ABSTRACT
Today’s large and complex enterprises are facing technical challenges of increasing global competitiveness in meeting or exceeding customer needs, reducing product costs and improving overall effectiveness. They invest billions of dollars every year in business improvements that are often not successful. They have to define the intellectual building blocks that shape how enterprises can fundamentally transform as the world around them shifts in response to changes, economic conditions and global competition. Understanding the elements involved in executing the business process improvements is not enough; success depends on developing and executing business growth strategies while managing risk at the enterprise-level change. Successful enterprise transformations involve a holistic approach that integrates view points and multiple stakeholders, processes and disciplines (Valerdi and Nightingale, 2011). Therefore, transformation is an essential driving force for today’s enterprises for their sustained competitive growth and development. The business vision, specific to each enterprise, gives rise to variety of goals including simplification, cost reduction, better customer service, improved processes, etc. To realize each of these goals, it almost becomes imperative that an enterprise utilizes transformation as a core concept. An enterprise’s transformation objectives provide the anchor for consistent decision-making and execution of the processes (Kumar et al., 2012). Rouse and Baba (2006) very strongly believe that fundamental enterprise changes begin by looking at the challenges from technical, behavioral and social perspectives. Research in enterprise transformation must yield both understanding of fundamental change and the methods and tools that can make change possible. They also believe that this will come from taking multiple perspectives on the problems of change – what drives it, what enables it, and what elements facilitate and hinder its success. Rouse (2005) identifies four main drivers of transformation:
1. New market and/or technology opportunities. 2. Anticipated failure due to market and/or threats. 3. Other players’ (for example, competitors) transformation initiatives. 4. Crises resulting from declining market performance (revenue and profitability), cash flow
problems, etc.
