Building digital business capabilities in B2B organisation in Finland
Teräs, Emmi (2021)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202101151290
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202101151290
Tiivistelmä
Taking advantage of digital business has become a cornerstone of today’s commercial success. There is a lot of criticism over B2B companies’ capabilities to execute digital driven strategies in Finland and it is suggested there is evidence Finnish companies are behind their global competitors.
The objective for this master thesis is to identify capabilities needed to succeed in digital business and to help companies to evaluate those capabilities. Topic is limited to commercial development and excluding back-end or production side digitalisation non-visible to customers. As an outcome of this thesis, an evaluation matrix is presented which is designed to help companies to evaluate their existing capabilities and help identifying steps to develop those capabilities.
Theoretical framework presented combines traditional organisational development theories with modern business approaches. Organisational development is covered from learning perspective, capabilities perspective, and from the process point of view.
Modern business theories presented are selected to support digital impact of business, including digital business strategy, customer perspective, digital means in e-commerce and marketing. Literature review concludes there is no bespoke theories available to guide B2B businesses in their commercial development choices.
Thesis is an exploratory study taking a pragmatic approach to research and focuses on producing a practical model, adaptable for any B2B business. Theme interview was selected as a research method and six in-depth interviews were conducted between August and October 2020, three from an agency perspective and three from intra-organisational perspective. Interviews were analysed in deductive manner. From the interviews, 17 interlinking themes were found and analysed how the themes contribute to developing capabilities inside an organisation.
Based on the findings of the interviews and literature review, thesis presents six capabilities needed to succeed in digital business. These six capabilities are: strategic capability, optimising capability, process capability, resourcing capability, leadership capability and learning capability. Evaluation matrix was created based on different levels of those capabilities to help companies identify at what level their capabilities are and what direction development need to go to improve capabilities. Thesis concludes that more emphasis should be taken in B2B companies to develop digital business capabilities.
As an exploratory study, more specific research on insights would be useful to further identify underlying organisational behavior. Quantitative research to find out at what level different industries are in the capabilities, in-depth research narrowed down to only one field of industry in B2B world, or investigating barriers related to transform commercial processes would all be interesting research topics.
The objective for this master thesis is to identify capabilities needed to succeed in digital business and to help companies to evaluate those capabilities. Topic is limited to commercial development and excluding back-end or production side digitalisation non-visible to customers. As an outcome of this thesis, an evaluation matrix is presented which is designed to help companies to evaluate their existing capabilities and help identifying steps to develop those capabilities.
Theoretical framework presented combines traditional organisational development theories with modern business approaches. Organisational development is covered from learning perspective, capabilities perspective, and from the process point of view.
Modern business theories presented are selected to support digital impact of business, including digital business strategy, customer perspective, digital means in e-commerce and marketing. Literature review concludes there is no bespoke theories available to guide B2B businesses in their commercial development choices.
Thesis is an exploratory study taking a pragmatic approach to research and focuses on producing a practical model, adaptable for any B2B business. Theme interview was selected as a research method and six in-depth interviews were conducted between August and October 2020, three from an agency perspective and three from intra-organisational perspective. Interviews were analysed in deductive manner. From the interviews, 17 interlinking themes were found and analysed how the themes contribute to developing capabilities inside an organisation.
Based on the findings of the interviews and literature review, thesis presents six capabilities needed to succeed in digital business. These six capabilities are: strategic capability, optimising capability, process capability, resourcing capability, leadership capability and learning capability. Evaluation matrix was created based on different levels of those capabilities to help companies identify at what level their capabilities are and what direction development need to go to improve capabilities. Thesis concludes that more emphasis should be taken in B2B companies to develop digital business capabilities.
As an exploratory study, more specific research on insights would be useful to further identify underlying organisational behavior. Quantitative research to find out at what level different industries are in the capabilities, in-depth research narrowed down to only one field of industry in B2B world, or investigating barriers related to transform commercial processes would all be interesting research topics.