Digital Transformation of Enterprises: A Transition Using Process Modelling Antecedents

Process modeling as one of the critical Business Process Management (BPM) disciplines is recognized as a key anchor to digital transformation (DT) efforts currently underway in most enterprises. While enterprises are transforming digitally, the practice of process modeling is also changing with little guidance on key considerations for realizing success process modeling. The focus of the paper was to determine key antecedents for realizing effective processing modeling during DT projects. A case study of a bank transforming its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was used as a basis to “tease out” key factors critical for successful DT. A number of inferences emanate from the findings of this paper. The first is linked to the increasingly knowledge-based orientation and digitalization of our society that requires a re-think of how current organizations are structured and modelled. The notion of “Digitalization of Project Management” also emerged to undergird current transformations in project management, which affects how process modelling is currently practiced. Secondly, the implications of such digital transitions in process modeling is that the process of organizational modeling and structuring is encouraging more “Knowledge-Enabled Participation”, with its emphasis on expertise, team structure and competence of project participants. The last inference conflates the factors of “DT Evaluation” and “DT Modeling” that emerged from this study to make the following claim: that the process of organizational transformation will increasingly be “machine-based”, with process modeling and evaluation becoming predominantly digitalized. Therefore, process modeling and its foundational disciplines (such as project management and business process management) will transform, with an orientation elevating older terminologies such as automation and data-intensive processing; with organizational strategy intricately linked to process modeling as its anchor.