Business process adoption in organisations: A case study from an insurance company in South Africa

Abstract

Business process adoption is one of the factors that determine an organisation's performance. While there are various factors that can have an impact on business processes adoption, this paper focuses on the impact of individual, process and organisational factors when adopting business processes in a large insurance organisation. Given evidence of non-optimal adoption, this paper investigates the factors that affect the adoption of business process by employees in insurance organisations in the context of Information Technology (IT) software development projects. A case study methodology was used with one large insurance company in South Africa as the unit of analysis. The data collection process started with conducting interviews with eight business process analysts to gain an understanding of how business processes are used in this organisation. This was followed by an online survey targeted at 120 business process users for which 65 responses were received. From the results of this study, a business process adoption (BPA) model has been developed which can be applied to assist an insurance organisation to improve the adoption of its business processes. The factors proposed in the model could guide future initiatives that aim to ensure the success of business processes in organisations.