Transformative Influence of Business Processes on the Business Model: Classifying the State of the Practice in the Software Industry

Fast changing business environments often force companies to rethink and renew their established business model. Often though, decisions to make changes to the current business model are made too late, when the current business is already struggling. One way to overcome this challenge is to continuously monitor business processes in operations and to adjust the business model according to changes in business processes. This paper clarifies the influence of business processes on the business model. Based on a literature review, expert interviews and inductive reasoning, we derive a classification framework for receiving new insights into the maturity of current KPI-systems and their strategic importance with regards to business model changes. While some companies consider the connection as so important that they set up sophisticated performance measurement systems, others rely much less on process KPIs to initiate business model changes. Investigating these differences marks a promising starting point for future research.