"Large, stable processes that have no ability to dynamically change according to new information will not enable organisations to deliver on the promise of digital business."
Through 2017, insufficient business process management (BPM) maturity will prevent 80 percent of organisations from achieving the desired business outcomes from their digital business strategies.
"Deficits in BPM maturity prevent change agents (individuals who lead changes) from delivering game-changing business outcomes from digital business initiatives," adds Marc Kerremans, research director, Gartner.
"Delivering expected returns from digital business investments requires process reinvention — that is, significant innovation in how products and services are created, priced, distributed and serviced across not just one group, but often across the entire value chain."
Digital business changes the competitive landscape, so that one-time process reinvention is not enough.
Organisations must become more resilient, adaptive and creative in order to master and sustain sudden, disruptive changes, as well as longer periods of transition — and even radical transformational changes that will be more frequent, unforeseen, varied and often unavoidable.
Because organisations cannot control such changes, they need to sense, recognise and quickly respond to them.
"With adaptive change, the goal is not to try to tackle big change on every front," Kerremans adds.
"Rather, the focus is on coping with the external nature of major change and its impact on organizations, cultures, governance, technologies and metrics.
"Change agents will likely need to employ several change response types to advance BPM maturity to the point where traditional business process improvement initiatives can turn into big change initiatives capable of supporting sustainable competitive advantage in a digital world."