Additional Information

The lecture "Digital Transformation of Organizations" will be offered for the last time in Summer 2020. The last exam for this lecture will be the repeated exam in the winter term 2020/21. The repeated exam will only be available for students who took the exam during the summer term.

You will have to apply to participate in the lecture, since we are offering a special capstone project this year. In the capstone project, you will work on a small aspect of a real transformation project of the IT consultancy Senacor, where you will implement a python script to calculate key figures for an imaginary bank based on a large dataset. Hence, elementary knowledge of Python is required to solve the capstone case. Up to 50 students are accepted to the class. Please apply for the course here, you will need your CV. The application will be open from March 21st to April 20th. The selection (if required) will be based on your previous experiences with digital transformation and information systems.

The lecture Digital Transformation of Organizations takes place despite the current restrictions caused by COVID-19. The lectures will be recorded and distributed in time via Ilias. The access to the Ilias course will be granted after application for the event DTO.

Description

During the last decades we witnessed a growing importance of Information Technology (IT) in the business world along with faster and faster innovation cycles. IT has become core for businesses from an operational company-internal and external customer perspective. Today, IT is considered as key enabler of operational excellence ranging from the enrichment of routine working tasks (e.g., enterprise resource planning systems) to e-enabled integration of entire business eco-systems (e.g., e-supply chains). Complementing this primarily company-internal perspective on IT, we have recently have seen a massive growth of digital extensions of existing products and services across all industries. The disruptive potential of IT has already transformed selected key industries, e.g. media or retail, and its impact is continuously growing in all areas of business and society. Large-scale information systems (IS) in organizations strongly interplay with work practices of individual employees as well as organizational structures shaping and being shaped by individuals' behavior.

Thus, successful implementation of IS requires dealing with transformation beyond technology. The ability to implement and use IS in a way supporting its overall value proposition has become a central success determinant. Accordingly, the course “Digital Transformation of Organizations” offers a holistic view of digital transformation. In addition to the basics of digital transformation, the course also focuses on customer and supplier relationships as well as internal changes.

The theoretical findings of the lecture will be implemented in a case study, which makes it possible to deepen and consolidate the learnings.

Bibliography

• Daft, R. L. (2009). Organization theory and design. Cengage learning.
• Laudon, K. C. and Laudon, J. P. (2014). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 13th Edition, Pearson.
• Sambamurthy, V and Zmud, R. Z. (2012). Guiding the Digital Transformation of Organizations. Legerity Digital Press, ISBN 978-0-9857955-0-4.

Content of teaching

• Definition and key concepts of digital transformation

• Introduction of different types of application systems and their characteristics

• The digital transformation process: The pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation phase

• Practice-oriented case study focusing on real-world scenarios

Aim

The students will:

• Get an overview on basic concepts and definitions and understand key characteristics as a foundation for digitization of business processes, products and services
• Learn important concepts and theories in order to successfully execute a digital transformation process
• Experiment with Python to automatically calculate key figures from a large dataset