BUSINESS PROCESSES MANAGEMENT IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

Digital Transformation of organizations and their business processes is a challenge for educational institutions (EIs) in many aspects. Besides digital transformation pillars dealing with strategy orientation, customer-centricity, innovation and organizational culture as well as digital competencies and skills, the fifth pillar related to ICT and process infrastructure has some specific demands. Some EI's business processes are common to all institutions within this sector and some processes are being performed differently from school to school. The variety of ways of performing processes in EIs, impacts the scope of Information Systems which need to be implemented for supporting EIs. This was recognized as a problem within several scientific projects authors worked on, whereby all projects were dealing with digital transformation, especially in a national project in Croatia, named “e-Schools: Establishing a System for Developing Digitally Mature Schools (pilot project)”. The project is a part of a wider e-schools programme aimed at introducing ICT into the school system in the 2015-2022 period. In order to introduce a new information system to Croatian EIs, we first had to discover, model, analyse and improve EI's business processes. Appropriate research methods for process discovery, modelling and analysis were applied, and a process repository was developed. Process analysis results have been discussed in several workshops with EI representatives and stakeholders (founders, i.e. local municipalities, Ministry of Science and Education, etc.) and improvements based on ICT support were suggested. An Open Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System was procured based on functional specifications derived from the process analysis and this ERP systems is currently being implemented. In this paper our research methodology is presented, the processes repository is depicted, and most important lessons learned are listed. The concept of digital transformation of educational institutions implies a high level of ICT integration in the performance of school business processes without the systematic approach to planning and management of the use of digital technologies to give the expected results. The use of digital technologies in education no longer depends on the enthusiasm of the individual, but on the systematic approach that needs to be planned, managed and implemented with the support of all stakeholders. For the digital transformation of educational institutions and their sustainability it is necessary to harmonize the implementation of ICT and process infrastructure as it was confirmed by our example.