Business Process Management Education in Academia: Status, challenges, and Recommendations

In response to the growing proliferation of Business Process Management (BPM) in industry and the demand this creates for BPM expertise, universities across the globe are at various stages of incorporating knowledge and skills in their teaching offerings. However, there are still only a handful of institutions that offer specialized education in BPM in a systematic and in-depth manner. This article is based on a global educators’ panel discussion held at the 2009 European Conference on Information Systems in Verona, Italy. The article presents the BPM programs of five universities from Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America, describing the BPM content covered, program and course structures, and challenges and lessons learned. The article also provides a comparative content analysis of BPM education programs illustrating a heterogeneous view of BPM. The examples presented demonstrate how different courses and programs can be developed to meet the educational goals of a university department, program, or school. This article contributes insights on how best to continuously sustain and reshape BPM education to ensure it remains dynamic, responsive, and sustainable in light of the evolving and ever-changing marketplace demands for BPM expertise

Teaching Tip: Teaching Business Process Concepts in an Introductory Information Systems Class: A Multi-Level Game-Based Learning Approach

This research develops an effective methodology for a core business introductory information systems course to teach business process concepts and the role of information systems in business processes. The developed methodology also helps students properly diagram an organization’s business processes. The methodology uses an experiential learning approach: Multi-dimensional Game-based Learning. Initially, students learn elementary business processes and modeling concepts, e.g., start, end, activity, and gateway. Advancing to a more complex process during the second level, student teams learn the concept of process activity responsibility, e.g., role, pool. The last level challenges student teams to manage a company in a simulated business environment using an SAP® Enterprise Resource Planning system. Students learn the relationship between information systems and business processes and the concepts of data flow, encapsulation, event, and parallelism. A survey of the student’s perception and the researchers’ ad hoc observations demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed methodology

Enhancing Student Learning of Enterprise Integration and Business Process Orientation through an ERP Business Simulation Game

The sophistication of the integrated world of work and increased recognition of business processes as critical corporate assets require graduates to develop ‘process orientation’ and an ‘integrated view’ of business. Responding to these dynamic changes in business organizations, business schools are also continuing to modify their curriculum and introducing innovative teaching and learning strategies. An ERP business simulation game is one such initiative that helps in understanding business processes and enterprise integration and develops process orientation among business graduates. This paper reports on a study investigating the influence of ERP simulation game on learning effectiveness, skills development and decision making. Its impact as a teaching and learning tool on the students’ ability to develop an integrated view of business is assessed and their generic attitudes towards the learning of SAP analysed. The results reveal the significant impact this game had on students’ abilities and points out the challenges in the process and pedagogy. The study found that the game contributed to deep learning in addition to resulting in significant improvement in their process orientation and integrative skills. The study, based on feedback from participants and the experience of academics, recommends further improvements to the deployment and curriculum design of the game

Enhancing Student Learning of Enterprise Integration through ERP Simulation Game

Difficulty of teaching concepts of business processes and business process orientation using traditional teaching and learning methods is well recognized in the literature. This paper reports on the effectiveness of an initiative that employs ‘ERPSim’, an ERP Business simulation game that uses a simulated and complex business environment supported by industry standard software, SAP. Using this simulation game, this initiative aims to teach process concepts and enterprise integration to students who have no practical experience and limited understanding of business operations and information systems in an Australian Business school. Analysis of the data indicates the success of this initiative, despite some operational problems for the academics and cognitive challenges to some students. The study particularly reports improvement in the understanding of the concepts of integration and business processes, the primary objective of introducing this game. Based on the feedback from participants and the experience of academics in administering the ERP Sim game, this study offers some suggestions for further improvement

An Innovative Framework of Integrating ERP into IS 2010 Model Curriculum

The wide spread of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology has made information systems (IS) education shift the focus from functional applications development to enterprise software implementation and configuration. The latest model curriculum for undergraduate IS programs, the IS 2010, has made teaching the large and complex ERP software system an important issue. This paper presents a framework of innovatively integrating ERP into four core and three elective courses proposed in IS 2010. The paper illustrates the integrated ERP curriculum by discussing the design, content, and teaching methods for the seven courses using SAP as the software tool. The purpose of the paper is to provide a useful guideline for those who seek to teach ERP technology in the undergraduate IS curriculum

An Empirical Investigation of the Development of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems Education for Third-level Business Students

