Customer-Centric Business Process Improvement and Redesign
Name
Thamasha Rasangi Wijayarathne Arachchige
Abstract
Organizations continually seek to enhance their business processes to maintain competitiveness. Historically, process redesign initiatives have primarily focused on improving internal efficiencies. However, in today’s dynamic landscape, mere efficiency-driven improvements no longer suffice for ensuring business success. As individual customer needs and desires increasingly become a competitive advantage, organizations must pivot toward a more customer-centric approach, with a particular emphasis on enhancing digital business processes. Despite extensive research on business process redesign for efficiency and customer experience, there remains a scarcity of studies that effectively intersect these critical aspects. This thesis investigates how companies can integrate customer centricity into the redesign and improvement of digital business processes by leveraging digital technologies.
Through a series of semi-structured interviews with 23 industry experts across 15 different industries in both B2B and B2C context, our study aims to deepen our understanding of key aspects related to managing and developing digital business processes with a customer-centric focus. Specifically, we explore the benefits of pursuing customer-centric initiatives, identify the characteristics that define a digital business process as customer-centric, and examine how companies approach the redesign of such processes. Additionally, we delve into methods for measuring customer centricity within digital business processes.
Key themes of our findings include the identification of customer-centric perspectives, features and principles in digital business processes, the role of emerging digital technologies in supporting redesign of these processes, and the importance of measuring the effectiveness of these strategies through specific business performance metrics. As a result, the thesis provides an understanding summarizing how companies can achieve customer centricity in their digital business processes without compromising on operational efficiency. The contributions of this thesis are beneficial for organizations seeking to transition towards more customer-centric business models by harnessing the power of digital transformation.
Through a series of semi-structured interviews with 23 industry experts across 15 different industries in both B2B and B2C context, our study aims to deepen our understanding of key aspects related to managing and developing digital business processes with a customer-centric focus. Specifically, we explore the benefits of pursuing customer-centric initiatives, identify the characteristics that define a digital business process as customer-centric, and examine how companies approach the redesign of such processes. Additionally, we delve into methods for measuring customer centricity within digital business processes.
Key themes of our findings include the identification of customer-centric perspectives, features and principles in digital business processes, the role of emerging digital technologies in supporting redesign of these processes, and the importance of measuring the effectiveness of these strategies through specific business performance metrics. As a result, the thesis provides an understanding summarizing how companies can achieve customer centricity in their digital business processes without compromising on operational efficiency. The contributions of this thesis are beneficial for organizations seeking to transition towards more customer-centric business models by harnessing the power of digital transformation.
Graduation Thesis language
English
Graduation Thesis type
Master - Innovation and Technology Management
Supervisor(s)
Fredrik Payman Milani
Defence year
2024