Does IT matter for business process maturity? A comparative study on business process maturity models

Abstract

This article recalls the business process discussion between Carr, who stated that IT does not matter, and Smith and Finger, who proclaimed the opposite. In the end, both visions agreed that IT (or process deployment) counts, but must follow the business strategy (or process modeling). The present study broadens the discussion towards business process maturity, which is a more recent perspective within the literature on business processes. Various authors have proposed a maturity model to guide organizations on their journey to process excellence. However, to what extent do they rely on IT? A twofold approach is adopted, which starts by giving an overview of the academic and non-academic process maturity models. Afterwards, the components within each model are discussed to verify the impact of IT. This comparison suggests that IT-neutral models allow organizations to deal with organization-specific characteristics. IT does not matter after all, but it enables process maturity. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.