BPM Organization in IT or Business

Yesterday, I was interviewed by a student who is currently writing his MSc-thesis on BPM, more specifically, on the establishment of BPM Centers of Excellence (CoE). He also asked me, where a BPM CoE should be located in the organization.

In many organizations, including ours, the BPM CoE is located within the IT department. Of course, one could argue that this creates a BPM organization that is only remotely connected to the business. On the other hand, there are also good reasons for this set-up:

(1) Being cross-functional IT has a perspective that spans across borders within and across the organization.

(2) The IT unit has no functional stakes to defend.

(3) Since BPM is closely connected to EA (Enterprise Architecture), a close collaboration between these areas is fostered.

(4) BPM also requires a level of IT competence that frequently does not reside within the business organization.

However, this does not mean that BPM can be run as an initiative by IT alone. Close cooperation between business and IT is required and even if the term is somewhat overused, "alignment" seems to be a good expression in this case.