Customer Centricity Assessment Tool for Digital Business Processes

Abstract

The digital-first economy has positioned user experience (UX) and customer expectations as critical product design and service delivery determinants. While digital products have evolved rapidly to meet these demands, the underlying business processes that enable them often remain internally focused, optimised primarily for efficiency rather than user satisfaction. Business Process Management (BPM) as a discipline has traditionally prioritised cost reduction, standardisation, and automation, offering limited support for evaluating customer-centricity within digital workflows. This thesis addresses the emerging need to evaluate the customer-centricity of digital processes. It develops a structured assessment framework to support product owners and managers in identifying to what extent their digital product’s underlying processes empower users, provide real-time feedback, and adapt to individual needs. The framework is grounded in a systematic literature review on customer-centric BPM and UX-related process features, emphasising the proposed design heuristics. From academic and industry sources, the study translates theoretical principles into practical evaluation criteria organised across dimensions such as process flexibility, transparency, and execution efficiency. The resulting assessment tool was validated through expert feedback and applied to a real-world digital business process to examine its usability and relevance. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was also used to evaluate how practitioners perceive the framework regarding usefulness, ease of use, and applicability in practice. This research contributes to the field of BPM by bridging the gap between process efficiency and customer engagement. The proposed framework provides a practical resource for organisations that align their internal workflows with customer expectations, helping them deliver more adaptive, transparent, and customer-friendly digital services.

Tänapäeva digitaalses majanduses mängivad kasutajakogemus ja kliendiootused keskset rolli toodete ja teenuste kujundamisel. Kuigi digitaalsed lahendused arenevad kiiresti, jäävad neid toetavad äriprotsessid sageli sisekeskseks ja keskenduvad pigem efektiivsusele kui kasutajamugavusele. Ärianalüüsi ja protsessijuhtimise valdkonnas on kliendikesksuse hindamine seni olnud piiratud. Käesolev magistritöö käsitleb vajadust hinnata digitaalsete protsesside kliendikesksust. Töös on välja töötatud hindamisraamistik, mis aitab tootjajuhte ja tooteomanikke mõista, mil määral protsessid toetavad kasutajaid, pakuvad tagasisidet ning kohanduvad individuaalsetele vajadustele. Raamistik tugineb süstemaatilisele kirjanduse ülevaatele ning Frank jt al. (2020) esitatud disainiheuristikatele, tõlkides teoreetilised põhimõtted praktilisteks kriteeriumideks nagu protsessi paindlikkus, läbipaistvus ja tõhusus. Loodud hindamisvahend valideeriti ekspertarvamuste abil ja rakendati reaalses äriprotsessis. Samuti kasutati tehnoloogia vastuvõtmise mudelit (TAM), et hinnata raamistiku kasutatavust praktikute vaates. Töö aitab ühendada protsesside tõhususe ja kliendikogemuse vahelist lõhet, pakkudes organisatsioonidele praktilist tööriista sisemiste töövoogude joondamiseks kliendiootustega.