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A Framework for Digital Business Processes

Authors:
Florian Allwein

Keywords: framework; digital transformation; digitalization; data; information

Abstract:
As society and businesses are changing due to digital transformation, traditional, analogue business processes need to be rethought and re-built. While information Systems research aims to support decision-makers in organizations with theoretically founded insights to support digitalization in practice, it sometimes lacks conceptual clarity, making it harder to apply its recommendations. This is especially true regarding terminology: There are no generally agreed-on definitions for central terms like "information" and "data", which would be helpful for organizations aiming to digitalize previously analog processes. This paper presents a framework covering digital processes in general. It shows how facts of the world are turned into digital data, then into information, which serves as the basis for decision-making. By defining digital data as digital representations of signs in the physical world and information as views of specific digital data, enriched by relevant context, it hopes to contribute to a clearer understanding of these terms. The framework is derived from an analysis of two sample processes, a) using a smartwatch to track movement and b) predictive maintenance in railway infrastructure using smartphones. It should be useful to research digitalization processes in other areas as well. Moreover, practitioners should find it helpful for discussions of digitalization projects.

Pages: 39 to 44

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2025

Publication date: July 6, 2025

Published in: conference

ISBN: 978-1-68558-285-2

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from July 6, 2025 to July 10, 2025