Digital Transformation; Enterprise Engineering; Enteprise Modelling
en
Abstract:
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, change has often been driven by the introduction of new technology. It seems that the organization that is best at leveraging technology wins in the marketplace—meaning that keeping up (or even ahead) of developments has become a crucial capability for modern organizations. The word leveraging is emphasized to stress the fact that technology is not a differentiator per se. Only when it is used successfully does it have any effect. Some claim that the people factor is actually key (Kane et al., 2019). The plethora of changes that the digital transformation has brought about, and the many more that we are not even aware of yet or have not even been thought of yet, provides organizations with deep and fundamental challenges. How to excel as an enterprise, while everything is changing constantly? There are hardly any securities left; traditional business models are continuously challenged by digitally inspired and empowered startups. The creation of this book was triggered by three, mutually amplifying, fundamental trends driving enterprises to change: the transition to the digital age, the emergence of service ecosystems, and the growing role of data as a key underlying resource. As a result of these trends, modern-day enterprises are confronted with several challenges. These challenges impact the “design” of these enterprises, from the definitions of products and services offered to their clients, via the business processes that deliver these products and services and the information systems that support these processes, to the underlying IT infrastructure. When using the term enterprise, we specifically do not only refer to commercial businesses, but rather more broadly to any purposeful undertaking by a socio-technical system. This indeed includes commercial businesses, but also includes government agencies, NGOs, factories, mobility networks, logistics networks, etc. The aim of this book is, therefore, to explore different relevant aspects in more detail while at the same time also providing concrete suggestions for enterprises to meet the resulting challenges. In line with this, this book brings together contributions covering four key perspectives: 1. Experience reports on how enterprises deal with these trends in practice 2. The need for a new design logic 3. The consequences for architectural coordination of the needed transformations 4. The ensuing consequences for enterprise modeling Each of these perspectives will be covered in a separate part of this book, containing stand-alone parts with contributions by several authors. Each of the parts contains a concluding chapter reflecting on the key insights provided by the different contributions.
