www.isqi.org). Considering the ECQA platform structure
and development, and its specific use for European certification, the Romanian
researchers (from Politehnica University of Timisoara, UPT) have planned to use also
the UPT Virtual Campus facilities for upload the training program in Romanian
language and better access those materials (www.cv.upt.ro). In this context, the
multimedia training materials and other e-learning facilities will be developed in
Timisoara, too.
5 Conclusion
The described approach is a classical one for skill set provision (qualification -
certification) on the ECQA platform (www.ecqa.org). The presented CertiBPM skill
card (training program structure) is the result of many virtual and face-to-face
meetings of the partners involved in the project. The certification procedure allows
total and partial certificates. The defined skill set map is complementary to the
academic programs in the field of production management that exist on the Romanian
market. The main opportunities from the European certification of the BPM
profession/competencies in the case of Romania are: (1) it offers the possibility for
having a EU certificate for the trainees that follow the training program and pass the
examination process successfully (more than 70 percents of the answers are correct).
This certificate offers them competencies that are compatible on the EU labor market.
This opportunity can be attractive for PhD. students and young researchers, too; (2)
the qualification and certification can be used by other employees that want to update
and develop their knowledge in the BPM field for better align themselves to the new
trends (new business processes and requirements of the market); (3) the different skill
units of the training program can be introduced in some master program courses (in
their syllabus) and so, students can be easy trained for being certified. Professors from
academia can become ECQA trainers for CertiBPM, too. Universities and other
On-Line Training and Certification Solution for Business Process Managers 389
training bodies can become collaborators of the ECQA and they can benefit from the
established schema and experience gained.
The presented paper is linked with the research activities of the project: CertiBPM
- Certified Business Process Manager LLP-LdV/TOI/10/RO/010, founded with
support from the European Commission. The presentation of this paper is connected
with the dEUcert project - Dissemination of European Certification Schema ECQA
(contract no. 505101-LLP-1-2009-1-AT-KA4-KA4MP), that has been funded with
support from the European Commission, also. This paper and communication reflects
the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any
use, which may be made of the information contained therein.
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