The Business Activity Model as a Pragmatic Strategic tool for Digital Transformation cases
Summary
Rapidly evolving industries require organisations to embark on a digital transformation. These
transformations have a large impact on the entire organisation, as technologies, business models
and organisational structures can be impacted. The new technologies, fierce competition and high
user expectations push organisation to change, but due to the size and complexity of these
transformations, many projects fail. This concept also triggered a scientific response to structure and
define this concept to improve the success rate and understanding. The scientific base is lacking in
empirically driven literature and practical tools to support practitioners on their digital
transformation. In a response to this need, the Business Activity Model (BAM) was created to assist
in the strategic process to determine what aspects of the organisation need to change to stay
competitive. This model has shown great potential to assist in the practical application in digital
transformations but is lacking in consistency in how it is applied. Confusion regarding the methods
causes discussion by the users and misunderstanding of why it is applied.
To discover how the BAM should be applied, a relationship between the cases in which they are
applied and how it is applied is researched. To discover this relation, first a framework (DTCCF) is
created that includes relevant aspects of the digital transformation in relation to the classification of
practical digital transformation cases. Secondly, multiple characteristics of the BAM are identified to
help discover different methods that are used to apply the BAM. Finally, the relation between the
identified case types and BAM methods is analysed to discover how the BAM should be applied.
Multiple case types are identified using the created framework, but the variance in how the BAM
was applied was not caused by the case types. In the same case types the BAM was applied in
different ways, which was caused by content and process related decisions. What content is needed
and the effect that the process can have, needs to be balanced to apply the BAM in the best way.