The Enterprise 4.0 Business Analyst: Digital Business Transformation Requires a New Mindset

Abstract

As the world becomes increasingly digital, achieving sustainable success means that organisations must fundamentally rethink how business is conducted, by taking a holistic approach to digital business transformation (DBT). Businesses must re-evaluate existing business processes and increasingly realise the importance of business process management practices to stay innovative and competitive in digital ecosystems. Businesses that fail to transform and become Enterprise 4.0 organisations risk losing market share and becoming irrelevant. In this paper we focus on the pivotal role of the future business analyst (BA) in enabling radical changes in their own organisations and working with all stakeholders in the ecosystem to understand future business and technology needs. Both the skills framework for the information age (SFIA) and the business analysis body of knowledge (BABOK) have identified new skills and knowledge required of business analysts for DBT. However, this paper suggests that skills and knowledge solely are not sufficient to address the significant challenges that complex digital transformation brings. A focus group session with nine business analysts—who have each experienced one or more digital business transformations in different organisations—revealed that a paradigm shift is required in the mindset (way of thinking) of the Enterprise 4.0 business analyst. The new mindset is manifested through thinking patterns such as adopt-not-adapt, outside-in, new-to-old, cross-functional collaboration, ecosystem thinking, a focus on information asset management, agility and strategic thinking. In this paper, we suggest that the Enterprise 4.0 mindset be added to the SFIA and BABOK competency classification to create a more holistic profile of the future BA, and to guide the cultivation of this mindset by tertiary education institutions, professional bodies, government departments and managers in organisations.