BPTrends Associates
Integrated Approach to Business Process Improvement

"Markets are always waiting for the “next big thing” and while new terms continue to evolve, such as “transformation” and “cognitive computing” the basic goals have always been to improve process performance across the enterprise,” begins Paul Harmon, Founder and Executive Editor of BPTrends.com and Founder and Chief Methodologist of BPTrends Associates (BPTA). However, the greatest challenge for Business Process Management (BPM) is making it an integral part of the culture. With this requirement in mind, in 2002, Paul Harmon and Celia Wolf, Founder and Publisher of BPTrends.com and Founder and Managing Director of BPTA, decided the time was right to launch a business focused on information and education on Business Process Management. The two had worked together off and on since their AI days in the mid eighties, and in 2002, Paul published the first edition of his bestselling book, Business Process Change and in 2003, together, they launched BPTrends.com, an online information portal.

Three years later, together with a 3rd partner, Roger Burlton, they launched BPTrends Associates (BPTA) a BPM training, consulting and management service provider. The firm’s BPM Curriculum and Certificate Program establish a consistent, integrated and scalable BPM Methodology, including a common language, tools and techniques that assure efficient collaboration among all process practitioners within an organization.

The BPTA BPM Methodology addresses the Enterprise Level, Process Level and Implementation Level of business processes. BPTA takes a top-down approach to business process improvement by aligning business processes with business strategy and goals and assuring that IT applications, human competencies and organizational development support the process performance objectives of the organization to yield optimal performance. “Our strength is getting the business process management system in place, including all the components of a process initiative,” says Celia. “Our services include BPM training, executive coaching, strategic planning, business process architecture, process design and the management and measurement of a process-based organization.” This, in combination with Paul’s book, Business Process Change, and our world class BPM information portal, BPTrends.com, makes us unique as a world class organization supporting BPM world-wide.

BPTA has always emphasized a comprehensive approach to process change.

It helped a Government agency in Canada responsible for acquiring, scheduling, running and maintaining buses throughout the province. The agency perceived a variety of problems with their business and wanted to improve their performance across the enterprise. BPTrends conducted a series of workshops with the senior staff and a proposed process architecture for the top level processes in the organization. This approach guaranteed that the top management of the organization had a comprehensive understanding of their organization’s processes and a plan to identify, prioritize, redesign, measure and manage their processes. The result was a significant improvement of the organization’s performance.

Our BPM Curriculum and Certificate Program is marketed and delivered globally, both publically and privately, through our network of licensed and certified partners around the globe

“Our BPM Curriculum and Certificate Program is marketed and delivered globally, both publically and privately, through our network of licensed and certified partners around the globe,” adds Celia. Based on market research and feedback from leaders, global partners and clients in the international BPM community, the curriculum was revised in May 2016 to address the current BPM trends—featuring the most up-to-date technologies, tools and techniques—designed to support a global industry standard.

Forging ahead, the firm’s personal commitment is to incorporate new technologies into its curriculum to enable well-rounded process change practitioners, capable of identifying, redesigning, measuring and managing their organization’s performance.