The Business Activity Model as a Pragmatic Strategic tool for Digital Transformation cases

Abstract

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.