Digital Business (DBiz)

...or Maybe Shutdown Would Describe it Better: A Case Study

There is no consistency to the business shutdown between states, counties, industries or anything I can think of. Each governor handled it differently and most of the time the rules really didn’t make sense. But one thing is clear, the governors are not through yet as each listen to their own physicians and advisors- each of whom have their own ideas. It seems that with each spike, large or small, the lockdown is back on. And we may be heading into another lockdown as winter approaches.

This article is not about politics or the Pandemic itself. It is about the yo-yo response that companies have to live with and if possible, not only stay in business but find a way to thrive - and some are thriving while others die.

Most organizations have started or at least planned digital transformation initiatives [12]. New digital tools are available with increasing regularity - and many of them have the potential for a major impact on business processes. Hyper-Automation has become a reality which changes the way business processes are organized and executed significantly. However, only a small number of organizations have their business processes sufficiently under control to realize the full potential of new digital technologies and the related transformation [7] [3]. Appropriate business process management (BPM) capabilities, delivered through the process of process management, have a significant impact on the value achieved through digitalization initiatives [2]. Digital transformation continues to shape the BPM Discipline. Here are four key trends and predictions: 

This question matters - now more than ever

Companies face daily new opportunities and threats in our fast changing digital world. Organizations have to establish a management discipline to integrate agile innovation into their business and realize the full potential of digital technologies and the power of the internet. The Discipline of Business Process Management (BPM) addresses this need. Correctly set up, it establishes an agile and focused innovation capability in an organization. The BPM-Discipline produces innovation in form of new impactful processes and organizes the way other innovations are developed and rolled out. It is  crucial for getting best value from digital transformations [1].

An increasing numbers of companies are becoming keenly interested in process mining. For example, the main track of the recent “International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM 2020)” had almost 2000 registered participants. While it was a virtual event due to Covid 19 – that level of participation is impressive nevertheless.

Why the rapidly growing interest in process mining? Unlike process modeling workshops, where the model is largely based on people’s perception of how work is done, process mining is data based. It extracts insights from processes by the means of analyzing the event data generated in IT systems. The potential benefits of process mining are principally related to process discovery and conformance checking. In other words, process mining compares data from the event log step-by-step with the process documentation or model to find discrepancies.

Digital transformation was always a 5 year plan that could be put off because it was so painful. But COVID has forced organizations to make dramatic, transformational changes in 5 months or 5 weeks. And the pace of change has not let up as organizations are evolving to stay relevant in very uncertain times.

Never has it been more important that the executives and managers have accurate dashboards and reports to be able to drive business decisions. But are they looking out of the windshield of the car or out of the back window?

Put another way, are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that they are using to make their decisions leading indicators or lagging indicators? Lagging indicators vs. leading indicators

Some examples of lagging and leading indicators:

Business process management (BPM) has been quietly undergoing resurgence as organizations gradually recognize the central role of process in digital transformation. Some industry observers have argued that process is sizzling, while others have pointed out that for BPM to achieve a renaissance it will require greater scale, flexibility, and collaboration than what was previously the norm.

In one of my earlier articles on Disruption, Innovation and the Art of Business Architecture, I made the case that the concept of entropy is highly applicable in explaining the evolution of business organizations.

Generally speaking, entropy is the measure of disorder in a closed system, and it is a concept borrowed from thermodynamics - the branch of physics that deals with the relationship between heat, work, temperature, and energy in a system.

EDITOR’S NOTE: DBizInstitute.org has released it first research report "Digital Business Adoption: Examining the drivers for digital business success around the world". Access this members-only report by logging in (existing members) or join DBizInstitute.org today.