Understanding how IT capability impacts sustainable competitive advantage through business process management

Abstract

Business Process Management or BPM is the blueprint of how work is performed in any organisation to deliver customer requirements. Sustainable Competitive Advantage or SCA pushes organisations to adopt flexibility and dynamism into their systems, processes and culture. A study was carried out to determine the influence of BPM on SCA, and to identify the antecedents of BPM in creating SCA. One of the antecedents’ of the study was IT capability. The study was based on organisations in Malaysia. The results from the study revealed that IT capability failed to observe significant relationship to BPM and SCA. In an attempt to understand further this phenomenon, a series of interviews were carried out on 3 companies representing the telecommunications, consulting and manufacturing industries. The findings revealed that while IT capability is a “must-have”, there are numerous factors that may influence or hinder the effectiveness of IT capability implementation.