This study is an empirical investigation of the development of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) education for Business students. It uses Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) as its case study to determine the benefits of practical ERP education, the challenges faced by third-level institutions and how ERP education should be provided to Business students. The researcher used observation, review of documentation, and semi-structured interviews of fifteen academics as the research techniques. As well as being beneficial for students, employers and ERP vendors, this study finds that the provision of practical ERP education has reciprocal benefits for the third-level institution. By improving graduates skills, enhancing their employability and ensuring students are always up-to-date with new technology, the profile of the college enhanced and important links are built with industry. The challenges facing the institution are personnel issues (such as inadequate training on ERP and inexperience in teaching in a lab setting), programme structure issues (such as the need to rewrite module descriptors and lack of space on the programme) and organisational issues (such as a lack of computer laboratories, cost of running laboratories and need for more technical assistance). However, all of these challenges should be weighed against the benefits that practical ERP education has to offer. This study suggests that in-house training of staff, inclusion of ERP education in the module descriptors, the provision of a dedicated technician, better links with other colleges and industry would all improve the provision of practical ERP education in third-level colleges. The benefits of ERP education can be maximised if it is provided in a mix of theoretical and laboratory settings in a cross-modular fashion in the penultimate year of the degree programme. There is a lot of work to be done in maximising the utilisation of the University Alliance Programme (UAP), small steps have been taken in CIT, but it still has a long way to go. Other third-level institutions can learn from the steps CIT have taken and is taking

Teaching Business Process Management with Simulation in Graduate Business Programs: An Integrative Approach

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a graduate level Business Process Management (BPM) course with process modeling and simulation as its integral component, being offered at an accredited business university in the Northeastern U.S. Our approach is similar to that found in other Information Systems (IS) education papers, and can best be described as Design Science Research applied to pedagogical innovation. We use a survey of 95 graduate business students, classified as Information Technology (IT)-oriented and Business (non-IT)-oriented, to evaluate how the proposed artifact – the BPM course and its modeling and simulation components – supports student learning. The survey explores process analysis, course design, and process integration issues. Statistically significant differences between the two student groups on the value of modeling and simulation are found on five out of 15 survey items: analyzing process performance, creating process models, mapping process structure, understanding process concepts, and implementing process controls. The paper discusses implications of these differences for designing and delivering graduate BPM courses in colleges of business administration

Teaching the Digital Transformation of Business Processes: Design of a Simulation Game for Information Systems Education

The ability to manage business processes in the context of the digital transformation is a key competency that should be addressed in Information Systems (IS) education. One possibility for teaching this competency is through simulation games, but the current ones lack a dynamic view on changing business processes induced by the digital transformation. In this paper, we present the design of a simulation game to teach the digital transformation of business processes within IS education. The game simulates the transformation of a bike manufacturing company to a bike-sharing provider, in which students have to manage changes in the production process in teams during different transformation phases. We argue how our game supports central learning objectives for teaching the aforementioned topic and show the benefit of our game design by running a pilot test with students from IS education using the Systems Usability Scale to evaluate the utility of our implementation

Effects of Simulation Games on IS students’ Work-readiness: Instructors’ Perspectives

Work-readiness is becoming a strategic priority for Australian higher education institutions (HEIs), with a shift from conventional teaching strategies towards experiential teaching techniques to boost students\u27 learning experiences. One of these techniques is to employ simulation games to give students a risk-free, real-world reproduction of the soft and hard skills required by the information systems (IS) business. This exploratory research examined instructors’ perceptions of the impact of simulation games on the work-readiness of information systems students. We conducted semi-structured interviews with instructors who run ERPsim game laboratories in Australian HEIs. The Work Readiness Integrated Competency Model (Prikshat et al., 2019a) was used to map the three kinds of learning outcomes resulting from these analyses: skills, knowledge, and attitudes. The mapping revealed that simulation games have the potential to foster the development of certain skills and attitudes required by the IS industry

Teaching how supply chain operations impact financial results: A case study using cloud-based simulation

Understanding how the execution of the supply chain business processes affect the financial performance a firm is key to running a successful enterprise. These processes are integrated across many functional groups within a business organization, and it is difficult to illustrate this integration in a classroom setting. This paper presents a case study of teaching supply chain operations and business analytics using the cloud-based SAP ERPsim manufacturing game. Although teaching about enterprise systems is often classified as part of the MIS or accounting domain, the ERPsim simulation encompasses the primary supply chain business processes, and because the enterprise system on which it is based captures the financial impact of supply chain transactions during the simulation, it is an ideal tool to teach supply chain operations, financial integration, and analytics. The results of this preliminary study demonstrate that there is a significant improvement in graduate supply chain students’ knowledge and understanding of the impact of supply chain operations on financial performance