“SC-COST”: Small Consulting – Capability Oriented “Smart” Transformation

Abstract

Digital Transformation offers many enterprises opportunities for new or enhanced business models. Most large consulting enterprises have the resources to utilise external capabilities for implementing their digital transformation policies, while Small Consulting Firms (SCFs) do not. Research in the field revealed the need for an intellectual framework for helping SCFs specify, analyse, and evaluate their digital transformation requirements themselves. Therefore, the main objective of the thesis was to develop a robust, intellectually defendable framework with a conceptual baseline, a way of working and a support tool to empower SCFs in a variety of business sectors to utilize this framework, with minimal assistance from modelling experts, in analyzing their requirements for digital transformation in a model-driven manner. Research in strategic management revealed that ‘capability-oriented approaches offered the necessary abstraction and intellectual basis for such a framework. Following a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), an iterative approach was used. The start was an existing state-of-the-art conceptual approach named eCORE to model the requirements, motivation and objectives for transformation. Leading to the design of the framework, named SC-COST, which consists of (a) a contextual basis that identifies how the approach can be used generically, (b) a modelling approach for enabling the representation of user requirements, (c) a tool to assist with the modelling, (d) a way of representing and using discovered patterns of capabilities for digital transformation. The framework was applied to 6 use cases of SCFs in different sectors, and the transition from an AS-IS to a TO-BE state through digital transformation was modelled. The results from these use cases were carefully analysed and synthesised to arrive at a set of patterns that would apply to many SCFs in a general way. The patterns were iterated via the use cases for validation purposes to ascertain whether the main objective was met. In the end, the thesis argues for the SC-COST framework and puts forth the proposition that it could be generalized for digital transformation with the potential for broader implications for the rest of the SMEs, a proposition that will require further research in the future.

Date of Award	22 Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Pedro Sampaio (Supervisor)