AN OVERVIEW ABOUT THE KPI USED BY BUSINESS ORGANISATIONS
TO MONITOR THE DIGITAL PROCESSES
Crocco, Edoardo1; Chiaudano, Valentina2;
1Department of Management, Università degli Studi di Torino, Scuola di Management ed
Economia, Torino, Italy
2 Department of Management, Università degli Studi di Torino, Scuola di Management ed
Economia, Torino, Italy
Keywords: digitalisation, KPI, benchmarking, digital transformation, management
Abstract
The phenomenon of digitalisation strongly affected business organisations that become more and more digitalised to survive in today’s competitive market.
The purpose of this research is to understand the existing literature about KPIs that business organisations used to monitor the new processes introduced with advent of the digital technologies inside the company.
The study uses Web of Science as a primary search engine and covers the most cited articles over the period 1997-2019. The records are statistically analysed using an open source software package called R.
The findings show how the literature is very diverse when it comes to this topic, as Digitalisation is affecting the Benchmarking processes of a variety of firms, from many different sectors. Our data confirms how the annual literature production has been steadily increasing over the years, up until 2019. This goes to show how the field is still evolving (Ohiomah et al., 2019). Based on our survey, “Performance” appears to be the keyword with the highest citations.
1. Introduction
1.1 The current situation
In recent years, the use of new technologies has affected business organizations, with more and more analogic businesses becoming digitalised in order to survive in today’s competitive market (Kumar, 2018). The digitalisation is a structural change for not only a single business unit but for entire organizations, as for them is the only way to remain competitive. Especially, key strategic functions such as marketing, accounting and human resources can now benefit from new tools and techniques which allow them to be more efficient although they have changed their operational model (Kumar, 2018).
However, despite the importance of digitalisation in modern day economy, the literature is still lacking when it comes to researches related to the application of technology for businesses (Ohiomah et al., 2019).
1.2 The Proposed Study
This study aims to analyze the state-of-the-art of the scientific literature as for how digitization affects process management in organizations, and particularly the KPIs that organizations adopt to monitor processes that are being digitalized. In particular, the focus is on specific keywords found in the literature, how often they come up when analysing the citations and whether or not there is a
correlation between the numerous elements connected with Digitalization. We explore the existing theories and case studies in an effort to find common themes and ideas.
Moreover, our intention is to find specific keywords with the highest amounts of citations through a bibliometric analysis, in an effort to map the existing theoretical framework which appears to be fragmented and still relatively new (Ohiomah et al., 2019). In addition, our research maps the articles found based on the industry sector related to them, showing which industry sector is the most affected by the Digitalisation process and which one isn’t.
1.3 Research Methods
As affirmed by (Fink, 2019), the systematic literature consists of reviewing an existing body of literature using a clear and reproducible methodology.
In this study we use the PRISMA guidelines to develop our reporting strategy.(Moher et al., 2010) We selected paper published from 2002 to 2019 on Web of Science. The choice of Web of Science of our sole citation database depends on the overlaps among the journal lists of Web of Science and Scopus and some other major scientific databases. (Gavel and Iselid, 2008)
On Web of Science database, we used the following search terms in title and abstract: (i) digital*
OR
(ii) KPI* OR benchmark*
The use of above-mentioned search terms and Boolean Operators on Web of Science gave us 4032 results. We then refined our research by limiting the results obtained in four specific fields: business, business finance, management, operation management, economics. This filter yielded 122 records. Then we filtered the result once again and excluded proceedings from the research obtained 85 articles and we make sure that all the articles were written in English (Kraus et al., 2020).
The next step was to manually screen the papers and filter out those that were not involving the topic of digitalization, KPI and benchmarking in them. This was achieved by analysing each title and abstract through the reference management software Mendeley. Finally, we exported the archive in a file that was readable by Bibliometrix. We then used R and its Bibliometrix tool to analyse the dataset obtained and extract the results discussed later in this paper.
1.4Structure
The paper first focuses on defining the terminology that is going to be used in the paper screening process. Then it shows the methodology adopted, focusing on the various steps that led us from the first batch of 4022 papers to the final selection of 69. We then show how the data were analyzsd through the Bibliometrix tool.
2.1 Annual Scientific Production
In an effort to demonstrate how the field of Digital Innovation is new and rapidly growing, we analysed the annual scientific production throughout the years, starting from 2002 to 2019. The production of content related to KPIs and Benchmarking tools in the Digital Age has been growing exponentially since 2002. The average annual growth rate is 11.33%. There has been a recent spike in production levels starting from 2015, with an annual growth rate of 80% from 2015 to 2019.
2.2 The most common Keyword
The three most common Keywords found in studies associated with Digital KPIs and Benchmarking are “Performance”, “Systems” and “Framework”, with “Performance” being the most common one. “Model”, “Growth”, “Innovation” and “Consumer” are also commonly used keywords.
2.3 Co-occurrence network
The Keywords co-occurrence network analyses the structure of a scientific field in an attempt to find existing links between keywords in the literature (Zarei and Jabbarzadeh, 2019). From our analysis, there appears to be strong connection between the words “Management”, “Adoption” and “Framework”. The same thing can be said about the cluster made of the keywords “Performance”, “Systems”, “Benchmarking” and “Efficiency”.
3. Conclusions
The digitalization process is affecting the way KPIs are measured in modern day businesses. The present study has concluded how, despite the field being relatively new and still in development, there has been a steady growth in the annual production rate over the past five years. The strict connections between the keywords “Framework”, “Management”, ”Performance” and “Efficency” suggests illustrates the increasing trends in the literature concerning the Digital Age.
Bibliography
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Gavel, Y., Iselid, L., 2008. Web of Science and Scopus: A journal title overlap study. Online Inf. Rev. 32, 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520810865958
Kraus, S., Breier, M., Dasí-Rodríguez, S., 2020. The art of crafting a systematic literature review in entrepreneurship research. Int. Entrep. Manag. J. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-020-00635-4
Kumar, K., 2018. Impact of Digitalization in Finance & Accounting, NRJP Journals 2018.nrjp.co.in Journal of Accounting.
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D.G., Prisma, T., 2010. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses : The PRISMA statement 8, 336–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2010.02.007
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