Portfolio Press Release
Announcing Lombardi University: A Comprehensive BPM Talent Development Program
Provides Role-based Education and Certification, a Faculty of Industry Luminaries, and Tools for Managing BPM Careers
Lombardi Press Release
12 May 2009
Austin, TX — May 12, 2009 — Lombardi®, a leader in business process management (BPM) software, today announced the formation of Lombardi University™, a first-of-its-kind comprehensive BPM skills development platform. Through Lombardi University, individuals can get role-based training for developer, program manager, analyst, operations and executive careers. Lombardi University combines Lombardi practitioners with non-Lombardi industry experts to offer the broadest set of BPM education available. Lombardi University also has developed tools that enable companies of all kinds — end users, systems integrators, and resellers — to develop a roadmap of needed BPM talent, and manage the skills attained by each of their people throughout their careers.
"One of the things that we constantly hear from companies is that they struggle with their BPM programs - not due to technology issues, but rather, because of a lack of people that understand BPM," said Phil Gilbert, president of Lombardi. "Lombardi University is focused on training people to think with a BPM mentality, growing and certifying their BPM skills, and ensuring that the tangible business improvement that is unique to BPM becomes squarely ingrained as a corporate culture and competency."
A recent McKinsey study surveyed more than 500 CIOs to find out what obstacles were inhibiting their IT productivity and delivery. A main conclusion was that talent development was viewed as the best way to improve IT performance in organizations.*
Talent development goes well beyond learning the speeds and feeds of a particular tool, and even beyond classroom training. This is why Lombardi University's certification program requires a combination of learned skills with practical experience, making Lombardi Certified practitioners the most advanced BPM practitioners you can find. Tata Consultancy Services is a Lombardi University launch partner; Dr. Santosh Mohanty, Global Head - Technology Excellence said, "TCS is committed to strategic and measurable talent development. Lombardi University's role-based approach toward education and certification fits our needs very well, and we will be participating in this program globally."
Developing the BPM Talent Pool
The new Lombardi University platform delivers the exact education and mentoring required for users to develop and accelerate their BPM capabilities and guarantee success. Starting with a first project, Lombardi University helps companies build the BPM talent they require to sustain the effort, and make it an organizational competency.
Specifically, the Lombardi University curriculum offers comprehensive BPM education, tailored to each person's role within a BPM team, including hands-on, practical experience with the student so that they quickly learn how to apply their BPM skills in-project. It also provides students with the opportunity to grow their BPM skills to an "expert" level over time, and at their desired pace. Additionally, Lombardi University offers an Executive BPM Training, which is critical for developing the BPM program leadership within a company. Overall, the curriculum is in stark contrast to the "one-time, one-size-fits-all," developer-only, product training offered by other BPM vendors. Lombardi University is truly innovative, with a combination of features that is unmatched in the BPM industry.
Lombardi University Features
An overview of Lombardi University's skills development and education approach includes:
- Certification — The cornerstone of Lombardi University is an innovative program that measures and validates student skills for every role at three certification levels. Lombardi University certification lets companies consistently measure skills, experience and practices across team resources, and provide a BPM education roadmap for member.
- Role-based Education Tracks — Lombardi University designs education tracks for each participating role in a BPM project team: analysts, developers, program managers, administrators, and executives. The new 'BPM Executive Training' offerings are critical for developing the BPM program leadership within a company.
- Mentoring — Lombardi University utilizes extensive mentoring to ensure that BPM best practices are clearly understood within the context of an actual project implementation. Lombardi experts work side-by-side with a BPM team to provide hands-on training of proven BPM implementation and deployment techniques.
- Flexible Delivery — Lombardi University delivers instructor-led courses and workshops at both campus classrooms and virtual classrooms (i.e., web-based). Additionally, students may attend self-paced, on-demand courses at their convenience.
- On-line management — Lombardi University's on-line education management system allows students to track and administer their education plans. Management can see direct visibility into the progress of individual students, as well as their entire team.
- Faculty Network — In addition to Lombardi's own BPM practitioners, we have incorporated well-known experts from the BPM industry. This approach expands Lombardi University's core education capability and provides customers access to unique "elective" courses that complement the core curriculum.
What Partners Are Saying About Lombardi University:
- "The Lombardi University faculty network reflects Lombardi's recognition that solid BPM fundamentals goes beyond tooling," said Dr. Bruce Silver, founder of BPMessentials, and a member of Lombardi University's faculty network. "As students work toward certification, offering elective courses that accelerate their education and mentoring is important for strengthening their knowledge foundation."
- "Helping organization's develop process driven leadership is a critical need in the industry," said Andrew Spanyi, Managing Director of Spanyi International Inc., and well-known process management author. "I'm pleased to see Lombardi University's management education filling this important gap in the marketplace."
"I meet with CIO's at companies all over the world and nearly every one shares the same concern with me. One of the biggest risks to process improvement success is the BPM talent gap," said Rod Favaron, CEO at Lombardi. "We developed Lombardi University specifically to address this gap — it teaches people the skills that they need to successfully do their jobs and helps companies develop and accelerate the growth of their organizational BPM capabilities."
This announcement coincides with the unveiling of new versions of Lombardi's award winning BPM products, Teamworks® and Blueprint™. Each announcement details how partnering with Lombardi as their as BPM platform provider helps companies achieve greater business returns from their large-scale business transformation programs.
Lombardi University courses are currently available for enrollment to Lombardi customers, prospects and partners. To learn about Lombardi University, please visit www.lombardi.com/university.
* McKinsey Quarterly, "IT's unmet potential: McKinsey Global Survey Results", McKinsey & Company, pg 6, December 2008.
About Lombardi
Lombardi is a leader in business process management (BPM). We offer award-winning BPM technology and services to help our customers, partners and government agencies around the world succeed with their process improvement initiatives.
Lombardi is behind some of the largest, most successful BPM implementations in the world. Our customers include AARP, Aflac, Allianz Group, Applied Materials, Banco Espirito Santo, Barclays Global Investors, Chiquita Brands, Dell, Financial Services Authority, Ford Motor Company, Hasbro, ING Direct, Intel, Jaguar Land Rover, Mirant, National Bank of Canada, National Institutes of Health, OAD Groep, Pfizer, PHH Arval, SIRVA, Symantec, UCLH, Wells Fargo, Yale University and numerous governmental agencies. For more information, visit www.lombardi.com.
For more information:
Wayne Snell
Sr. Director of Marketing
+1.512.382.8200 ext. 377
Wayne.Snell@lombardi.com
