Modeling a Business Transformation with Business Process Management – a Case study

Abstract

In todays paced digital world businesses are increasingly shifting from traditional methods of software distribution (Software as a Product (SaaP)) to Software as a Service (SaaS) in order to meet customer demands and stay competitive. This transformation brings both challenges and opportunities for software companies looking to optimize their operations and enhance service delivery. To address this it is crucial to have an understanding of the Business Transformation (BT) process and best practices. The objective of this masters thesis is to contribute insights in the field of BT with a specific focus on transforming an existing software company’s Business Processes (BP) from SaaP to SaaS. The aim is to identify process patterns (PP) in BPMN models that serve as a guide for this transition ensuring efficiency and alignment with industry leading practices. To achieve this research goal, BP Modeling serves as the core methodology enabling to model the current processes (”as-is”) and design future processes (”to-be”) for the SaaS model. The BPMN models provide representations of these processes facilitating clear communication and allowing for comparisons, between process changes. Moreover a review of existing literature on SaaS transformations, known as a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is conducted to uncover the best practices and theoretical insights. The findings from this SLR serve as a guide for developing the to-be processes based on the as-is processes. Process comparisons of current and envisioned process states result in evolving PPs which serve as the base of validation expert interviews. These interviews provide practical perspectives from industry experts who have firsthand experience in leading or being part of similar BTs. Based on the results of the interviews, relevant PPs are ranked and explained, in order to showcase their benefits for a BT. The process model comparison brought forward ten PPs that have influence on at least one process domain. The domains were developed by coming up with a customer life-cycle that includes the five most important BPs domains of the case study company. The PPs were validated independently from six industry SaaS and BT experts and resulted in frequently used patterns in the modeled Transformation, being rated the most important on average by the experts. It is essential to acknowledge a limitation in this research scope as it focuses the as-is process models specifically on Flexopus, a German based software company. Therefore generalizing these findings to software companies may have limitations. Additionally it is recognized that relying on expert interviews and literature reviews might introduce biases that require careful consideration during the analysis and interpretation of data.