Balancing Efficiency and Flexibility in Business IT Processes

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3.3 Business Process IT Ambidexterity
Highly competitive environment and need of innovation, the companies are facing high pressures to innovate and improve the business process. As IT budgets are limited, process owners and IT departments need to decide how to divide their spending on efficiency and flexibility enhancing IT capabilities to optimally support the execution of business processes. The limited IT budgets put pressure on IT process owners to find the perfect mix to achieve the efficiency and flexibility to support smooth execution of business processes (Heckmann, 2015). IT departments need to find the right balance to use IT budget and decision making ability and play their role in maximizing the organization’s revenue. Ambidexterity …show more content…

This sounds easier than done, Business Process Ambidexterity is something a lot of the organizations have failed to achieve. Too much focus on the exploitative capabilities and the short term results look good and changes in the industry will blindside the organization. Google Orkut, was once top notch social media platform available but management was too keen to use the existing resources to maintain the platform and satisfied with the growth of the user base overlooking the need for innovation. The management from Orkut was blinded by the short term success of the platform and did not realize and plan for the future. Similarly, too much focus on the explorative capabilities, and organization loses the short term benefits. Firms cannot plan future at the cost of today. Ericsson invested heavily in the future by employing over 30000 researchers and developers for the development of the first analog mobile systems. The company was doing well overall so the problem was not reflected in the numbers but with the crash in the telecom sector means, Ericsson was hit harder than anyone else as they invested mostly in the future at the cost of the today (Brikinshaw & Gibson, …show more content…

I am introducing a new term in this thesis, this new third concept of Business Process ambidexterity is called Hybrid BPIT capabilities. Exploitative business process IT capabilities are set of IT activities and operations to support and sustain the business activities. Exploiting the extremes of the existing IT and the technology to support the business processes and operations. If we look at exploitative business process IT capabilities in terms of the online Media industry, all the activities of supporting the business process and maintaining the ongoing IT operational processes e.g. maintain the websites, improving the layouts, servicing the customers, and even starting up a new business process based on existing technology and support. On the other hand, explorative process IT capabilities are more innovative and out of the box IT activities to support and grow businesses. In the online Media industry, launching a new platform i.e. moving from web streaming to mobile app or development and integration of a new module into existing platforms. Exploitative and explorative IT capabilities help the organization to sustain and grow the businesses, measured in terms of the final outcome of the process i.e. Revenue Optimization Process. In the highly competitive online

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