Business Process Management and Digital Innovations: A Systematic Literature Review

Tahir Ahmad,Amy Van Looy

doi:10.3390/su12176827

Abstract

Emerging technologies have capabilities to reshape business process management (BPM) from its traditional version to a more explorative variant. However, to exploit the full benefits of new IT, it is essential to reveal BPM’s research potential and to detect recent trends in practice. Therefore, this work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) with 231 recent academic articles (from 2014 until May 2019) that integrate BPM with digital innovations (DI). We position those articles against seven future BPM-DI trends that were inductively derived from an expert panel. By complementing the expected trends in practice with a state-of-the-art literature review, we are able to derive covered and uncovered themes in order to help bridge a rigor-relevance gap. The major technological impacts within the BPM field seem to focus on value creation, customer engagement and managing human-centric and knowledge-intensive business processes. Finally, our findings are categorized into specific calls for research and for action to let scholars and organizations better prepare for future digital needs.

Highlights

Today’s technologies are triggering a fourth industrial revolution and generate new ways of doing business
The studies were classified against the seven business process management (BPM)-digital innovations (DI) trends of [12]
To obtain faster innovations and operations, we found that past studies mainly focused on business process reengineering (BPR) and agile principles, as well as on quality dimensions

Summary

Introduction

Today’s technologies are triggering a fourth industrial revolution and generate new ways of doing business. With the rapid boom of new technologies (e.g., blockchains, Internet of Things (IoT) or artificial intelligence), organizations are struggling to take maximum advantage of new IT [1]. On the one hand, emerging technologies enable disruptive digital innovations (i.e., DI or innovations with new technologies) which are rudimentary prerequisites of sustainable business processes (i.e., an organization’s long-term way of working). While product/service innovations are a potential feature for organizations to lead in the market, digital process innovations help in terms of reducing time delays and resource sharing [3]. Digital innovations are transforming both the client needs and the infrastructural requirements. New technologies, such as blockchains, IoT, process mining, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and 4D printing, have the potential to disruptively change business processes

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion