Business Process Management Certifications Overview and Transfer of Innovation

The purpose of this article is to present early phases of the Leonardo da Vinci – Transfer of innovation project called Certified Business Process Manager (CertiBPM), which was started in Dec. 2010. The goal of this project is to export the BPM knowledge from Slovenia to Romania. The focus of early phases of the project include exploring the existing BPM related certification on the market, designing commonly accepted body of knowledge (skillcard) and translation to English and Romanian language. The research approach consists of qualitative research methods: literature review, existing BPM certifications review and comparison. The existing BPM related certifications were gathered and studied. Key finding of our research is that there are two main types of BPM certifications exist on the market. First distinguishable group of certifications are BPM platform vendor dependent and focused on specific software tool (e.g. IBM). Second group of certifications includes general process management knowledge consistent with specific methodology (e.g. OMG). Moreover, no existing course includes human factors, soft approach to management and motivational factors. Research limitations/implications: Existing course is well established on Slovenian market, and currently there is no evidence that the knowledge will be equally useful by Romanian management students and managers. Researching existing certifications and extracting common knowledge out of them ensures only theoretical comprehensiveness of the course. The usability of the course for the target group is yet to be proven with the research after the knowledge transfer. Most valuable practical implication of our project is unification of the BPM course and certification into coherent European Certification and Qualification association scheme.