Process excellence the key for digitalisation
Business Process Management Journal
ISSN: 1463-7154
Article publication date: 26 April 2019
Issue publication date: 2 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The new digital era brings several opportunities and challenges that accelerate the need to implement digital solutions in organisations. This speed of change creates many questions, but unfortunately, references cases to answer them or general guidelines to succeed are still rare. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present four cases that illustrate the procedure followed by companies to introduce digital elements in their operations (automotive industry supplier, toy industry, catering company and circuit trainings company). Each case offers inspiration and knowledge about the procedure to introduce digital elements and facilitates the proposal of a general procedure that aims to become guidance for practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
The research implements comparative analysis in a multi-case design. It sensitises the concept of “digitalisation path” as a research instrument. Projects documentation and informal conversational interviews allow the researchers to describe each organisation and their digitalisation path. The interviewees review, enhance and approve the cases. Furthermore, the research compares the paths and summarises the findings into a digitalisation path model that explains the digitalisation of these organisations and it serves as a guide for other organisations.
Findings
The digitalisation paths evidence the necessity of business process management to develop digitalisation. Technology is not the goal, but the instrument and process excellence is the driver to introduce new technologies in the operations. Furthermore, the four organisations share a similar pattern and activities within their digitalisation paths.
Research limitations/implications
The multi-case methodology lacks generalisation, but it provides detail over the digitalisation paths.
Practical implications
The paper presents a guideline for practitioners to introduce digital elements in the organisation.
Originality/value
The paper presents a practical perspective to introduce digitalisation in organisations, which is currently rare in literature.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper is one of the research outputs of the project IGA VŠE F3/87/2017 financially supported by University of Economics, Prague.
Citation
Martinez, F. (2019), "Process excellence the key for digitalisation", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 25 No. 7, pp. 1716-1733. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-08-2018-0237
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited