Tell me what’s my business - Development of a business model mining software: Visionary paper

Abstract

Decision-making, innovation and transformation of business models require organizations to precisely understand their current status-quo business model. However, traditional top-down approaches to business model visualization are human-centric, “de jure”, subjective, error-prone, and time-consuming. In contrast, bottom-up Business Model Mining collects and consolidates different sources of business model-related data and presents business models in predefined templates such as the Business Model Canvas. This paper employs a design science approach to develop a Business Model Mining Software to automatically mine business models bottom-up from enterprise resource planning systems. First, this paper discusses weaknesses of traditional top-down approaches to business model visualization and the potential by data-driven approaches. Second, this paper derives meta-requirements and design principles as theoretical foundations to conceptualize the business model mining software. Third, this paper instantiates the “Business Model Miner” in Microsoft PowerBI as a working software based on data from three real-life SAP R/3 ERP-systems of a manufacturing corporation.