A critical analysis of global BPM demand

I’ve recently submitted a Business Process Management research paper for presentation at this year’s conference on Qualitative research in IT (QualIT2010), held immediately prior to the Australasian conference on Information Systems (ACIS2010) in Brisbane, Australia. Our paper provides insight into the research methodology applied and the outcomes of a global review of the capabilities organisations typically look for in their BPM employees.

To clearly articulate the preferred BPM capabilities sought across three distinct geographic regions, a structured content analysis of leading on-line recruitment websites was conducted, with this data compared to leading academic BPM capability frameworks. As there is still very little understanding on BPM as a profession, this research aims to address this gap by analysing current BPM vacancies on a global scale and providing a synthesised view of how the roles and responsibilities required aligns with known BPM capability frameworks.

The intent of this paper is to provide an understanding of how BPM practitioner capabilities currently required by organisations differ between the Australian, European and North American contexts. Specifically, this study addresses the following research questions through a literature review and qualitative data analysis:
• “What does the landscape of BPM employment opportunities look like across different geographic regions?”
• “How do sought after capabilities match to known BPM capability frameworks?”

This analysis can be used by prospective and current BPM professionals to understand organisational requirements globally, and academics to structure BPM education to suit these differing geographic demands. This study can be further extended to incorporate and align industry requirements with academic offerings to better serve the needs of the BPM community and make BPM curriculum more relevant.

I’ll put up a link to this paper and another on BPM curriculum (to be presented at ACIS2010) after the conferences.