Trends in Business Process Transformations

In 2007, Business transformation became a crucial factor in driving change within organisations. European Firms have identified the need for change due to several growing external factors that have had a growing impact on the firm’s survival in the industry. As the forces of globalisation began to increase, barriers of trade reduced significantly causing firms to shift their focus on improving processes internally in order to sustain operations and become profitable. With the reduction of the barriers of trade, competition both domestically and overseas increased, not only so but technological changes, industry consolidation, government policies and customer preferences became large influencers for firms to adapt to the dynamic environment of change. (Exhibit 1)
The external trends fueled the need for internal business transformations to focus on revenue growth opportunities, cost cutting measures and increases in productivity. Those three factors have become common themes among several organisations that firms took on projects to address them. The projects undertook included corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions with external manufacturers, outsourcing with eastern firms and the implementation of enterprise wide IT projects to centralize all operations and enhance communications. The projects were forecasted to grow from 2007 and had become a part of the norm of any organisation. (Exhibit 2)
In 2012, the business drivers behind business process transformation remained the same with a higher focus on improving customer satisfaction whilst remaining competitive. Business’s started to increase utilizing enterprise wide IT projects in order to sustain their lifeline within the industry and increase their customer satisfaction. The IT projects were seen as enablers for any organisation, leading to a rise in cloud computing. The cloud aimed to serve the key elements of increased scalability, on demand resources, shared infrastructures, and remote