Uncovering the competency gap of students employed in business process analyst roles — An employer perspective

As organisations become more process oriented, there has been a significant increase in the demand for graduates and professionals with Business Process Management (BPM) expertise. Whilst there is an increase in BPM training and university related courses to try and address the demand for BPM expertise it has remained a constant challenge for organisations to acquire the appropriate skill set. Little research has been conducted to measure the extent to which graduates meet employer requirements within this field. The aim of this paper is assess the competency gaps of IS students employed in the emerging business process analyst role using the framework for business process analyst competencies as developed by Sonteya and Seymour. We find that competency gaps do exist, the greatest of which were organisation knowledge and the business process orchestration competency. Additionally, the study found that employers consider the business interpersonal competency as the most important for a business process analyst role.