A Modeling Method in Support of Strategic Analysis in the Realm of Enterprise Modeling

Abstract

Organizations increasingly have to cope with the digital transformation, which is ubiquitous in today’s society. Strategic analysis is an important first step towards the success of digital transformation initiatives, whereby all the elements (e.g., business processes and IT infrastructure) that are required to achieve the transformation can be aligned to the strategic goals and decisions. In this paper, we work towards a modeling method to perform model-based strategic analysis. We explicitly account for information technology (IT) infrastructure because of its key role for digital transformation. Specifically, (1) based on a conducted study on business scholar literature and existing work in conceptual modeling, a set of requirements is first identified; (2) then, we propose a modeling method that integrates, among others, goal modeling, strategic modeling, and IT infrastructure modeling. The method exploits, among others, three previously designed domain specific modeling languages in the Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modeling (MEMO) family: GoalML, SAML and ITML; (3) we illustrate the use of the modeling method in terms of a digital transformation initiative in the electricity sector; and finally, (4) we evaluate the proposed modeling method by comparing it with the conventional SWOT analysis and reflecting upon the fulfillment of the identified requirements.